Companies are quick to say "blockchain not bitcoin", one most glaring example is the shit that Jack Ma pulled. Ultimately all they are about economic rent and control.

Though end-users don't really care these things like liberty from currency control. it wont be long before some financial disaster happen that saw the rise of cryptocurrency use (use, not price) that the smart ones would finally see the appeal of it. It's not about jumping in and hoping for "when moon", but to know that the money you own would be accepted anywhere in the world and whose fate is not decided by 12 unelected old men in a cushy room.

As for steem, I really believe that the 3 second blocktime, massive network capacity and DPOS consensus algorithm isnt that properly communicated to the wider public, even among the cryptocurrency space. Ask any folk in bitcointalk and most likely their understanding of Steem is something along the line of "Reddit with money". Totally doesn't do steem justice.

A quick search on Quora about the "fastest transaction crypto" and steem isn't in any of the answers. (Hmm, maybe i'll drop a angrily passionately written answer to shill for steem).

IMO Marketing purely through user word of mouth may not be the best thing Steemit.inc can do. Perhaps they decided that now may not be the best time for full scale marketing yet, and i may agree to it. But if this is the extent of how Steem will reach the public, we're gonna have a problems.