Whoa! What a read. I love it 1000% first thank you for posting the history and the future of the platform in a comprehensible post.

I came across this platform by accident over a year ago and I liked the concept, almost seemed too good to be true at first and realistically I am pretty close to computer illiterate, especially this whole blockchain and crypto thing was a foreign concept to me. With all it's flaws I never regretted it and it's given me the opportunity to learn a lot, still have a lot to learn but I think i'm one step ahead of the rest of my peers that still ask "WTF is bitcoin" . I keep informing them of steemit being the future of social media which I always believed from my early days here, sure it's not perfect but it's just growing pains, for a while with the lack of communication I was almost wondering about it's future and if anyone even cared. Clearly with your article that is a big yes and makes me optimistic for the direction the platform will go in the future.

I really hope coinbase adds steem as one of the currencies and that would probably cause investors to take the platform more seriously and possibly attract more users. The trending page and bidbot abuse still needs to be addressed and I don't think it's the first impression we want new users to get but it is evident that some of the bot owners are starting to take more responsibility as to what their business promotes.

One thing I would like to see is being able to buy steem directly from the platform via credit/debit card or whatever without having to buy thru a third party or having to buy another currency to convert, or perhaps someway to make gift cards exchangeable for steem, could be used as a promotion tool in stores as well, kind of like a apple card. That is the one crypto project I really believe in because of it's fast and painless peer to peer transactions so far.

Overall , even without much computer knowledge, I found steemit easy to learn, seems overwhelming and much more intimidating than it actually is at first with all the information to take in. I still struggle to explain to my friends what is steemit and how it works and get them to join but I will share this to my other social media because you did such a great job at explaining the platform, better job than I will ever do!