Steemit Alpha, a look back in history.

"one small step for steem, one giant leap for steemkind" - Ned Scott, April 4th 2016.
Source

That's Ned's first post ever made on steemit and a proper way to start off this post.

Today's post is a history one, It's about the rapid growth of Steemit, a look back in history and an answer to the question, how whales and dolphins came to be?

Alpha

The logo below, is the "original" logo of Steemit dating back to the Alpha days, don't remember this?
Well some lucky people do!

That was the logo used in the 1st initial Alpha release 4 months ago!
Now a real pearl, a look of the UI and Trending Page in the early Alpha! :)

Look at that ^^! That was the look of Steemit in the really early days. Note the up vote and down vote button! Yeah it used to be a thing back then, no flags! So much has changed over the past 4 months, not only on the outside, but on the inside as well! -Peasants, they didn't have the follow button back then, once they had it, it wasn't working ;) Hahahhaa

The "Whale Factory"

What many people don't know Steemit is here for more than just a month or two that the majority seems to think. Note the big payouts in the early days, that's how some whales got their Steem Power. With very few users and a lot of steem, It was a big steem time back than, but that's not how most of them acquired their steem power. Imagine you having a account in the early days, you would've been at least a dolphin by now. The majority of the whales where one of the 1st passengers of the "Steemit mining train" earning huge amounts of steem for their mining! Most of the whales today are just, early power miners! That also explains why the majority of them have multiple accounts. You might know that the top 19 witnesses get huge SP rewards, well some whales have been getting these for months now....Oh and back in the days, there was no such thing as a"posting limit", you could post every 5min's! But coming up with something to post was the hard part! :))

On the other hand most of the dolphins are early investors who bought in at prices of ~0.25 cents/1 Steem. Or are just basic members that were just taking part in the platform. It is truly amazing to see such rapid growth and progress in this short time period and to be a part of it. We are the early supporters as well, if you look at the bigger picture!

Announcing the revolution!

• That's the "Introducing Steem, Looking for Witnesses / Miners " announcement.
  Psst, you might recognize some of the prominent Steemit users on this thread:
  https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,22125.0.html?PHPSESSID=ucu81llbpps9nl2v0b5clm6q60
  Oh and some people even considered it a April joke....(It was published on April 1st, lol...)

• This is a post from Coinreport, announcing that steemit is going public posted on May 4th!
  Steemit went public with the 1st public beta version on May 3rd 2016!
  https://coinreport.net/steemit-rewards-social-media-content-creators-cryptocurrency/

• The promotion on Bitcointalk on May 9th and the announcement of: "large rewards being distributed for Steemit's first and largest distribution on July 4th."
  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1466593.msg14800086#msg14800086

This is the 1st Steemit promotional video ever using the "old" logo:

Still worth watching, but don't use this one for promotion, share instead https://steem.io There is the "new" one with the current logo! :)

Fun Facts:

• This is the first ever post on steemit! https://steemit.com/meta/@steemit/firstpost posted on: Mar 30th 2016!
• This isn't the first post on Steemit, but it is a very special one, Ned's first post on steemit!
  I quote: "one small step for steem, one giant leap for steemkind"!Seems we conquered new frontiers again, first the Moon, now Steemit, what's next?Hahahhaa :))
• The first Pow ever, was found on March 24th 2016. at 18:00:03 UTC in the block #1092!
• The first block ever(Block 1), produced was on March 24th 2016. at 16:05:00 UTC!
  (At the time of writing this we are currently on the Block 4325828!)
• The first ever account was created on 30th March 2016!
• If I'm not wrong, Steem is celebrating it's first 6 months of existence tomorrow at 16:05:00!!!(But we are for sure celebrating 6 months since creation of the first block!)
• Exactly 3 months ago on May 23rd Steemit had 1360 Users! Again, at the time I'm writing this, there is mighty 73.200 of us and hundreds are joining us each day!!!

I hope you enjoyed this post, I just wanted to share with you the amazing history steemit already has considering it's still fairly new and It's rapid growth. For me it was really interesting to research all this data and find that old screenshot of the Steemit Alpha. I've gained a lot of information about steemit thanks to this, expanding my Steemit/steem knowledge even further!

The Future?

Steemit did so much in such short time and proved it's great value, biased on this what are your predictions for the future of Steemit 3 months, a year ahead? I would like to hear your opinion!