I'm speaking for myself here (FYI: this is a shared account).

Because I went ballistic on the BitShares forum (and on one mod in particular; I love you @ash! =) ) for a span due to a user being banned over what I considered to be a silly reason (despite his previous warnings) and I took a stand ... and I kind of regret it ... but I had fun doing it (sorry BitShares forum). ;)

Several of us on that forum were also into a the Qora - community and really liked where that project was headed with their decentralized micro-blogging project. It's very cool btw and I hope it continues to grow!

We had several discussions on the topic of decentralized social media platforms and I would bet that's where Dan saw an opening in the market and now we have Steemit.

Actually I didn't realize what STEEM was when it was released, but looking back I wish I had just listened to Dan's original post where he hinted we should take a look. It was the 4/1 date though and a lack of time that made me brush it off for several weeks.

I was one of those people that were left in the dark about the project being real or who was even involved in it until a friend informed me that it was actually Dan's project and it was a blockchain based social media platform.

So I took a look, and as the blockchain will reflect, I was not originally happy with what I saw, for many of the same reasons discussed here to this day. But I decided to just shut up and instead of complaining (for the most part) about what I didn't like, try out the things I did like about it.

One thing is for certain, Steemit is a lot more fun at the Dolphin and Orca levels. I can only imagine what it's like to be a whale. July 4th was a life changing event for a lot of people. Originally it was a $2 million bootstrap I believe (not sure what it ended up being, like $1.7 or something) and it's kind of unfortunate that more people did not participate before 7/4.

Imagine if we had a lot more users here that got in on the pre 7/4 phase and were able to earn their way to or near the dolphin level. It would be rocking here on Steemit!

Perhaps we need another one of those $2 million giveaways @dan / @ned for new users only. ;)