Most social networking sites extract value from their user base for the benefit of the shareholders alone. Steemit is different, it's a new kind of attention economy. By connecting with the Steem blockchain (which is decentralized and controlled by the crowd), Steemit users receive all the benefits and rewards for their attention.
One of the great things about Steemit is that it allows easy entry for people with little or no knowledge about cryptocurrencies, to this vast world. While it is possible to get involved with other projects, this does not require sophisticated arrangements, since you only register and start publishing. This makes things much less overwhelming for all new users, with a ton of information to learn and want to start scratching the surface of this whole world.
I have found that many people, eventually, ask about the difference between Steemit (the web page) and the chain of blocks Steem. So we are going to cover these questions and about other projects that are connected with Steem.
Steemit is the website that many of us spend our time between reading, posting, commenting or checking our wallet. However, all the information of our publications, votes given or received, the money of our Steemit wallet and much more, is actually happening in the chain of Steem blocks. The blocks themselves contain our publications, comments and money transferred.
While Steemit was the first application to use the Steem blockchain, this was not the last. There are other projects that have been developed or are in development to make use of Steem. In short, this means that other sites can hook their own web pages in it, to publish, vote and win with it.