When I heard about Steem and Steemit it wasn't so much the earning potential that attracted me as the technology. There are probably other places where I could make more in the short term, but Steemit is based on blockchain technology, which means that all transactions are recorded and verified there and anyone can access that data. I don't know all the details, but I'm assuming that it is not anonymised as the site shows everything about other people that you can see on your own account. The Steemit site is just one way to show the data and people are actively looking at other things you can do with it.
To see some of those you can go to SteemTools (Steem App Center on the Steemit menu) where you will find a form of app store. It's actually just links to the sites rather than things you download, but there's at least one browser extension. You can vote apps up. I'm not sure if that uses your Steemit account.
Some of those I've looked at are:
Some of these may become features of the main site in time. I'm excited to see what people can come up with. I expect there will be mobile apps at some point.
