No Rewards, No Steemit
Let's Use The Wayback Machine
It's 2006. An exciting new internet site has been bringing in thousands of users with its minimalist features and its lack of censorship. Anyone can say anything they want and it's just there, for all the world to see.
Since commenting was added, in late 2005, the site has just been going crazy with all kinds of people hurling their opinions at one another like opinions were just invented. It's a heady time, even before Condé Nast steps in and decides to buy the fledgling site.
The name?
Reddit Steemit.
That's right. Instead of Huffman and Ohanian it's Larimer and Scott who roll out a blogging platform that dumps all posts into three different locations (trending, new, hot) so everyone visiting the site can find quality content. They can link images and videos to their posts that are hosted on Flickr. It's truly an amazing online product.
Scratch The Record Needle
Except, it's really 2018. Social Media (which is what we now call internet sites that allow people to post and engage with one another, in as fast as realtime) are a dime a dozen and growing in numbers and popularity everyday. A blogsite circa 2006 isn't going to cut it in today's, highly "sophisticated" world of smartphone image sharing and 4K video.
Enter, The Blockchain
Fortunately for Steemit, and by extension, all of us, blockchain technology was invented years before Larimer and Scott founded STEEM and the Steemit app was slapped on top of it.
In fact, it was the blockchain technology and it's ability to create and transact cryptocurrencies that facilitated the idea of rewarding people something for their content. While the concept might not be revolutionary (the attention economy already had begun), Steemit was innovative for the blockchain, which wasn't being used for much more than transactions—recordings of crypto coins bought and exchanged.
Takeaway The Incentive, What Do You Have?
No rewards, no Steemit. It's pure and simple. If there were no money to begin with, Steemit wouldn't exist. There would be no reason to, other than to see what would happen if a social platform were dropped on a blockchain. Someone might want to decentralize people's interactions and give them an alternative to data selling sites. But where would the money come from to do any of this if STEEM didn't exist?
Hard to say. As far as I know still, we can't go back in time and find out, so we're left to draw our own conclusions on if Steemit even gets conceived, let alone launched, without STEEM.
What if the money were gone now, two years after the fact? Poof. You wake up one morning to find that your posts and comments no longer are paying out. The rewards pool has been shut down.
I imagine that some people would still stick around. Those who were able to create some deeper level associations would still want to hang out. As a blogging site goes, with the ability to see other posts, it's okay enough. But those who were hoping to eventually make writing and creating their full-time gig, well, they would end up going elsewhere, and the masses who were supposed to flock to Steemit once the signup process was revved up, would stay where they are.
What About Me?
That is what this post is all about, right? On this 17th day of the May 30 Days Writing Challenge put together by @dragosroua. If There Will Be No Money Paid On Steemit, Would You Still Be Around?
The best answer I can give would be: a little. I have some friendships developing here. If those folks were hanging around, I would want to check in from time to time, see what they were doing. That's if somehow Steemit was still up and functioning. But I couldn't put in the long hours anymore. I would need to get some form of gainful employment. It really wouldn't be a matter of desire. It would be a financial need, and Steemit would be the hobby I could no longer afford to spend so much time on.
Yes, no reward no Steemit, because the reward concept and Blockchain Technology are making this platform revolutionary and if reward system is shut down then possibly it will just remain as mini Facebook where people will come and create short post and continue their conversation in comments or communicate on Steem Chat. But whatever it is, Steemit is affecting positively many lives so we should be proud of an Platform which giving the hope to those people who were not affording the daily needs. Thanks for sharing this post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
In the cases you cite where people are able to provide for some needs if not all of them through their activities here on Steemit, we find the true value of the rewards. Those are life changing instances. For many of us it's easy to forget that there are still parts of the world where money stretches farther than in the rest of the world. So, being able to help so many through the rewards here is a great reason for them to exist and continue. The rest of us just need to try to be a little less cynical about that and a little more grateful ourselves. :)
Yes, that's true and thanks for your kind response and insights. 🙂
I've stopped blogging on other sites and spend less time on Facebook because of the crypto rewards. If it was cash, I probably wouldn't even do it. The fact that it is crypto and I can trade for other tokens and accumulate crypto. That is the key for me. I like how the mining of Steem comes through using the system. It is a far more efficient way to create coins than the traditional bitcoin mining. Great post.
