I signed up at Steemit in my hunt for an alternative to Facebook and Twitter, and it is definitely all that. However, my goal has been to find a platform to which my less technologically adept family and friends would be attracted, and in this Steemit runs into serious problems.
I also have accounts at Minds.com and a Diaspora group. I've been using those platforms for long enough now to say with some authority that they are both more user friendly and intuitive than Steemit. Content monatization is a little more straightforward at Minds than it is here, especially for people who aren't already familiar with cryptocurrency. The one thing Steemit has going for it is popularity, and a larger supporting community. So, when my mother announced that she wanted to leave Facebook, I tried to set up an account for her here, and that's when I slammed into the deal breaker.
We have one, and only one, cell phone. Don't need and can't afford a family plan. That number was used when I signed up. Steemit insists on a separate cell number for each account, and doesn't offer any alternative verification method. Yes, there are a couple of apps I could use, which then require her to pay the account set up fee. Well, why would she do that when it takes two minutes to set up an account at Minds without those hassles? Short answer, she now has a new account at Minds, and since that's where I'm now pushing friends and family, it's unlikely I'll have much use for my Steemit account in the future.
All of these platforms are still in beta, so I'll hang in for a little while here to see if these issues get fixed. We'll see.