it often seemed as if Steemit was an afterthought which had been in "beta" for many months before, and since, I arrived.

I've suspected it was the other way around, Steemit was the hook to finance everything else, first up was EOS and now SMTs.

That's fine, except for the huge campaigns of "get paid to blog" and the ever present (at least early on) "we're going to replace Facebook" mantras.

Then again, Its just my naivety to think people on the internet will be honest.