Thanks so much for the help! Will definitely check out these members. I'm finding it a little hard to accurately search for things, so tips like this are really great. I'm finding discord to be a pretty popular place for steemit members (and crypto communities in general).
Regarding platform's growth, yeah I've recommended the site to a few people and they're still waiting on their accounts to be approved from weeks ago!
Cool! There is another way to quickly join if any of your friends have a little bit of crypto (about $20). Just go here, pick a username and send the funds: https://anon.steem.network/
One of our Steemit witnesses @someguy123 has created this sign up portal. The only difference is that Steemit.com does not pay the fee for them... but no waiting.