I have been online for a long time and have used a lot of different platforms, including hosting my own blog. In that time I have seen a lot of these get shut down (Multiply, Tsu, Orkut, Buzz, Google+...). Google have been particularly bad for that. When I heard about this one (as it was then) I could see it offered something different in that it would be hard to shut down as long as people wanted to use it. It just needs a few people running nodes and that is not too intensive. Of course the potential to earn was interesting too, but I made hardly anything in the first couple of years. Even now I am not likely to give up the day job, but it is making a difference for many.
Having free, fast transactions was a novelty in crypto (maybe less so now), as it means anyone can build on it without worrying about the costs. I know some will complain they cannot get funded by the DHF, but elsewhere you would have to rely on backers anyway.
I do think we have missed some opportunities, e.g. the death of Twitter, but we don't have a marketing department and many people are sceptical about crypto. We have to counter the usual arguments about it being energy hungry and used by crooks.
I will always say that Hive is not perfect. We have various feuds going on, but I stay out of those and have got so much out of it. I have attended lots of events and I think I have helped a lot of people along the way.
I really hope that more people can benefit from Hive in various ways as the commercial platforms seem to just get worse.