As a long time Redditor I shared some of its ideas and future look on decentralized media.

Thank you for posting @cryptoctopus this query/poll as to why Steemit.

For primarily the same reason as @whatsup.  It is private....uncensored....and to add a few more reasons...why?......no government interference...and to be a guinea pig of sorts for others who were on other social sites.  

No social media site has been of interest to bleujay.  Therefore the idea of putting content forward to dialogue over was a real draw to remain which could not be possible if one has no privacy and is censored.

Steemit so far is a winner.  It has gone beyond any expectations.

It piqued my curiosity when it became the third top crypto.

After years of being harasses by friends and many others to start my own blog about this and that topic, the ones I actually chose to write about in my steemit blog, I was convinced to do so once and for all when I was told I'd potentially get financial rewards for doing so. 

After trying it out, I thought the platform was fantastically well thought of, even if it is only in its infancy, and kept on going with the postings. Thanks again for your continuous hard work and dedication to quality. All for one and one for all!!!   Namaste   :)

I was at Bubblews, then at Persona Paper. Let's say I am always on a lookout for writing sites. I've seen Steemit mentioned on Cointelegraph and joined immediately.

I blogged for nearly a month on "madagain.com", a personal blogging site but didn't find it doing anything then I found steemit and here we are! Great Concept and I Totally loved it!

ha ha ha
http://www.zappa.com/sites/g/files/aaj776/f/styles/suzuki_breakpoints_image_mobile-lg_sq/public/release/201601/04_WOIIFTM_cover.jpg?itok=wH6d6aSi

I was looking into micropayments for content, and had been following a couple of Bitcoin-based networks with similar ideas, but Steemit came out first. They are still all under production.  

I think I saw it mentioned as a Reddit Alternative, sometime in May when I arrived.

I joined because I saw Ned on CNBC talking about a social media blogging site that paid you for your content. I thought to myself.. that is exactly what I have been looking for!

I saw crypto and Reddit and thought the idea was cool. Thought I would have something to contribute for in the science area of a new social networking platform. Hope others agree that I've been a net positive for the platform. I've been trying and will continue to try to be.

Last Spring I had time to look into new programming projects and found out about Ethereum/Dao.  I had heard of bitcoin and cryptocurrency and always wanted to get more into that.  I researched Ether and began to set up my computers to code within Ethereum.  While researching, I saw an article on Steemit, which combined crypto, programming and a social network. I came here, read and commented for a few days, then made my intro post which did quite well.  The nice payout reinforced my desire to stay here.

I have been on, and created, social networks before, so that has always been an interest of mine.  There are opportunities here to program projects and I have done that but not released to the public.  

The community here has worked through all kinds of issues.  It still feels like the early days of YouTube here, before it went to the moon.  I know how that played out and I will be here watching as Steemit goes mainstream too.  

I'm here every single day, manually up voting, to support authors and distribute a tiny bit of the reward pool to quality posts, in my opinion, regardless of what my curation reward may be.  But I do also vote on some posts mainly for a little reward. :) 

Steemit to the moon!

i were into BTS so the new creation of dan had to be checked by myself!

I learned about Steem on April first (April fools day), on the Bitshares Talk Forum.  After reading all the talk about it over the next two weeks I desired this wasn't for me. But then I thought, how do I know it's not for me if I don't try it. Gave it a try and fall into love. Ok maybe not love but liked it very much. I wish I didn't resist getting in right away. There was a lot of easy money to be made back then.

Steem is the only crypto besides bitcoin that actually does something to encourage people to use it

Because somebody pumped the price to $4+.

*Hey, if you are listening, can you do that again?*

http://www.jiffytax.ca/images/moneytree.gif
#### Money, 
##### And unabashed promoting of:
### [Gold as money](https://steemit.com/life/@nigelmarkdias/has-goldmoney-s-aurum-made-the-search-for-a-central-bank-gold-standard-redundant)
### [Second passports](https://steemit.com/life/@nigelmarkdias/do-you-need-a-second-passport)
### [Personal opinions](https://steemit.com/life/@nigelmarkdias/the-sultan-of-swing)
### [Dubai](https://steemit.com/life/@nigelmarkdias/dubai-dhows-to-disney-episode-1-does-dubai-have-the-world-s-most-loyal-jim-reeves-fan)
#life #money #gold #currency

@onceuponatime, One of the earliest steemit adopters, joined a community project that I started here in Chile. When he came to see our land and evaluate the project, he introduced me to steemit. I joined, met the few people that were here in the beginning, and loved the concept so much that I decided to stick around and invest for the long-haul. It has been a fantastic year and I'm very much looking forward to the next.

An attempt to get bitcoin.

I joined Steemit as a result of a forum I used to lurk on Reddit. I didn't quite believe that it was real though I hoped it was. My first day I saw a couple @andrachy videos and was intrigued. Later, I stumbled across the famous freak @stellabelle and the discourse and discussion happening around the *very real* things she was talking about just hooked me. 

TL;DR came for the revolution, stayed for the drama and popcorn ;)

@roadscape told me to check it out around the time it launched, it took me a couple of weeks to get around to reading the whitepaper, and another month to sign up. I got here just in time for the 4th of July when the rewards started paying out. It was great to see all of the familiar handles from the bitsharestalk forums, the progenitor community of Steem. The awesome part about Steem: you get high quality discourse (as were the bitshares forums), but now you can do it for every topic, not just block chains and austrian economics.

I enjoy blogging and the technology was cool. The money is a bonus

I was working as a writer for Interesting Engineering and I was doing research on the internet. I came across an article on Steemit, and i noticed the dollar value at the bottom. I've been wanting a solution to the publishing/creative vs. money problem for my entire adult life. I thought that Steemit had the solution......
Most of my friends are some kind of artist, and they are all poverty-stricken. Artists have trouble monetizing their work.....writers too... That's why I stuck around.
And a big one: I have been seeking out an alternative to Facebook for years now. I got sick of FB about 3 years ago. And I was a Myspacer before that...... I knew there was going to be a big next thing, and I have been looking for that. But I found Steemit accidentally.

@cryptoctopus, what's your answer?

I enjoy writing and have  done so as a hobby  for many years.  A friend recommended Steemit  and here I am.  I have only written a post introducing myself but will get back to writing when time permits.

I read an article in CoinTelegraph that led me to investigate. Since I have done a lot of blogging over the years, including other paying sites like Tsu and ZapChain, it made sense to take another crack at doing it for  pay. Steemit runs very deep with it's open source software and imaginative economic model. It is just the kind of thing that would interest me.

**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 <a href="http://www.qora.org">Qora</a> - <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1358722.0">community</a> 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. ;)

I joined steemit as a way to express thinking / living freely.
I joined steemit because it is a very interesting (crypto) protocol.
I like how on steemit one can value them selves and other selves individually & collectively.
http://www.onlinesignature.in/animateText/text785697588.gif

I heard it was a private, uncensored social media site.