I think it’s unfair to simply call it a clone. It’s a fork of Steemit, with additional enhancements and customizations that further enforce the niche.

I would venture a guess that you haven’t opened the site (at least recently). I recommend looking at it again: https://steemleo.com.

Mind you, the basic infrastructure is still the same as Steemit and will always carry certain similarities. Why reinvent the wheel? After 3 months of development, I think we’re making lot of progress toward creating an even better version of Steemit.com. Hell, I’ll even say that we already have a superior site in certain regards. I know that I far prefer to use Steemleo over Steemit as the content is immediately more relevant to me, there are additional streams of data presented and the rewards mechanisms are more fairly aligned.

To your point on monotonous sites — the vision for Steem ever since the announcement of SMTs was to niche down into these communities. Steemit.com should not be dishing out Steem tokens as a rewards mechanism. They should be developing the chain, but that’s a whole discussion in and of itself