You are right in regards to people making Steemit what it is. Most of the great ideas grow in the community and not from Steemit as a company. The day to day interactions with old and new users alike does have a remarkable draw. I've established friendships with people who I've met with in the community (3D world LOL) sourced from this platform, spent hours on the phone with folks I met and worked with on Steemit. I've never had a facebook account or twitter and my normal posture towards social media has always been anti as I never agreed with how it corrupted peoples lives. But we do have something remarkably different here. A great post and glad you stuck around. Keep up the awesome work. Up voted and definitely resteemed. :)Wow. What a great write up. I remember first arriving and not using bots for my first 8 months. Then @davemccoy and I started @newbieresteemday and I started using them to help people, and then started using them on my own post. But interestingly my most profitable vote ever came from before I ever started using them and recently I walked away from bots. I just went off them.
I know I said I wouldn't name drop, but davemccoy is definitely one of the heroes I had in mind in my post. You didn't miss anything not havinf a fakebook account. I deleted mine some time back, after downloading all the info they had been collecting on me.
Thanks for the kind words and looking forward to seeing where we will be after we have a year under our belts.