Steemit vs Synereo: The battle of the Blockchain based Social Media sites has yet to begin.
Prophesy
Three months ago, I prophesised,
Therein lays the beauty of Steemit. It shows that rewarding writers for good content IS possible. Whether this platform has the perfect mechanisms or approach is irrelevant. The Pandora’s box has been opened. Writers can make a living outside of the centralised paradigm. No need for agents, publishers, google adsense.. etc. You just need a login, a laptop and an internet connection. The trick is understanding that Steemit will not be the only show in town. Where Steemit falls short, others will step in. Step in to compete for one thing... the thoughts, feelings and ideas of you and me. We are the King makers!
Real platform vs Paper platform
So what are we to make of @stellabelle's recent post waxing lyrical about the benefits of Synereo over Steemit? @stellabelle is the most successful content creator on Steemit in terms of rewards earned via blogging/ curating and reputation, so her words inevitably carry some weight.
Has Steemit fallen short? Has Synereo stepped in?
I believe the "fall" of Steem/ Steemit is greatly exaggerated and the "rise" of Synereo is premature.
Steemit is far from perfect. However it IS a work-in-progress. It is out here, being stress tested and tackling actual (not conceptual) challenges. Synereo, which I highlighted three weeks ago as having an impressive looking demo, has zero users and zero demands on the protocol. There is a huge gulf between a great idea on paper and live site that has real world users to contend with and challenges to overcome.
I will reserve judgement on Synereo for when it is actually released and gains user traction. I've been involved in the cryptocurrency space for over two years. I've seen many projects promising the earth yet delivering little more than vapourware. I'm not saying that Synereo is one of them however being an "attention economy" it will need to earn my limited attention with a release and reward system that works.
Stellabelle's concerns
I've a lot of respect for @stellabelle. She wears her heart on her sleeve. That alongside her relentless work ethic, drive and talent for the written word has earned her deserved success on this platform. However I think @stellabelle's grievances will likely apply to any social media rewards platform in this arena:
(1) "Problem #1: Steemit users have no control over their personal safety and whom they choose to associate with or not associate with"
Response:
Successful people get trolled on the internet. It's can get disgusting and it can get very ugly. However any successful person that ventures beyond private chat/ networking on social media is going to attract trolls. Trolls are the vampires of the internet. They get their kicks out of sucking the energy out of others. Do not feed them. Their activities fall into the realms of criminality in most jurisdictions. Report them to authorities and the site owners, block and forget them. Steemit has a follow function and is/ has implemented a mute button. It may not be perfect, however it will likely get there before Steemit moves out of beta.
I understand Synereo says it will have functionality to allow users to control their local network, however it will be interesting to see how this marries with the ability to reach "the masses" with blog posts? Assuming there is an option to engage in a public forum, the issue of trolling is sure to arise.
(2) Problem #2: Popular and well-respected, valuable content creators and influencers and also those with high reputation do not currently control the direction of the reward system.
Response:
Having watched the Synereo rewards demo, the rewards (AMPS) are controlled by those that choose to (or can afford to) amplify content.
I can easily see a scenario where 'popular and well-respected, valuable content creators and influencers' are not rewarded for their content on the Synereo platform. Particularly if their content is consumed by those that cannot afford to amplify it. Most users are use to consuming content online without having to pay for it.
I can however see Whale and Advertisers ampifying content they have a vested interest in. I can even see people choosing to join their network to get a trickle of the amp rewards. It could be a platform where people are paid to watch ads, with consuming quality content being a secondary concern.
Speculating
Much of what I've written in the preceding section is speculation. We can speculate either way on how Synereo will turn out. We can do this because the battle has yet to begin. Let's wait until next month, until Synereo finally throws it's hat into the ring, before we declare it to be a contender, let alone a successor to Steemit.
To borrow a baseball metophor, we are at the bottom of the first innings, and (after two years in the making) Synereo has yet to step up to bat.
Full disclosure - I own a not insignificant amount of both Steem Power and Amps.
I've been saying something similar since joining Steemit. If Steemit doesn't do things right someone else will come along, do it better and take it's place.
True.
So true but I think the platform should make it easy to report criminal actions like direct threats of violence/rape etc.
No matter how you do it inequality will exist. This is an ancient problem which nobody has a simple working solution for.
