Yeah I faced the same thing as you did, most of my friends just drifted back to FB. I don't know. I've been numbed by FB, and I don't really use it to keep in constant contact with friends and family. I don't even talk to my closest friends every single day lol..
So yup, Steemit's quite the right place for me to put out my thoughts and work, and it so happens that the community here is great. Or at least, the early adopters may seem to have some qualities that are rather different from most internet users.
Odd isn't it, I have been marked by FB too...it's been an interesting social experiment for me. I withdrew from FB after using it daily for 9 years. I tried to keep my friends list manageable and to people that I knew really well. In 4 months, not one of them has tried to contact me, just to have a chat. 2 people out of 200+ have sent me pm through FB to ask me for something. Please don't mistake this, I'm not complaining that my friends don't care, I think they are under "FB house arrest" and are so conditioned by habits or lazy convenience that they don't even realize that I've been MIA for months. It became very obvious to me that I was quite different, then I really started to think about what is making me different. I would bet there are a lot of common similarities shared amongst the early Steemit adopters. What I think is a key factor, as a collective group, is that we don't watch traditional tv or gather information about current events from mainstream media. It's very interesting when you start to unravel what makes a Steemian tick.