[ENG] STEEMIT: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

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This post is a translation of my original post published yesterday in Italian.

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It’s been 22 days since my first post, my introduction in English on this new platform (new to me, at least). In these 22 days I discovered an Italian community on SteemIt @SteemPostItalia, I reintroduced myself in Italian, wrote two movie reviews, a society piece, a post on Halloween, and one on BEAUTIFUL Fuffolino. Meanwhile, I developed a small understanding of what SteemIt is and how it works, which I thought would be interesting to share here as a reminder of my first impressions, so that they can potentially act as comparison to how I might feel about SteemIt months or years from now, provided my experience here lasts that long. Basically, this post is a time capsule.

STEEMIT AS A BLOG

_PIXABAY

I’ve never been a blogger. I’ve never even been able to keep a diary with any consistency. That’s probably why I’m living in the Venetian suburbs with a well-built seaman, rather than strut around Fashion Weeks with some lean toy boy with seagull eyebrows[1].
All things considered, I like writing, when I’ve got something to say, but I loath having a blank page syndrome. I’m verbose, though, so when I have opinions to share I do so in very many words, usually on Facebook.
But since I was never a blogger, before, I can’t really compare SteemIt to other platforms, which I’ve never used.

The first thing you’ll notice about SteemIt, though, is that it’s built as mash up of blog and social medium. You can’t really personalize your own space, nor are posts from a single individual searchable or indexed. As far as I know it’s not even possible to filter an individual user’s posts from his reposts. Basically, you are encouraged to produce original quality contents, but you can’t make them stand out in any particular way, besides the few seconds that they’ll feature in the “new” tab (provided people actually check that out on a regular basis).

And are we really sure that SteemIt really encourages quality contents, beyond its mission statement? Many users strive to produce interesting and considerable contents, for sure, but the efforts involved might ultimately seem wasted when, after hours spend reading, re-reading, enriching, expanding, and formatting a post, you look around a bit and find posts that are objectively useless, badly written, and aesthetically displeasing, with $ 50,00+ value.
For example, yesterday I was looking for other movie reviews and came upon a post whose sole content was a comic strip of three scenes depicting the same sketched character, in the same position, with no background, silently watching the movie and asking a 10 words question at the end. And the question was neither particularly deep or funny, yet that post was valued more than $ 50,00. With no intention of competing (I’m not saying that those $ 50,00 should have gone to me, instead), it’s something that left me dumbfounded, because we’re not even talking about a post with poor grammar or written in bad English, but of something completely devoid of actual content, voted on by other users either for friendship or by habit.

Nevertheless, by promising to compensate the work of those who write on it, SteemIt at least has the merit of encouraging people to blog. As I’ve never been able to even keep a diary, it’s improbable that I’d be able to keep up with a blog of my own, which I’d have to design, nurture, and promote. On SteemIt, my only job is to write stuff and not only will I be able to quickly share it with the world, but I might even end up making some money out of it. Or at least build up my credentials to start earning later on.

STEEMIT AS AN INVESTMENT

_PIXABAY

Considering all of the above, it’s obvious that if you hope to get rich through SteemIt you need more than quality contents, because the sea is full of fish (not coincidentally, fish is the metaphore of choice to define users by their relevance to the platform) and emerging is really, really hard.
Those who made it in the past might still be offering quality posts or might now be cashing in on popularity alone, publishing mediocre content and watching the votes of faithful followers or bots mount nonetheless.

Basically, in order to make SteemIt worth it’s while you need to be able to sell and promote yourself, just as if you were dealing with any regular blog. Which, ironically, is precisely what I said I wouldn’t be able to do on my own. The relevant difference is that you’ll be selling exclusively to fellow steemians. In fact, sharing your posts on social media can be useful only if the people you reach are either already on SteemIt or persuaded to join, else the fact that they appreciate your post will be financially indifferent.
This can be either good or bad. Bad if you can count on a substantial following outside of SteemIt and sharing your posts could gain you much appreciation. Good if you think that any promotional activity must be aimed directly to people who are already invested in making SteemIt a better place, which you won’t need to convince to go and see your blog, but just to check out your latest post.

The biggest downside, though, at least in my opinioni, is that each post will not only be featured for a very short time in the newsfeed, but will also enjoy just a brief span of active life, ending at the 7 days mark. Something that was explained to me only recently, by the way. After 7 days, not only the post may not be edited anymore and the author and curators can cash in on their earnings, but those earnings become set in stone as much as the post itself. Hoping to create interesting contents today, that might keep on earning recognition later on, after you’ve gained a bigger following, is, therefore, useless. As it would seem useless to devise serial or interconnected posts, since linking back to content older than 7 days wouldn’t be profitable. It’s basically a blogging fast-food: what you promote is not really yourself, but only last week’s work.
What still isn’t clear to me, though, is why the platform allows people to upvote posts older than 7 days, since that’s irrelevant to the post’s earnings. Neither do I know whether upvoting older posts decreases your voting power. If anyone knows, feel free to enlighten me in the comments. Within the next 7 days, of course.

All things considered, SteemIt feels pretty asymmetrical as an investment: earnings don’t depend exclusively on how much time you invest on the platform, but also on how you use that’s time and how much you invested in the past.

STEEMPOSTIT

_{@THENIGHTFLIER}

Finding an Italian SteemIt community to join straight away was rather nice and, as a beginner, I confess that the automatic voting group had a big impact in pushing me to write one post after another. Being able to ask others for help gave me the opportunity of figuring out the platform much quicker and reading the posts of the other community members gave me both the chance to easily find something interesting to read (as the SteemIt search engine is not the best) and inspiration to write my own.

The automatic vote, of course, is a double edged sword. Each of us might be willing and convinced of contributing with valuable content, and therefore appreciate the group’s vote, as symbolic as it might be. And yet probably all of us have stumbled upon badly written or particularly trite posts, even within the community, which still gain the same group’s vote, including our own, contributing to the spiral of discontent that I’ve described above, where bad posts still get credit.
I personally still think it’s more of a positive thing, though. Firstly because personal opinions on individual posts are, intrinsically, personal, but also because supporting each other at least helps us all grow. Limiting oneself to the group, and not to other self promotion techniques, won’t create that following that might one day make even mediocre posts raise a profit, but little by little at least each member’s steem power and reputation will grow, allowing for better future self promotion.

The community, at least, has the merit of giving special credit and a richer upvote to the best posts each day, evaluated both for content and form. This, I think, is the most valuable thing about the community, which in my opinion more than offsets the pitfalls of the automatic vote. In the end, this group offers a good balance between formal and substantial equality: general support, but with a constant eye to quality.

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So, basically, breaking it all down...

SteemIt Pro:

• encouragement of content creation
• possibility of joining a local community which rewards both participation and quality

SteemIt Contra:

• bad search engine
• quick content obsolescence
• easy development of mechanisms contrary to the production of actual quality content

I would therefore recommend SteemIt to someone who has a lot of time to invest in it and could potentially produce interesting and valuable content or to someone who, even without as much free time, might still enjoy the chance of creating content and seeing his or her posts being given some (albeit small) amount of financial recognition.
Both kinds of people could potentially have much to gain, but what they’ll earn most probably won’t be worth as much as the time invested in earning it.

[1] Of course, I’d take well-built over seagull eyebrows everyday, even if there was a six-pack involved.