I can't say I've been writing anywhere else either, which includes even my own projects, so while I enjoy the interactions here, the rewards make it possible (for now) for me to hang out. The crypto part of it is probably secondary, other than I like the idea of what I've earned having the potential of increasing in value (something earning in money would not permit). So, I guess we take the downs with the ups.
I think it is a great innovation to use content creation to produce the coin. It provides so much more for us than just the rewards, too. And, we're not all consuming massive amounts of electricity or expending so much space and resources in data farms to do all the mining. This way, many more of us are involved.
I loved how you used Reddit as a way to introduce Ssteemit and Ned and Dan.
I an very impressed with how you wrote this!
Yeah most likely we would lose a lot of content creators who are in it for quick Crypto.
Thanks. I thought it was an interesting parallel, considering since I've heard it be said a few times now that we want to get to be the size of Reddit, if not the Reddit of crypto. I don't know if that's the way this should be going but whatever.
Well, quick or not, if you're here to earn something for your creativity and the earnings part goes, well, what is there left? You go somewhere else for that and either keep up the friendships you have here or you hope to carry them with you to the new place.
I totally agree with this @glenalbrethsen and I wouldn't stick around either. I would attempt to stay in contact with the people I've formed relationships with here but it would be via more conventional means. I wouldn't post.
But maybe, by then, there would be somewhere else we could all migrate. 😊
The cat's pretty much out of the bag as far as the attention economy is concerned, and as folks transition away from the advertising model, there will be an ever increasing demand for something like the STEEM ecosystem. Only, it will need to be simpler, more intuitive and a lot of what we deal with here will have to be done behind the scenes.
So, I'm sure there would be somewhere else to go and do our thing there. EOS has the best opportunity to be an influencer in all of that, along with the third party apps already springing up. Maybe we'll have multiple places to be at instead of just one. That would be the best possible scenario.
This is like the only place where writing an 800 words article is actually better than just saying: "No."
And I love it for it. I said it myself in my post. Initially, I came to share, but making money is what made me stay and actually put an effort into it.
Actually, there are some people here who would make a lot more than you or I are just saying "NO!" to the question. That's the beauty and the ugliness of this place. With one of a number mechanisms in place, a creator can get all kinds of rewards. What they might not get, except in some circumstances, is engagement. And while I'm here for the rewards, I'm also here for the interaction.
You came to share and stay because you can earn something. I came to earn something for my creations and stay because I get to talk to people about what I created, as well as what they created, along with all kinds of other topics. The engagement part means eyes on what I've created, which is more important to me than the actual follower count or the reputation rating.
I can see your point, even though I had to re-read the comment a few times.
As much as the numbers are great to see, they're not everything. Even more so in a place like this. I'm nearing 200 followers, but the amount of engagement has not increased much in the past month. I literally only gained like 2 relevant followers: @themanwithnoname and @raikuhen.
I know that you've talked about this in one of you articles, because it inspired me to rethink my strategy as well. After reading it, I've vut down my following count to at least a half.
Well, cool. I hope cutting down the number you follow works out for you. I've found it to be great—in fact, I probably could stand to find a few more people to follow. The gross numbers really don't matter, as you say. What matters is what's happening in relation to the posts and comments we make. If people are too busy going through their feeds of hundreds, the likelihood of them seeing our posts is small. Or if they're too busy posting and not reading at all, following hoping for a follow, that's no good either.
@themanwithnoname is a good one to have following you, and to follow for that matter. Hopefully, he'll be around to comment on things this week, or maybe next. :)
Sorry if my comment wasn't clear. It's possible for me to get too much going at once. I sometimes have to pick through it and figure out what I said. :)
@glenalbrethsen You have received a random upvote from @transparencybot for not using bidbots on this post and using the #nobidbot tag!
The first recorded Steemit.com page on archive.org dated June 17th, 2016.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160617233928/https://steemit.com/
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I followed the link but it gave me a 404 page not here error.
I've read through some of the two year old posts and it's interesting how things have changed from then to now. A lot more optimism, and much more thankfulness. Things seemed to change with the hard forks, though. Which is strange, since the hard forks were supposed to help. And of course, the Ned/Dan split. That didn't help much, either. So, anyway. It is what it is, right?