I rarely go to Facebook anymore. But geeze does this screen make me wander over to see what's going on over there now and then...
My how the past couple of weeks have affected us. With the start of the month came dreaded words that shook the world of Steem as we knew it. DDoS. According to 
Steemit.com is experiencing a DDoS attack.
We're working on mitigating it. Stay tuned.
There are lots of rumors and misinformation floating around. Don't believe everything you read.
Steemit.com is experiencing a DDoS attack
In the Comments to that same post, Sneak and 
People that may have been supporters of the platform may never come back because of that failed first impression.
Some people have questioned if the recent problems are truly the result of a DDoS attack. While I did a brief search, I was unable to find any post titles that suggested there were people who question the official story, but they sure are out there in the comments of posts.
I will state the same thing I did in my last post on the subject, the DDoS story is the official line from Steemit, so that is what I am reporting on. If you have proof to the contrary, I am more than happy to take a look, but speculation doesn't cut it, as the DDoS story is what Steemit is sticking with.
The outage was unrelated to any recent changes that were applied to Steemit.com. The site has been getting requests on the order of a hundred thousand per second from someone using a botnet spanning throughout dozens of countries.
Several changes have been made to mitigate the attack in the short term, and we are working on several improvements that will make the website more robust to these types of attacks in the future.
Exerpts from Update regarding DDoS attack
Why Does all of this matter?
We are experiencing a period where the First Impression quite bluntly, Sucks. The Gateway Errors, the long load times, the inability to quickly and confidently upvote or comment, let alone post is becoming an increasing issue.
New users coming to the website for the first time are getting the impression we don't know what we are doing. The average social media user couldn't care less that the top corner of the screen says "Beta". If it doesn't work, they will turn right back around and forget about the site. Two people I referred over to Steemit already gave up prior to these issues due to the learning curve. So these issues sure aren't helping.
What we don't want to do is have people come to check out what is going on in Steem, and turn around running back to Big Daddy Mark and his Book of Face. But if they do not see a working site, if they can't navigate around without experiencing the loading wheel of death and Gateway Areas, that is exactly what they will do. Facebook is, after all, familiar and comfortable to millions of people.
Regardless of the size of fish you are, you need to care about how many users are here. If the Average users falls, so does the desire and demand for STEEM on the open market. Without new demand, value plummets. A million STEEM won't help you if they become worthless because no one is interested in the platform as a viable crypto anymore.
How bad is it? Let's finish on a High Note
I pulled the following chart out of 
Steemit Statistics 2017.10.19Do you see what I see? I'll give you a hint. Companies judge performance on a Year Over Year basis. They are looking at trends for this month versus the same month last year. And that's the way we need to look at this chart too. Compare the current curve against what was seen during the same period last year.
There's something about April to August that brings in the active users in droves. Then things fall off a bit in September and October, then Flatten out for awhile.
Granted, we only have one year of data to base this on, but the good news is, we've seen this pattern before, and survived. Not only survived, but thrived. Last year at peak in August there were 26,329 active users. This year the August peak his 81,708. Maybe a slight draw down is a good thing.
We will need to watch the November numbers come in to see if we get the same leveling off that the platform experienced last year, and then with the new year and the potential of SMTs coming into the system, this time next year we could be looking at the same 4x active users as we can see this year versus last year. Or even more.
Make no mistake. The Dev team need to increase stability of the website at all costs. A website that is not functional is not drawing new users to it. And new users will not know to go to, or care to go to alternate sites. If you were a new Facebook user and saw the page was down, would you look for alternate ways to get to it, or go find something else to do?
There is so much massive growth potential in STEEM if the team in place does it right. So let's hope that stability is the more important S word right now.
After all, without a Stable STEEM, SMT will have nothing to balance on!
Thanks for reading! I hope you have a marvelous weekend! Steem on my friends!!