It could – and it probably should if it wants to keep up with the social media essential core values, which are pretty simple and straightforward to express:
Engaging with the platform should get me more of what I want.
As it stands, engaging with the platform doesn't necessarily get me more of what I want. It's very difficult to find things on topics I'm interested in. My rewards for voting up things I'm interested in are pretty minimal unless everyone else is interested in them. Voting up things I'm interested in doesn't mean that the system can and will find other things I'm interested in and show them to me. There's no way to filter the fire hose of new content if I just want to look at the stream based on things that I've already shown the system I'm interested in.
The one thing that the traditional traditional Steem blockchain does well is threading conversations which hang off the bottom of the post. For that, it actually helps find things I'm interested in and follow the threads of conversation. Positives where positives are due.
In almost every other way, the Steem digital applications lag far behind even the basic functionality of Reddit – and that is really saying something.
There are a lot of things that front end applications on the Steem blockchain should do in order to surface content and make interacting with the platform emotionally rewarding, and one of the things that they could do is put together decent suggestions for content like YouTube does.
Steemit should function less like Twitter. It already replicates entirely too much of its functionality from the user experience of the normal user.
There is a fire hose of content. It is difficult to find content which you are interested in. If you find a source of content which you like, there's no guarantee that new content will be similar. If you are a creator, there's no guarantee that you can get your work in front of people who are interested in seeing work like yours. You spend a lot of time telling the system what sort of things that you like, but the system never changes its behavior as regards what it does as a result of you doing all that telling. The fire hoses undifferentiated, there's no way to cluster content for presentation, no way to filter aside from picking some people that you follow.
For the vast majority of the Steemit experience, it is exactly like Twitter – except for the fact that you can have properly, nicely threaded comments underneath posts which give conversations a sense of context, a sense of place, and allow lines of reasoning. It's a pity that actually reading those comments is annoying, frustrating, and can't even match the experience provided by low-end USENET readers from the early 90s.
One of the problems is simply that Steem is so much smaller than Twitter, etc. And keep in mind that Facebook, etc, were forced upon humans in a wide variety of ways. They had a lot of help making it go main stream.
UseNET
What is Usenet? Is this Usenet? I'm reading about it on Wikipedia. It appears to be peer to peer to some extent. It appears to be focused on the news. According to Wikipedia, it says: Usenet (/ˈjuːznɛt/) is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. So, I can see an analogy inside. I think I understand your comparison between Steem and Usenet. Yeah, you might be right concerning the User Interface (UI) within Steemit, that it can be annoying, difficult, etc, to read comments like you said. Busy.org might be a little better in some ways.
Mea Omnia
I was a web designer for a website called Mea Omnia (MeaOmnia.com) around 2011-2013. Mea Omnia means My Everything in Latin. So, we were trying to make Mea Omnia into something like Facebook, Steemit, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, etc, combined. I say that to say that I know some of it might be tough to do, and yet I am guessing that Steemit could probably do better in regards to finding ways to give users more customization options which MySpace had. That is what we were focused on with Mea Omnia, trying to find ways to give users options. We ended up abandoning that Mea Omnia project. So, I'm no computer expert and yet even I get some of it. I don't really know a lot of code, but I know how to Google it and put things together sometimes.
Facebook Groups
If Steem does not already have groups or communities, then perhaps that would help. I thought I heard some people talking about how that new feature would be launching with HF21. I will be looking around to see whatever happened to that.
It could – and it probably should if it wants to keep up with the social media essential core values, which are pretty simple and straightforward to express:
Engaging with the platform should get me more of what I want.
As it stands, engaging with the platform doesn't necessarily get me more of what I want. It's very difficult to find things on topics I'm interested in. My rewards for voting up things I'm interested in are pretty minimal unless everyone else is interested in them. Voting up things I'm interested in doesn't mean that the system can and will find other things I'm interested in and show them to me. There's no way to filter the fire hose of new content if I just want to look at the stream based on things that I've already shown the system I'm interested in.
The one thing that the traditional traditional Steem blockchain does well is threading conversations which hang off the bottom of the post. For that, it actually helps find things I'm interested in and follow the threads of conversation. Positives where positives are due.
In almost every other way, the Steem digital applications lag far behind even the basic functionality of Reddit – and that is really saying something.
There are a lot of things that front end applications on the Steem blockchain should do in order to surface content and make interacting with the platform emotionally rewarding, and one of the things that they could do is put together decent suggestions for content like YouTube does.
Should Steemit function more like Twitter?
Steemit should function less like Twitter. It already replicates entirely too much of its functionality from the user experience of the normal user.
There is a fire hose of content. It is difficult to find content which you are interested in. If you find a source of content which you like, there's no guarantee that new content will be similar. If you are a creator, there's no guarantee that you can get your work in front of people who are interested in seeing work like yours. You spend a lot of time telling the system what sort of things that you like, but the system never changes its behavior as regards what it does as a result of you doing all that telling. The fire hoses undifferentiated, there's no way to cluster content for presentation, no way to filter aside from picking some people that you follow.
For the vast majority of the Steemit experience, it is exactly like Twitter – except for the fact that you can have properly, nicely threaded comments underneath posts which give conversations a sense of context, a sense of place, and allow lines of reasoning. It's a pity that actually reading those comments is annoying, frustrating, and can't even match the experience provided by low-end USENET readers from the early 90s.
Main Stream Twitter
One of the problems is simply that Steem is so much smaller than Twitter, etc. And keep in mind that Facebook, etc, were forced upon humans in a wide variety of ways. They had a lot of help making it go main stream.
UseNET
What is Usenet? Is this Usenet? I'm reading about it on Wikipedia. It appears to be peer to peer to some extent. It appears to be focused on the news. According to Wikipedia, it says: Usenet (/ˈjuːznɛt/) is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. So, I can see an analogy inside. I think I understand your comparison between Steem and Usenet. Yeah, you might be right concerning the User Interface (UI) within Steemit, that it can be annoying, difficult, etc, to read comments like you said. Busy.org might be a little better in some ways.
Mea Omnia
I was a web designer for a website called Mea Omnia (MeaOmnia.com) around 2011-2013. Mea Omnia means My Everything in Latin. So, we were trying to make Mea Omnia into something like Facebook, Steemit, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, etc, combined. I say that to say that I know some of it might be tough to do, and yet I am guessing that Steemit could probably do better in regards to finding ways to give users more customization options which MySpace had. That is what we were focused on with Mea Omnia, trying to find ways to give users options. We ended up abandoning that Mea Omnia project. So, I'm no computer expert and yet even I get some of it. I don't really know a lot of code, but I know how to Google it and put things together sometimes.
Facebook Groups
If Steem does not already have groups or communities, then perhaps that would help. I thought I heard some people talking about how that new feature would be launching with HF21. I will be looking around to see whatever happened to that.