How difficult/easy would you say it is to use Steem?

This honestly depends on what you use. If you just focus on the blogging part and do nothing else, it can be easy. If you just play SM, it can be easy. But as a newbie trying to do all this at once, it can get daunting.

Would you recommend Steem to family/friends/coworkers? If no why not?

Already have, they joined and quit. I don't think anyone else I know is too keen about crypto and blockchain yet. Maybe in a few years.

the in-crowd have a very crank idea on how 'the masses' would be and would be coming , true dat , anyone i asked simply said 'meh' ... (...'paying to facebook?' why would i wanna pay for ...etc , and indeed, the whole planet isnt interested in pyramid affiliate marketing and the entry-level for standard run-of-the-mill every day fb-users who made zuck rich is simply too steep, even if its a tek-heads playground and as you say the dev-side is the interesting part, i havent found anyone too keen on 'if you want to post 20 a day you pay but be careful you might find your money zeroed out by zealots' (or should i use another pitch on people i know or family ?')

i put a stop on it myself for a while, it sometimes feels like they are deliberatly insulting what little intelligence i have left with the same regurgitated pitch ... "short term means nothing"

"o yea? so if people do the pension fund thing and 20 years from now 1 million withdraw all at once who's gonna get anything thats worth anything but the first 100 to withdraw ?"

hyperinflation and the total unwillingness (or inability) to see that small stores or something, anyone trying to promote a product, putting money in it can be zeroed out and blanked by ANYONE who simply has more ...

its like entering a voting booth : one guy puts in 500 dollar and votes once ... 400 people come in with one dollar and vote each once

first guy is president :p

there's a streak of downvote bots on the loose who all have one thing in common : a witness vote on an account named puncakbukit

nothing gets done about it ... HF21 was a disaster and it certainly hasnt helped to push the price up. I stopped all my cronjobs and posts (things i spent over a year on sometimes by now) because it doesnt even pay itself for the electricity the machine uses when running 24/7

despite that ... i hang around , but i rarely comment or interact

as you, so eloquently state yourself

bem ... couldnt resist when i saw the post lol

we'll see where it goes ... my guess is either stuck around tencent or further down ... every time it goes up by two cents it gets bricked to 12 again for quite some time now, the huge pool ninjamined at the very beginning is waiting to be sold off

etc.etc... im sure you know all that too, Bot-man :p

see you around