I love Steemit and am very optimistic about it's future. My reason for being on here in addition to enjoying the platform and having made some friends and connection on here is also wanting to be on the ground floor of something potentially very big.

Many of the biggest Youtube stars we have today are where they are because they were early adopters so whenever I see a new social media platform come out that looks promising I try to gain a foothold. I did that with Periscope, that didn't wind up playing out that well but you just never know.

I've been on here since last June and it was pretty negative when I got on. Steem was at a low price and had been that way for a while, it was before hardfork 19 which apparently leveled the playing field more with whales and the rest of us so it was kind of negative back then.

I think it's important however to distinguish between negativity and constructive criticism. I see some people bury their heads in the sand and are just dillusional saying Steemit or DTube is better than Youtube. I suppose we each have our own opinions but to me nobody is as good as Youtube at knowing what I want to watch and delivering it to me. Steemit and DTube really make me work and sort through a lot of stuff I'm uninterested in to find the stuff I am interested in. There's also not all of the same content, Steemit and DTube lacks a lot of longer form content.

I think some people feel like it's bad to say anything critical of Steemit and I think that is also bad in that you can't improve if you don't acknowledge your shortcommings so to say Steemit is awesome and its gonna kill FB and Youtube is basically saying Steemit doesn't need to improve.

I really like @brianphobos approach. He's one of the biggest advocates and cheerleaders of Steemit and I think he's responsible for bringing a lot of people on here and keeping a lot of people on here, honestly if it wasn't for him helping me along the way and keeping me motivated I would have left a long time ago and I see he's the same with many others. A ton of people I follow I see brian cheerleading them on, commenting on their posts. In a video recently he commented on how he feels like his growth isn't as good as it could be because he's honest and shares his opinion and isn't rah rah Steemit is the greatest all the time. I actually appreciate his measured approach and prefer it over people who act like Steemit can do no wrong.

One thing that's been annoying me a bit recently about Steemit is all these reserved accounts. I was wanting to start another account or channel about self improvement and all the names I wanted were taken which is fine if someone is doing something with them but most seem to be reserved by Steemit or are people just squatting. @selfimprovement @getmotivated @motivation @inspiration @motivated. I suppose in a sense that's not any different than any other social media site where you have to be clever to find a name ie @selfimprovement1 or something like that but that's my most recent annoyance lol.