Well, I can speak to your 1st point.

Steemit, as a platform (social media product) has to compete with every other social media website for eyeballs and attention. Why should people join, and why should people stay? (rhetorical) The internet, esp. social media, is an attention market, in the sense that we're speaking about here.

Customers are the eyeballs that Steemit has to attract to its platform in order to provide value to its currency. Obviously, no user content, no value.

Perspective is important as well. As Ned mentions in his online interviews, Steemit is also a new experiment. It's also in Beta. Personally, I think Steemit has a lot of potential for use, but it will need time to grow.

The main consideration of this thread is user-adoption. It's one thing for people interested in the digital currency niche to slide over to this project, but it's quite another to lure 'mainstream' people away from their social media spaces, where all their friends reside. In that sense, Steemit very much is a product competing for users, or customers.

If Steemit desires to go 'mainstream,' it will have to solve one big problem. Is the value proposition of joining Steemit worth enough to people that they would leave their social media space, and friends, behind?

If the Steemit team can tackle that question once they've had time to develop their platform, they'll be well on their way to achieving large-scale adoption.