More #NewSteem, How I Ended Up Here and the Path Towards Mass Adoption (Ulog No. 38)

Yesterday, I wrote a bit about **#NewSteem, and things seemingly getting a bit better here... which led me to thinking about how I feel more comfortable with the idea of sharing this platform as "something worthwhile" with people I know in the writing and blogging community.

Note, here, that I didn't say in the crypto community, or the make money online community.

Because I honestly don't think those are the ones we need, here...

Golden fall leaf in the sun

Consider How I Ended Up Here....

I actually ended up on Steemit (as it was called, back then) in January 2017 because I followed an article link on Facebook.

The link was to an article about Universal Basic Income (UBI), which I was studying up on, at the time. There was not one whisper about "Steemit" or "making money" or "upvotes" in that article. It was purely about a UBI enterprise a friend had asked me to look into.

My decision to join Steemit and become a content creator here was the result of reading that article (again, posted to an external source), then looking around for other UBI articles here; and then at last noticing that authors seemed to be getting rewarded for their content here... at that point I got curious and made an account and started writing.

Truthfully, I was pretty skeptical about the rewards thing, and was not counting on it. However, there seemed to be intelligent content and interaction here... and that was my primary interest.

Fall leaves

We Talk About "Mass Adoption...

A lot of lip service is given to this idea of Steemlandia reaching a point where we start to enjoy some form of "mass adoption."

That's a nice idea, but it often feels like we are going about it the wrong way.

Sure, I can't deny that the "Trending" page is looking a little better, these days.

Of course, a lot of people argue that nobody/they don't LOOK at Trending. Well, yeah... but that misses the point. As I wrote in a comment earlier today, someone NOT signed in sees the Trending feed by default... so we must consider what ends up there. "Trending" is like the storefront window to the world. And in order to bring new "customers" in, you want your BEST stuff displayed there. And now it's up to those big curators to make that a reality... so outsiders see that, and think to themselves — a bit like I did, almost three years ago: "I want to be part of this show!"

But is that likely to happen?

Fall leaves

Our Myopic Smugness...

There's a certain myopic smugness around here that really isn't going to work if we are to build this place to a much greater level. It exists on several levels... starting with this idea that people should automatically care because of the emphasis on freedom and this being On the blockchain.

To be honest, the vast majority of the greater world neither knows what a "blockchain" even is, nor do they care.

Sadly, it seems like quite a few of the people with influence here talk like we "have all the answers to your social media dilemmas," but those answers are highly technical (building Dapps) or highly specialized (crypto investing)... but we actually have remarkably little to show for it... particularly in the context of having loads and loads of dynamic and interesting content that appeals to a general audience.

Keep in mind here, that "mass adoption" means appealing to a crowd whose expectations of a social web site starts with "log in with Facebook" and you're ready to go!

We're a long way from that... but we have to start with simply presenting a "Store Front" with compelling enough content to warrant someone wanting to go through the sign up process!

More fall colors

Internal Content and the Rewards Feedback Loop

It's a bit ironic that I am "writing a post about Steem," given what I am about to say next: We have an issue with "Internally Focused" content here. Too much content here is created for the Steem community, not for "external" consumption.

Most people who come here for the first time are probably not going to be interested in a ton of posts about Steem.

As I read in another comment this morning: "neither Facebook nor twitter got huge as a result of publishing loads of content about Facebook and twitter."

Unfortunately, the very nature of the rewards system makes our content trends a self-fulfilling reality: Because you are only rewarded for "internal" content, people lean heavily towards publishing internal content. And that's going to get in the way of — or at least slow — the process of user growth here.

In some ways, we need to make a move towards simply publishing interesting content that is venue neutral. Is that likely to happen? Who knows... maybe it will.

Thanks for reading!

(Another #creativecoin creative non-fiction post)

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for this platform.)
Created at 190925 00:05 PDT
1098