It took 5 days to activate my account

I am pretty new. It did take a few days to get approved (3). I assumed it was to try to combat bot accounts or people with multiple accounts. Or to keep a steady flow of new users added to the block chain in a way that doesn't manipulate the value of STEEM/DOLLAR or content both. 
Thanks for content.
 i would not recommend paying for an account tho.

Mine only took a day or two when I created it last week. I am from the Philippines in case it has something to do with location.

I guess I was the last-of-the-lucky . . . I joined on May 11 and had approval within  a couple hours.  I was in on the Discourse platform chat and the mods advised that they are moving as quickly as they can.  There was an enormous volume of new users who suddenly came onboard in the last 30 days and the accounts have to be manually entered.  As of last night, they were very encouraged by the progress being made.  I expect the situation will ease per their diligence!

NaileD IT !! - ))

... 8 days here - ))
THE days were LonG ... my EXCITE'me'NT so BIG !!! - )))

HERE i am NOW ... and THANK FULL !! - ))
... and ...  i neVer wait for a thin-G !!! - ))) 

L(if)E is WAY ... to short !! - ))

LOVELOVELOVE )))
greb'Z )

MANY NEW ... USERS 'in' WAITING ???
... would LOVE TO SEE THIS POST  !!! - )))

i found a similar post while ... p(END-IN)g ?? -))
... it helped, so will this POST !! - ))

Mine took about a week, which was a shame as I had written my 1st blog within the 1st 24 hours of signing up, i even made up a photo especially for it! By the time I was approved my blog was old news.

Two days in early May.

Mine took only a few days to be approved, but there has been lot of new people joining!

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It is good feedback. Steemit knows it is an issue and it is a high priority for them to resolve.

The reason for the wait is that it actually costs Steemit quite a bit of money to create each account. Around 20-30 dollars worth of STEEM is delegated to each account that gets created. Unfortunately lots of users were abusing the 'free' signup to create multiple accounts loaded with free STEEM. In order to prevent abuse, they are actually reviewing each application manually. I heard that there were over 5,000 signups in one day. This is why it is taking so long.

Users should **not** try to sign up multiple times. This will likely be seen as an attempt to create multiple accounts, and could result in all attempts being denied.

The services AnonSteem and SteemConnect are there if users don't want to wait. If you don't mind waiting a few days to a week for Steemit to review your account, then just hang tight and your free account should be approved. Otherwise users are welcome to create their own accounts - they just have to pay their own registration fee.

Fascinating, I had no idea!  

Whew, we lucked into finding out about Steem even if it was only a few months ago, HUGE thanks to @itsmein3d for pushing us into it.  

This all sounds like an excellent exercise in patience, which is what it's going to take (along with hard work, high quality, and a little luck) to make Steemit an awesome platform.  

I know @captainobviou3 was asking about this as well, thanks for the explanation @timcliff!

Thanks for posting @alphacore!

I signed up on May 18th, approved May 21st.

Oh wow. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I did not realize this was such an issue since I must have been one of the lucky ones. My account was approved within hours last month.

Existing users could sponsor new user accounts through SteemConnect. I'll create accounts for 3% of all future rewards :p

On a more serious note, I think the community can help bridge the gap until a better solution is come up with. Maybe forward people from the Signup page to Discord where they can find a sponsor who can also provide initial guidance.

Concerning.  New users are critical to the platform's success.  If their first experience is just waiting in line, well that sucks.
Glad the Steem team is working on the issue.  But, wow!  This must get fixed soon!

How about this idea: New accounts get created immediately and then after a person posts their first blog, then they receive a little Steem from the system?  That should weed out a lot of bots, fake accounts, etc.  Simply put, use the initial Steem as a reward for new content.  Dead/shell accounts, that never posted anything, become worthless to create.

I was indeed surprised to learn there was a time for approval...I was lucky to sign in last month the 15th may and it took less than an hour to receive the confirmation, as far as I remember ...WoW ! How lucky I am !  (but *that* I already knew ...)

It took a day and a half for my approval, but 2 to 3 weeks for my friend from Europe to get approved. Good thing I told him to be patient!

This is a gated community!  Welcome to the VIP! It is like having a GPU miner and everyone else is mining with CPU's.  Muhahahahahahhahaah
https://steemitimages.com/0x0/http://brianphobos.com/img/gated-steemit.jpg

An interesting solution might be to offer a sponsored account. For instance, the user could create the account and then I, as their sponsor, could fund the account. This would distribute the workload and allow for verified signups. You could even charge more, say $50 since I could easily ask a friend to return some of the signup fees.

After 7 days of waiting, I found the@anonsteem page in the FAQ where you can pay to play. Best 0.6 Litecoin I've spent!

I just got my approval email today! 7 days latter. Almost gave up waiting.
I wish I had seen this post before I signed up, it would of help with the waiting.
We need up vote this to be at the top of trends so others can see it may take a few days. 
What is ironic, I told a friend yesterday and he was approved in hours, but it took me days!
I'm new here and want to learn and follow all of the good people here. I will be posting my first post soon.

When SteemIt comes out of Beta, then I could see the wait times and the manual approval process being problematic. But, I've done Beta testing for a number of platforms and a wait list is normal. I've waited months for application approval. So, perhaps, SteemIt needs to send out a "we're still in Beta testing and your account application is being manually reviewed" email.

Steem accounts are valuable cryptoassets, that's why they are not given easily for anybody.

The Steem blockchain doesn't have any transaction fees like other blockchains, it prevents spam by rate-limiting how often users can use the blockchain. The more Steem Power you have, the more you can use the blockchain.

So when the account is created, it needs to get a little bit Steem Power to be able to post and vote.

I really can't understand what people at Steemit Inc are thinking... They should be selling Steem accounts instead if insisting that only they can create the accounts for new users for free. If there is high demand, there are people who are willing to buy the account and that should be made as easy as possible. Then the waiting list would be shorter for those who don't want to use their own money.

Steemit.com should also have an easy account creation tool, so that existing users could make accounts for their friends.

Edit: I wrote a post about this: [Why Steemit doesn't let new users in?!](https://steemit.com/steemit/@samupaha/why-steemit-doesn-t-let-new-users-in)