"Steem" is not a company, it's a blockchain on top of which the Steemit.com website operates. It will not "kick you out" or "lock your account", because it is not a living entity.
The Steem blockchain is not dependent on Steemit.com to exist.
But steemit.com IS dependent on the Steem blockchain to exist.
Steemit.com is but one company that operates on the Steem blockchain.
Think of "STEEM" like a smartphone, and think of "Steemit.com" as one of the apps. Many apps will operate on the smartphone (steemit.com, busy.org, chainbb.com, esteem, steepshot, etc), but taking away an app makes no difference to your smartphone, right?
Thank you and @voorash: I still have no clue really what the blockchain is, a little bit better understanding of it now, but only a little bit. My account was created on steem or steemit not sure, it was a free sign up and they started me off with something like 14 STEEM POWER. So I will stay on steemit, and view all others, right or wrong thinking as third party providers. Once again thank you for the help in trying to get me to understand what is what.
Right, that would be the steemit.com website, which is owned/operated by Steemit, Inc". But "STEEM" is not a website, but more like the backbone for websites like Steemit.com and busy.org, etc. It's the "paper the story is printed on, but not the story itself", so to speak.
Cool what are the other apps?
Aside from steemit.com, there's also beta.chainbb.com, busy.org, and then there are actual apps for iOS & Android, such as Steepshot and eSteem.
These are all different ways of interacting with the underlying Steem blockchain.
Interesting. What is the underlying steem blockchain?
Think of it as the backbone to the whole thing. It's the ledger, and it's permanent. Even when you edit something - a post or a reply - all versions of the post are recorded on the blockchain. It's a perfect, unhackable version of the history of things that occur. I say unhackable because it's not just kept as a record on a single machine. There are numerous machines, all keeping a copy of the blockchain (ledger) on their machine, and all transactions must match the info on the ledgers of the other machines on the blockchain, which are all scattered around the world. To hack the blockchain would mean all machines on the blockchain must be hacked, and this would be basically impossible.
busy.org looks the same as this but better interface you know what i mean?
For sure. It's really whichever one that fits better in your hand, so to speak. I tend to just use steemit.com myself, but that's just because I got used to it first.
Yeah me too.