http://i.giphy.com/rvDtLCABDMaqY.gif 
# Sorry about the visual Gif earlier that was a little inappropriate I guess.

I think user participation is going to shoot up.  There are fewer posts now to some degree because people are figuring out how to make fewer, better posts.  There is also overall sentiment and short term users that were real, but only posting for the money.  We are about to enter the second wave..
https://steemit.com/steemit/@albensilverberg/the-steemit-wave-theory

Brand new to this, trying to read up on what Steem is and can be. This was helpful and helped to clear the picture a bit more. Thanks!

As someone who has covered Twitter as a business for the past two years, it seems like there are really only two issues to focus on. 

First, if Steemit wants really explosive growth, it needs to be easier for the average Joe to understand. It won't get there over night. It took a while for the mainstream (non college students) to understand Facebook. Twitter is still having this problem. Steemit has a huge hill to climb in order to help people understand crypto currency. To be honest, it's all a black box for me, but participating is fun, so I continue.

Second, the site IS set up for success. In a decentralized structure, we ALL learn from our mistakes, and adjust accordingly. When any system LOVES small, non-fatal mistakes (like kinks in how voting power is calculated, or bots taking over, etc), and learns from them, the power of the system increases exponentially. 

In that light, this is what I see happening with fewer posts, as @dantheman references. People are learning from their mistakes--they are posting less crap. That's a good thing.

Overall, the ecosystem has great potential to be an example of antifragile growth.

@dantheman ,
As courtesy, please show the source of the chart,
https://steemit.com/steemit/@atomrigs/attention-whales-it-is-time-for-your-action

I wonder if you or somebody could check out the account of @itay.
You can see from [his comments](https://steemit.com/@itay/posts) that he's clearly a bot, but what's disturbing is his high reputation.  If you look at [the steemd page](https://steemd.com/@noaommerrr) of @noaommerrr who has 96.2M Vests you can see that this account is upvoting all of this bots comments.
### Worth looking into?

I signed up about a month ago and aside from a few replies i have yet to make any posts.  Trying to figure out the ins and outs, generating content, and watching how other users use steemit.  @adamkokesh said he did something similar in his introduction video.  I love the idea of how this site works and cant wait to drop my steemit exclusive content, ive also never really done much on youtube either and while most of my content will be video ive had a hard time deciding if i should do them steemit exclusive making them private on youtube, or releasing via both outlets at sametime.  I decided to start off exclusively steemit and see if we can build some steem but more importantly reach and interact with some like minded people.  Id be interested to see the same chart next month to see if the posts/replies increase.  Where as i agree and im sure there are plenty of bot accounts, have seen a few that where "click baity", but i also feel there are a bunch of lurkers waiting and lurking to figure it out as i have been doing.  So far i like it, check it daily, and cant wait to start submitting stories.

Good to see Steem is growing positively! Thanks for the update!

The honesty with which you portray the actual events and going ons of steemit is refreshing @dantheman.  Keep fighting the good fight and a sincere thank you!

Great to see work is being work on to get better.

I disagree. While the number of account doubles, the number of post has decreased in the absolute term. Therefore, we should admit at least one of the followings: 1) Users are leaving and/or 2) Users are less participating.

Here are my suggestions:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@clayop/make-people-happier-and-let-steemit-succeed

Is there anything in the terms and conditions forbidding the registration of multiple accounts? I see some language that could be construed as such but maybe it's time to update the T&C's with better guidance around signing up new accounts?

How many accounts is considered abuse? Is running multiple niche focused accounts considered abuse? Maybe I'm blind but the policies on account signup don't seem crystal clear to me and I've seen use of multiple accounts being openly talked about on Steemit.chat as being common practice.

A few months ago I was a terrible writer and Presenter; I was shiftless, lazy and disrespectful of my readers to be entitled to a clear concise message within my writings.

Last month I upranked from terrible to a bad writer etc. this month I am just a poor quality writer, yet I post and gain 2 upvotes per Post daily. For a poor writer i feel it is my due; what i dislike is that quality presenter get the same sort of attention.

I myself felt there were 2,500 people per day here and weekly 10,000 but still quality posts were buried into the depths of the BlockChain. People are not going to repeatedly spend a day crafting a post and then be ignored. Steemit will lose its potentially best people.

Once you insult these people they will not come racing back, today I posted a Blog Post about donating money to gamble toward rewarding a quality post in a lottery after it had been completely ignored.

Now there is the change of more money toward posting than curating, we need to be encouraging people to post less and be rewarded not for posting but for improving the posts of others.

I love the idea of Steemit but I cannot and will not continue to be as active here for sixty five cents a day. True this is the only website that has ever paid me anything and I believe in the Steemit mission but unless Steemit starts making some changes where quality people are not just forgotten, then I will rearrange my schedule to five days of fun websites and two days of helping Steemit change the world : )

/ hugz ; )

I also think that users are not participating. They come, they look, some of them just try to make some easy cents from curating and they disappear! My latest activity just proved me that less than 10%  of the voters read  the content before voting and around 4% are commenting using general non-related comments, even if the content is Steemit related...sad, but true!