It cracked me up that "the reason is you"; while the people reading this are not part of that group ;-)

Although I agree with the fact that Steem is a marathon instead of a sprint, I do think there is another reason people fail to really participate.
And that reason is the layout of the steemit website.

When I joined a few days ago I was seriously underwhelmed by the UX. A mainpage with a long list of 2-line intro's is not really appealing.

And this comes from someone with over 30 years experience in IT, having grown up with machine-language and MS Dos.

I think people expect something along the lines of a FB or other social network, where you sort of have your own environment.

Also, like I mentioned in an earlier post, I feel that missing multi-language support is one of the biggest problems.

And I myself am still confused with the 5 items in the top left corner; Home I understand, but what is the meaning of new, does that not appear on the Home screen? And what is the difference between hot and trending, to me that sounds alike.
And than we have promoted, which confuses the hell out of me. Who promotes, why, and how does this differ from new and trending?

I really believe that a professional designer can make some serious improvements and make the total experience much better.

Please don't feel like I'm just ranting, I appreciate all the work that went into Steem and Steemit. My remarks are only meant as input to make the community grow and be more active.