Very true, the early adopters will give an edge for sure when things explode. I do believe that those who consider 50K active users to be less number, well, it is not a social media platform where you are sharing low quality posts. People write useful content and share great knowledge to learn from which takes time. In blogging world 1000s of blogs start every day but then going through the hardwork and pain, 80% of them stops by end of 6 months once they realize how much effort it takes to write quality content.

So, I do believe if majority of these active contributors are quality content author and curators, it is not disappointing at all given the nascent years of Steemit.