RE: STEEM: Freemium Is Not Free!!!!
Every time I see something like this excerpt below, I'm infuriated because of how detrimental this can be to the future of the blockchain (relative to the limited range of emotions possible on a largely neglected blogging platform). I've been active on Steemit.com on almost a daily basis for 13 months and it doesn't grow old.
Who doesn't care about user acquisition and retention? Steemit.com? If that is your answer, you are correct. They do not care. Nor do they care about their UI. @andrarchy reaffirmed that clearly. They are completely focused upon the blockchain and feel that is where their resources are best suited. Some might disagree but that is their viewpoint.
Business are made of lots of people, including westerners who drink Starbucks, and people who work in sweatshops because they have no other choice. Businesses also exist because they have customers they acquire and retain, i.e., more people.
How will businesses most likely hear about Steemit.com in the foreseeable future? The people/users that they retained that respect how they're valued, treated and would be willing to put their customers in the same environment. Just imagine if they cared more on these points, instead of giving them a free pass, or putting them on a pedestal for seeing some type of more grandiose picture it's suggested we must be naive for missing.
How many more potential business have been missed or will never come to fruition in the future because of this? This also applies to us seemingly low-priority Steemit.com users. It's common sense.
I've earned all my SP mostly because I don't want to put my money into a company who doesn't care about the items you reiterated above. While I enjoy the relationships, learning and interaction on this platform, I personally couldn't recommend a business to the blockchain, or would even build my business on here, unless the company showed other values. While businesses may use the blockchain in various ways, Steemit.com will likely be a large part of it on a user-level at some point.
People use the blockchain. Steemit.com is how many people form their judgments and opinions about the Steem blockchain, whether they should or not. While every transaction has a cost, or a "freemium", those who continue to feel that resources are not best spent on people (read: future business owners and customers beyond Steem Power holdings/transaction volume), really don't feel like the proper leadership to me for attracting the masses.
I feel that prioritizing the experience people have with the blockchain will lead to more success than a super highway with "100,000+ businesses" and "SMTs by last February", when they do arrive. It's like putting the cart before the horse.
Nice post in general.
That is not the idea and for a very good reason. I predict that five years from now Steemit.com will be forgotten. It's a minimum viable product, a prototype, it's nowhere near in functionality or design modern where web applications need to be. It's a primitive web interface to the blockchain that was the first of its kind to succeed the command line client used by the hard core nerds who came here first.
The masses love apps that look and feel fantastic and function smoothly. They don't care about blockchains. The native token system on top of the app functionality is a big bonus.
All fair points. Thanks for engaging. I'd imagine this interface is as how you feel and will be because of how the company treats it. If it saw the interface as an invaluable means of staying connected to people/businesses/future businesses (even as a marketing platform), because the company will need all of this to be relevant and have value in the future, perhaps we'd be much further along on the roadmap and it wouldn't need to be deemed as a vestigial stepping stone. It's much harder to get new customers than retain current ones, and this site is the medium for achieving this for the foreseeable future. First impressions and ongoing reputation are priceless when more competition will be along in due time.