Usually, the effects are seen in slow drips at first and start to build momentum.
Remember facebook? It all started with one website for Harvard only, they never did much marketing their own community did it for them, they were able to grow rapidly and vastly, adding other universities, after a while they went wider and started accepting everyone, now it's the most known website in the world. That's where I see Steem going, even more actually, because facebook was limited, we aren't we pay users, we can put STEEM on other platforms and dapps, with the tech and motivation we can do to facebook what facebook did to myspace!
Good example, .. if crypto ever gets hot again, we will likely see a lot of people joining at once.