RE: End-User Retention - Does it matter anymore?
There is no guarantee that SMT's will take off passed the steem community. From what I hear, there are plans by big media outlets to adopt an SMT, but what happens when these well known sites decide that all the bots, vote buying and trolling over who got paid what causes them to abandon the reward token?
There are solutions proposed that could prevent these, but they haven't even been experimented with yet. So I'm very skeptical that we're ready for SMT's. In my opinion steem is not yet a good example of a sustainable decentralised social network, which means any SMT could be just as unsustainable.
Aside from that, steem still gains value from all of these 3rd party applications. Personally I think they bring more value than any SMT will. They have the ability to hit specific internet markets, which means steem is no longer "not for everyone". But development costs blood, sweat, tears, time & money. Promotion & marketing basically has to come from investors and users, and as long as people are unsatisfied, they're on strike from promoting the network and those platforms.
Besides, everybody keeps making the assumption that investors are some multi millionaire or advertiser. Some day they might be, but that is probably 5 years down the road like most other social networks. Our investors are US. We're the ones buying steem when we're satisfied that this is sustainable and going to grow. There are far more of us than there is millionaire's with nothing better to do with their money. While we lose users, we lose potential investors. Not indirectly because they attract investors, but directly because all our investors started out as users.
I also disagree with the widely shared view that investment in steem comes from people wanting to gain exposure on the platform (especially while people can buy upvotes). I do accept that some people have invested for that reason, but I see it as the wrong reason.
Steem is an active investment as opposed to a passive one. When you power up you can use your SP to help empower and grow the network through user retention. You can't do that by spending all or most of your votes on yourself.
Remember that those who invested in all the little bull markets were people that were here long enough getting satisfactory rewards.
While I agree with you in theory regarding the end-users purchasing steem and powering up, I haven't seen it turn into reality. In fact, many seem to want to take rewards out of the system instead of put them in or even hold them. Isn't paying users to use the platform about the same thing as buying "votes"? Just on a grandor scale?
Anything earned easily isn't valuable and will not go up in price.
While I agree that voting bots can compromise the desire to buy steem power, I think they DO help us to retain investors. The active bloggers (generalizing) do not seem to have the funds or interest in purchasing Steem. Self-voting, of course not entirely seems to be a good reason to purchase steem.
I feel the idea of holding SteemPower and why has definately gotten confusing. :)
I don't think there are right or wrong reasons to invest. Different goals.
I agree that SteemIt, Inc needs to depend on the current users to hold while they launch and build their vision.
I always appreciate your point of view and willingness to talk about it.
Thank you, I appreciate yours too. But if you say anything earned easily isn't valuable then doesn't the voting bots make it easy? It used to be about the work (big or small) put in by the people who engage and interact, this keeping others engaged. That actually did make it hard but also valuable. That was when ordinary users were buying and powering up.
I also don't see people buying steem in order to buy upvotes. Generally they're using the SbD they made from the last upvote and sending it back to the whale that upvoted them (or a bot-running minnow who pays the whale). This means it's all going to the whale and it doesn't matter as much what price they sell their steem at since they always have more coming in. This is something @dan had envisioned would be prevented by other whales, but we rejected the tools that would have been used to do that.
Interesting thoughts. It is true you can continue to build the account without additional purposes. I do not have a clear vision of how we move forward from here.
With SteemIt, Inc. working towards a different model - with many applications and front-ends, It seems that trying to tinker with "SteemIt" feels like yesterday's concern.
*"It used to be about the work (big or small) put in by the people who engage and interact, this keeping others engaged. That actually did make it hard but also valuable. That was when ordinary users were buying and powering up."
Good point.