darkcoin brought new people into the cryptosphere
How many?
Compare with Steem.
If the ratio is less than 100:1 I'd be surprised, and will likely very rapidly expand to 1000:1 or 10000:1 if not higher.
What is Steem's attrition rate on new signups? Since no one is compiling this data accurately, we don't know if Steem is failing or not.
I don't know the number, but regardless of attrition rate it there are still orders of magnitude more people actively using it than were brought into the cryptosphere by darkcoin. Come on, it isn't even close. Just look at the volume of substantive comments being posted which is sort of a Proof of Actual (non-attritted) User. Unless you think Ned has hired an army of sock puppets in the Philippines to pretend to be users. That is possible, of course, but I just don't believe it.
That doesn't mean a competitor to Steem couldn't do even better.
The attrition rate matters w.r.t. to the bolded text I wrote, as to whether they can cross the chasm from the blocknerds very motivated types, to the masses.
Of course it "matters" generally, no one would deny that. But compared to "darkcoin brought new people into the cryptosphere"? That's a bad joke.
The issue that matters is if Steem can not just suck in (the 100,000 to 1 million) Bitcoin nerds and their gfs, but new people from outside of Bitcoin. Do we see evidence of that?
Hard evidence no in terms of validated demographics? No, especially since it is hard to tell whether new users are Bitcoin users are not without them mentioning it, but it is pretty apparent to me that many of the new users are not Bitcoin users. Answering their questions about how to get their payments out (they have often never heard of Bittrex, Poloniex, Coinbase, etc.) makes that pretty clear for example.
Why would you find relevant a comparison of a silly anonymous coin to a blogging site that pays out crypto-currency
I don't, but the claim was made and I replied to it, pointing out how absurd it was. Unless these claims are refuted, less informed and less experienced readers may think they are valid.
If usership is 7500, then Steem hasn't even gotten 10% of the Bitcoin community to be active yet. Of course it is early yet and usership might be growing fast. Has anyone projected how long until they reach all Bitcoin's usership?
I've not seen any such forecast, but it is clear that it is still growing rapidly. Literally every day the alexa rank drops.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/steemit.com (this link doesn't work for me, type in "steemit.com" when you get there)