The only thing synereo achieved so far is to partially parasitize on STEEM's succes. So far Trolling and FUDing against STEEM is the only thing that gives synereo some "value". I would like to see a synereo related thread in bitcointalk that STEEM is not FUDed/Trolled/attacked
/rant
Some hints about synereo...
Yes, I'm biased!
Very realistic and impartial analysis.
Nice post; here are a couple of ideas.
Since people are getting paid pretty much whenever things come up on their feed (depending on their settings, I suppose), most people will almost certainly have some AMPs to boost content, thereby paying the creators.
I don't really see anything wrong with that, but if they promote shit, then it's going to be harder for it to propagate through the network. The better the content, the more smoothly it will move. Why bake a shitcake and force people to smile when they eat it, when you can bake a cupcake and get people to smile because they like it?
Fine by me; people probably join Steemit to get a little curation rewards, rather than consuming with nothing to show for it.
I think that's pretty unlikely. Even ads have to arouse some interest, and be targeted towards the right audience. If you show ads to people who are not your target audience, you are plain wasting money. Even ads have to have quality, if they are to be effective.
Synereo has yet to prove any of what it can do, and I'm curious to find out.
What @stellabelle said is very true , people in here seems like voting based on reps and famous author they never took their time to read new author post or others people that have low reps , people have struggle alot with this kind of pattern of voting and more . This is not about the money but remember people join steemit because of what ? The rewards that people always shouting about.
I do make some decent money once or twice a month here . After change after changes my upvote getting lower . That sad . Is my writing getting boring or my photograph getting dull you judge it , come to my blog and tell me :)
I don't see how Synereo will address the issue of people voting based on reputation and popularity of authors.
In this respect, Steemit is no different to pretty much any other industry in the world. Generally people with reputations and popularity get a disproportionate amount of the rewards compared to new entrants. The publishing and entertainment industry are built on it. For example, there are "a-list" actors that people flock to see regardless of the merits of the film.
I agree more needs to be done to ensure that quality content gets recognised and appropriately rewarded. Hwoever there will always be an element of people getting upvoted based on reputation and popularity.
It's not voting it's paying attention to. If you comment, like, forward it builds the authors amps. But the reader gets steady stream of amps from just looking at their feed or adjusting their feed. It's reader focused rather than writer focused. The valuable part of a network is the audience, synereo gets that in their design. Content is a dime a dozen, look at all the free content on the web.
Equally "paying attention" can be dime a dozen. Particularly if people are simply clicking for pay. It would be interesting to see if Synereo has the issue of people creating bots to automate forwarding, liking and comments.
My main point however is that the challenges of Synereo are completely unknown at this point.
They will have different challenges but they do have protection against bots through thier reputation score reo. As in understand if their bots all keep voting for the same person it won't help the rep and it will have the effect of trading amps between you army of bots. You could do it but you wouldn't get anywhere. Basically unless your robot had a good reputation outside your circle it it wouldn't help you. If it did have a good rep, it would. So good bots like cheetah might help but voting bots would have to vote throughout the network to earn you incremental amp.
You do click for pay but you also tune your feed to what you want. In the end time is what is valuable, if users want to read spam for money they can but they can do that now too. I don't mind paying for crypto news but I don't want cooking, car ads etc. I think their formula could work. We'll see.
Sound about right .
Right now Steemit feels like too much of a casino. Everyone is posting for the elusive whale vote. I've had articles get a lot of votes and still not make hardly any money. This isn't good.
I really hope Steemit wins this battle! Since I have already invested so much of my time on this platform, but I will stay diversified and use both once I can actually use Synereo. But in my opinion Steemit is a better name then Synereo.
Agree. Why do developers insist on 3 syllable names, they never make it? I guess it's supposed to make you think synapses. Why not synap!
I don't really see it as a battle. It's another option in the market. The Yours platform is anther one underdevelopment. If you invest in the stock market, you don't buy just one stock. In the end the crea will rise to the top :)
There's been too many examples of projects that were overly hyped prior to launch (DAO most recently). Let's wait until Synereo is live before comparing it to anything.
Yes exactly, we can't really say anything for now. We've just gotta wait. Sometimes, thing looks very bleak and then they look so great few days or months into the launch.
I think the key sentence here is
interesting post @nanzo-scoop