Steemit is just a dapp, think an application program on your phone. It's just a front end user interface into how to read the blockchain. It is not the blockchain itself. It just so happened that steemit inc was the original programming team that created steem... so they've been largely associated as the chain itself. Which it is not!

Steempeak and partiko for instance are other applications with similar functions of reading the blockchain. They are different dapps.

Partiko u can download off Google play, as it's a mobile app. Steempeak just go to steempeak.com and it functions similar to steemit. There are a lot of others.

Consider this site for other ways to interact with steem: https://steemprojects.com