If you have been following Steemit's progress and growth you already know this, but for those who don't you should prepare for a surprise as Steem is showing signs of rapid growth, not only in trade volumes/price but in all of the projects that are built on top of the Steem blockchain.
Great success is imminent and just around the corner, stack some STEEM ASAP so you are ready when it happens
Steem and blockchain in general is a revolution like no other. Shifting the power always from big corporations and giving it to those who deserve it. Empowering content creators and consumers. This is just a beginning of a great story we will write on Steemit and you are lucky enough to be one of 50 000 active users currently on this amazing platform.
The Steem blockchain is not only insanely fast but it's frictionless 3s transactions with 0 fees are providing a great platform for many projects. Sounds too good to be true? It isn't. That's the power of the Steem blockchain :) And that's why it will get increasingly popular in the future with developers that are looking to make apps working efficiently on a blockchain.
Steemit.com is just a front-end for the steem blockchain and there are many more exciting projects that are utilizing the power of the Steem blockchain. And for each one you need a Steemit account to function and receive rewards.
Most notable of whom are:
A crowdfunded project by 
Check Utopian Rules and see if you can make a contribution. There are many projects to work on for developers, translations, graphic design, analysis, suggestions etc..
To make a contribution register with your steem account at Utopian
Read more here
Utopian: My Contribution to the Open Source World.
Dtube
Is a project by a genius known as 
Dtube also support's it's contributors with massive upvotes so if you have quality content to offer think about making a submission. It could be anything but it must provide value to the community. Again, don't think about abusing because you will get nowhere.
Read more here
Introducing DTube: a decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS
Dlive
Is a decentralized video sharing platform for livestreamers based on the Steem blockchain similar to twich but you can earn steem/SBD for livestreaming.
Read more here
Announcing DLive Beta
Dsound
Is for all the musicians out there. Made by 
Read more here
Introducing DSound: a decentralized sound platform using STEEM and IPFS
Dmania
If you can make dank memes Dmania is just the right thing for you. Also based on the steem blockchain Dmania is a place to share your dank memes and get rewarded for it. But please don't repost other's memes. Only use for your fresh original memes :).
Dmania also has it's own bot that supports users with 15$ upvotes. I'm not sure how they chose which meme's are worth the vote because not all get upvoted.
Read more here on how to contribute:
Share your dMania Posts on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest
To post register with your steem account here Dmania
If you look into this projects you will quickly realize that when any of them hit the mainstream, and it could happen any day. Making millions of users joining and launching Steem price to the moon. Start contributing to any of above mentioned projects to push them further and make some cash for yourself while helping them grow!
Zappl
Is a decentralized micro-blogging platform built on the Steem blockchain that claims to be "The Twitter of Steemit". It works just like Steemit, but in a much smaller format with a cap on amount of words you can write per post. All Zapps are also posted on your steemit profile, and logging to log into Zappl you will need a Steemit account first and go through Steemconnect.
If that wasn't enough we got SMT's :)
SMT or Smart Media Tokens will allow any website that has a comunity or wants to build one to addapt Steemit's monetary system and issue their own token.
Read more in the announcment post by 
Every single token that they hand out has to go through Steem first and which will greatly increase STEEM value as everyone addapting SMTs will need a large amount of tokens to function properly on the Steem blockchain.
One of the most notable projects that will be amongst the first ones to addapt SMT's and issue their own coins is APPICS
It's basically a much better version of instagram with a Steem-like monetary system allowing users to earn monetary rewards in form of cryptocurrency while doing what they would usually do for free on Instagram.
CHECK IT OUT
What's currently preventing us from going mainstream, 100$ STEEM and how Steemit.inc fixed it with the upcoming (patch/update) hard for 20 - Velocity
HF 20 is an update announced 7 months ago and since I first saw what it is supposed to do I have been eager to see it applied as it will fix Steemit's major issues that are preventing us from going mainstream and that is account creation.
The problem with new accounts is that Steem is bandwidth for the steem blockchain and without it you can't function. No comments, posts, or upvotes. Nothing. So in order for an account to work Steemit needs to delegate them some SP.
Taking in consideration that millions of new accounts will be created that makes it allmost impossible for Steemit to cover all those expenses and thus the problem of creating accounts. And the proccess taking so long.
I myself waited 3 months to get one account while my friends that made them got them in a couple of days/weeks. But that's still a real issue. We can't have a working product if we don't have the ability to create new account's. It's impossible to ensure any growth when account creation is such a problem.
So how will they fix it?
By burning steem for account creation
To solve this problem, we propose a new method of burning STEEM (i.e. destroying the tokens and removing them from the token supply) on each account creation and crediting the account with permanent minimum bandwidth instead of providing Steem Power to the new account.
Not only will this prevent future abuse of making multiple accounts for malware benefits with users only wanting to get free STEEM but will drastically decrease the number of total STEEM in available in circulation thus pushing the price to the roof! Imagine millions of new accounts created and tens of millions of STEEM vanishing and what it will do to the prices :)
To further decrease the load of account creation on Steemit discounted account creation through mining will be added
These accounts can be paid for with a combination of STEEM, bandwidth, and mining. Yes, mining. We believe that the ability to mine an account into creation was a fantastic feature of our hybrid proof of work system that was lost when we removed proof of work. Mining will use Litecoin's script algorithm as it is battle tested. This will only be used for creating accounts through the discount system and not for block production.
As I understand it, if you have the equipment needed you can bring down the price of an account by offering some of your processing power to the network. Sounds amazing!
With account creation fixed and amazing projects evolving there will be nothing stopping us of taking over the online space from the hands of facebook, and other bullshit social media websites that leech on your time spent on the site only to make profits for themselves all while spying on your every keystroke and listening to your every phonecall (if you are an android user, not sure but IOS but they might also do it) only to give you more personalized adds that in end they can charge more.
As soon as HF20 launches (should be in a month or two max) prepare for complete and utter madness as millions of new users join Steemit and push prices sky high! Take my advice and, convert all SBD you have to STEEM, buy more STEEM with fiat and POWER UP!! 100$ per STEEM will come sooner than you think :)
Read more about hardfork 20 - Velocity here
Remeber that this is just a start of a revolution like you never seen before. We will change the course of history with what we are doing here today. So do your best to contribute to the community as much as you can. Tell your friends about Steemit and share the word around, write good blogs that will bring traffic from outside of Steemit, contribute to projects building on top of the Steem blockchain because not only will you make a profit by doing so but you will help the projects evolve faster and further.
NEVER FORGET TO BE A POSITIVE MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY AND DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO PUSH IT FURTHER!
Steemit is like a beehive and every user is whether they know it or not, is contributing to it's growth so start today and do whatever you can to help our community grow and succeed! What are you doing to contribute to Steemit's growth and what you plan on doing in the future? Leave a comment as I will revard best, most hardworking bees in our hive with a sweet upvote :)