Congratulations @acidyo.

You really deserve all the great things along these years since you always help the growth and engagement of new and existent members here on steemit and Reddit. Always sharing your thoughts and knowledge without asking anything in return.

Regarding reddit you are right it wasn't as popular back then and even I only saw a great potential when they change the user interface ( that in my opinion is much better now and captivating to use daily) as well all the feature improvements that really make the platform shine and keep people coming in and stay for long.

On the other side steemit really is great because you earn real steems for your content but in terms of user experience is not the best it could be. Recently I start to use 'busy' and it helps on the overall feeling of having a great interface but it still misses the 'hook' reddit for example is able to pull this in a great way. They have build something that is a hub for all. You have in a single place all the sub-reddits, chat, people that genuinely reply instantly to your post just because they had fun or connect with that thought without thinking much about karma or not...here you have to think twice to comment or upvote something because you can 'drain' your tank of comments and upvotes and that is restrictive, even more for new adopters of the platform, they can't be really 'free' on the true sense of the word. So sometimes the important thing is not the reward or gratification but the overall experience and be a part of something that you can call genuinely 'yours'.

I think Steemit has potential and can grow and improve a lot in terms of user experience and add more features to captivate more people in the future. But like Reddit it will take time and maybe it will have to abandon or even remove some rules and restrictions that are hurting more the platform than helping in order to keep new users interested and whiling to stay every day.