The potential Steemit Content crisis
Steemit has become a social media sensation with enormous unbounded possibility. You wouldn't be on this site if you didn't believe so. However with expansion comes challenge and for this platform to become truly massive. The content has to be good. Not just good but structured and worthy of our attention. For there will be a time when the ease of which to earn large upvotes will become incredibly difficult. At this point users may leave as some of the novelty or promises of "easy" money might have wore thin. What will ensure Steemit thrives is the content creation that continually attracts readers and consumers.
There have been some very interesting and useful blogs which rightly have garnered much praise and upvotes. There are some however some not as interesting - which have still generated thousands of upvotes. A breed of posts have become quite common (not least because of the financial rewards). They often feature a rather simple blog spiced up with a photo of a pretty girl holding a Steemit sign or the like. I do wonder what the real motivation of the poster is, and the mentality of some of the tippers. That's not to say everyone has different tastes and expectations in what they want to see/read.
What are we tipping for here?
To be clear I have nothing against anyone posting a flattering picture alongside their post. However is someone explaining how to make a cheese sandwich really worthy of $1000s. Or are we tipping the fact the person is conventionally attractive and holding a Steemit sign? What exactly is being rewarded? This is important if Steemit is to become a source of great reading and interesting photos. Or is the strategy to become more of a popularity contest platform like Instagram - with an abundance of selfies and short skirts.
Spam tags
The content on Steemit must be clearly marked and easy to find. Spam tagging of trending topics that have no relation to your chosen subject matter should be removed. If users think that the easy way to get visibility (and rewards) is to post sub standard blogs but litter it with erroneous and misleading tags then the platform suffers. It detracts from the user experience. Imagine searching Youtube for your favourite show only to have to wade through a list of search results containing anything but your favourite show. These practices should be discouraged while the platform is in its infancy.
In summary all I'd like to see from Steemit is upvotes offered more for interesting, different, unique, funny, useful, personal stuff. And less of run of the mill blogs sprinkled with t!ts and @ss as a cynical ploy to generate cash. We should also strongly discourage the deliberate mislabelling of posts.
To those who've used their rewards to pay bills, go on vacation/holiday, or look after your family - you are inspirations to us all.
Happy Steeming everyone.
Creative engaging content and some of the most interesting back and forth conversations in comment feeds are something that set this experience apart. The people putting out consistently good content are being noticed and while the may only generate a few cents, they are building a trust with users who will continue to view their content. One of if not the best feature here is that trolling and comments that add nothing to the post are able to be ignored and moved down instead of back and forth troll wars. Your comments reflect you as a poster and the reputation you have here. Something that was lacking and creates a poor user experience. I love YouTube, but when was the last time you even bothered to scroll down and view a comment? There is a platform here that can launch new artists, musicians, photographers, and people who just either write well or engaging content. People are bound to be able to launch careers and think of how a new or upcoming musician could post a new song, get quality feedback and interact with fans who will hopefully post more than just "I love you" or beg for likes. They can be rewarded financially without working through ad revenue, but they can build themselves up from the ground floor. That's something I'm excited to see. The average user on YouTube will make very little money and has no benefit from mega stars getting millions of likes. Here however that impacts the value of steem and everybody can profit from entertainment, to discussion, and also monetarily. I see big things in steemit's future.
I agree there is a lot of potential for Steemit and its USP is a great one. I don't doubt for a second Steemit can change lives for the better. I'm just concerned it becomes awash with overly attention seeking folks not offering much in the way of content value (but perhaps a lot in the way of trashy photos and misleading blogs). Remember Myspace? They say Facebook killed it off - but it didnt really. Myspace became saturated with uninteresting wannabees with not a lot to say. People got bored and moved away. I think Facebook in the next few years will see genuine users tun their back on it too. Too many adverts, pushed content and not enough good stuff to keep them interested.
Agreed. It will be up to us to help make our votes count for truly great content and not to reward meaningless drivel
The whales reward those that they think will draw more people to steemit and we all hope it is us.