Yeah that is what I meant as far as advertising - the first big Curie upvote works as advertisement outside the Steem ecosystem. Which is really, of course, where advertisements for new users have to go. You don't advertise for new users within the existing user base. My main point with this post is that I hear a surprising number of people who do not see the value of what Curie is doing from a "adding value to the Steem blockchain" perspective. These same people get excited about Jerry Banfield advertising for Steem on youtube, or some developer attracting new users to the blockchain with an app.

My point is - Curie has been advertising the core concept of Steem the entire time and gets very little credit for it. The entire Steem blockchain is based around "proof of brain", and the entire Steemit, Inc. marketing plan is based around "You can get paid to post your content". Every large Curie vote that a newbie user gets, they go running around to friends and family outside of Steem and tell them about it. This is the most valuable form of advertising you can get! You can't buy an ad from youtube that comes from the mouth of a loved one and tells a personal experience of actually getting paid for posting content. The real shame of course is that the trend is going farther and farther away from upvoting content based on merit, and is going more and more toward upvoting content based on who paid the most for the upvote.