@ned Is Shakin' And Bakin' (and maybe Stackin)

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Ned is making his rounds. This week is really impressive with the way he stepped up. After having to power down for security reasons, Ned is on the trail of rebuilding his relationship with the community.

As one person I was chatting with said, I guess almost losing all of one's money will light a fire under one's ass.

Personally, I have nothing against Ned. I do not know the guy, never have spoken with him, nor interacted in any way. My views are simply based upon the actions, or lack thereof, and how it affects the community.

I will say that I give him props for what took place this week. First, he appeared at the Steem Town Hall Meeting hosted by @aggroed. From what I understand, he is also going to be on the air later today with @pennsif. These are smart moves and ones I would suggest he make if I were advising him.

There was also an update to the About Us page on Steemit.com. In looking at the page, I had mixed emotions. I am glad the Steemit team laid out it's vision. However, something that is Steemit's modus operandi, they shot themselves in the foot. The layout is awful and some of the terminology does not fit.

"Stickiness" is a term that is technically correct and is used in marketing circles. For those who are unaware, it basically refers to the time spent on a site. Many try to increase their stickiness by linking you all over the place on the site. This is why many site have the most recent articles listed in a column next to the one being read. Another common tactic is to have suggestions pop up at the end of an article such as a "You Might Also Like". All these are done to keep you bouncing around on the site, increasing the stickiness .

Many of you have not heard this term because it is not commonly put out there. It is one of those marketing terms that applies to the industry, kind of back room. In marketing meetings, especially social media, they might use the term stickiness but it rarely gets out.

I am sure a few on here were wondering if they were trying to catch flies. Stickiness is an important concept for flypaper also.

Aother term for "Priorities" is roadmap. This is something that every ICO launched in the past two years has. It is not that difficult to put together a nice infograph laying out the roadmap. There are even sites that will enable one to do it in under 30 minutes. From an aesthetic perspective, it makes a huge difference (plus you can blast the infograph all over the Internet).

I am glad Ned is out there taking questions and presenting his case but he needs to understand what the optics are. Steemit.com, good or bad, is the landing page for the ecosystem. With the announcement that 70% of the staff was laid off, there is increased scrutiny on the company.

Ned needs to start treating Steemit.com like he does his hair. Spend a little time on it to make sure it is perfect.

Certainly, it is a benefit to us all that he is taking the initiative to engage the community. Personally, with their renewed, isolated focus, I am optimistic about Steemit Inc. The last couple months are a wake up call. I keep beating the drum of decentralization and will continue to do so since I feel that is best for the ecosystem (actually all of humanity). Nevertheless, Steemit Inc getting it's act together makes life easier.

Ned truly might be a visionary with ideas that will really catapult things forward over the long term. However, he needs to surround himself with some people who help to guide him in matters such as this. While developing a thriving, up to date social media website requires a lot of time and money, posting the most basic things on a website in a proper manner has been going on for 20 years.

That said, the word of the day is COMMUNITIES.

The exciting part about the entire announcement was the renewed commitment to communities. That is something we heard about repeatedly over my time on Steem (about a year and a half). I am not sure how I feel about it being right after the RocksDB etal moves. I think SMTs still need to be a very high priority after Steemit Inc exits survival mode.

This view aside, inserting communities could be a good thing since it will alter the face of how Steemit operates. Also, if my understanding is correct, it is something that will filter through to all applications built on the blockchain (someone correct me if I am mistaken on that one). If this is the case, it will add value to everything that is already built on this blockchain.

Here is a link to Ned's post.

https://busy.org/@ned/the-guiding-mission-vision-and-values-of-steemit-inc

I still stand by my estimate that I think Steemit Inc will have things in a much better position come the middle of the year. The progress they are making so far looks promising. From reading what people are saying is on Github, they are still in survival mode. Once they get passed that, their streamlined vision should allow for rapid progress in other areas.

One final thought for the techie ones on here. There was this announcement put out yesterday also.

Tower is now on top of Hivemind.

Tower is a solution to expose the Hivemind's database as REST API interface.

https://busy.org/@emrebeyler/tower-a-rest-api-implementation-on-the-top-of-hivemind

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