As alot of you who follow me will know I like to take a positive, but realistic approach to Steem. There has been alot of negativity lately on the Steem blockchain, with the markets continuing to bleed. I can see that Steem is at a crossroads, and can go two ways, and will either become a market leader, such as Amazon, or be a 'has been' such as Myspace.

Could Steem be the Amazon of the cryptospace?

After the dotcom bubble, MANY of the companies cashing in went completly bust, or lost upwards of 90% of their stock prices. This is similar to what is happening in the crypto space at the moment - Steem has lost around 95% of its value from its all time high price.

One of those companies that lost alot of value was Amazon. The reason that Amazon didn't go completly bust is that it had solid funamentals, and a clear vision. Yes it lost the majority of its stock price, but so did most of the dotcom market. Fastforward 15 years, and now Amazon is one of the most valuable companies on the planet! Amazon would have made some of the HODLers of their stock very, very rich.

We are in a similar place with Steem right now, the price has dropped to dramatic lows, and confidence is waning. However, Steem has a solid community, and some amazing development going on - @steemhunt, @steemmonsters, @musing and @dlike are just some of the great initiatives building on the Steem blockchain. These dapps have great developers, and great communities which are creating decentralised, incentive based platforms. Along with this Steem has a core community, who has stuck through the 'crypto winter', and are determined to see this thing succeed!

With further development and hard work, Steem has the potential to become the Amazon of the crypto world!

...... or will it just be another Myspace?

However, the alternative to Steem becoming a market leader like Amazon, is for it to become lost, never to be heard of again, such as sites like Myspace. Myspace was one of the early adopters in the social media space, but due to lack of creativity and innovation it got overtaken by giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The recent announcement by @ned that 70% of Steemit Inc staff are being laid of is anything but promising. The talk is now about focussing on blockchain development - Steem needs much more than this to keep up and not be taken over by competitors. Steem needs a vision, and some solid marketing, and in my mind a bit of an overhaul in terms of how Steem is perceieved to non Steemians, and potential investors. Steem has been drifting along for some time now without any real direction, or push to bring upon mass adoption.

Luckily Steem has the 'first mover advantage' - they were one of the first in the crypto space to incentivize content creation, and thus have an advantage. However, there are other companies making inroads, and more alternatives coming up for bloggers and content creators to monetize their content.

Steem has a lot of work to do in the coming months if it wants to avoid becoming the Myspace of the crypto world....

Conclusion

Steem has the potential to become a market leader in the crypto space, but has hard work ahead or it could end up as the Myspace of the crypto world.

As always I welcome comments and discussion!