Basically, to create an account on this blockchain, someone has to pay for it. You can pay with your tokens (HIVE) or with your Resource Credits if you have enough. Registrations on Steemit.com was long because Steemit had to verify requests and pay for account creation.
Hive Community tries to decentralize this aspect and we have some tools like hiveinvite.com to make it happen. You can spend your resources to invite new users ;)
This is really cool and thanks for taking a sec a explaining it to me