Let's Bring Promoted Posts Back - A Great Way To Reduce the SBD Debt!
How many of you promote your posts anymore? How many of you even look at promoted posts anymore? My guess is few people are doing either.
In case you haven't heard the news, the price of STEEM has been falling. There are a lot of contributing factors to this (which I will skip in this post), but one of the big ones is the massive amount of SBD debt that is still around from the July price spike - and continues to put downward pressure on the price.
The witnesses and devs are brainstorming/trying lots of ideas on how to reduce the debt without causing the price to go into a death spiral. I would like to propose a solution that everyone in the community can participate in: Promoted Posts.
When a user burns SBD to promote their post, this reduces the SBD debt. The SBD is destroyed without the block-chain having to mint a single new STEEM coin. Hypothetically, if everybody used all of the existing SBD to promote posts, the debt would be completely eliminated without using any inflation.
I do not want to try and encourage anybody to spend money promoting posts if they do not feel it is a good idea. Let's let the market dictate that.
What we can do though is make promoted posts more valuable. There's a simple way to do that: Spend more time browsing the promoted posts.
Asking people to simply throw away their own Steem Dollars on a poorly implemented feature doesn't seem like a very good idea. The problem right now isn't that there are too many Steem Dollars. The problem is that there isn't much incentive to buy Steem and convert it to Steem Power.
A better idea would be to expedite some of the requested and needed features and improvements to existing features on the site, and to find better ways to increase transactions with Steem - which will provide some added incentive to buy it. Steemit needs more development and Steem needs to be accepted as payment for more goods and services. Users should not throw away their SD because these things aren't happening quickly enough.
That is not what I am saying in this post. I specifically said in the post that I am not requesting that. The only thing I said was to spend time looking at the promoted posts. The request is free to do, and you are welcome to ignore it :)
I'm trying to work on all of this as well. Asking people to view promoted posts is not going to prevent anything in this category from happening. (We can do both :) )
Again, I am not asking users to promote posts. I am just asking users to view them. If users start viewing them and promoted posts start making the promoters more money, then it will encourage more promoting. The encouragement would only come from the fact it is working though. If nobody is benefiting from it, then the demand will not increase.
This is not the only problem, but it is a big problem. The witness and people in the price channel that I talk to agree with this.
Well, that's not good news. As witnesses, they shouldn't be confusing cause and effect. The problem is not that there are too many Steem Dollars. The problem is that the Steem Dollars - since pegged to the Dollar - are worth too much relative to the price of the rapidly falling Steem currency. The problem is that Steem is becoming too cheap because demand cannot keep up with supply. There is no interest to buy Steem and to power up and hold Steem Power - as evidenced by the power downs, sell-offs, low volume, and lack of buyers.
Theoretically, if the price were to fall far enough, only ten Steem Dollars could be "too many." Would burning those ten Steem Dollars resurrect Steem with a market cap of $50? Burning that 10 SD by sending it to the @null account will essentially do nothing at all - because the problem wouldn't be that there are too many Steem Dollars. The problem would be that Steem is worthless and nobody wants it.
There needs to be more demand for Steem, not new ways to piss away one's Steem Dollars. There needs to be a real market for using the currency - real demand for buying into Steemit, holding Steem Power, and using the Steem transaction services and network. If burning a bunch of Steem Dollars can stop the bleeding and control the debt ratio, then burning large amounts of Steem Dollars from @steemit, @steemit1, and @steemit2 should happen. However, I don't think that's the problem, as I already stated. The huge lack of demand for Steem is the issue here, among other things.
In any case, reading promoted posts won't accomplish much.
Users don't care to view them or they can already view them in the regular feeds. The "promoted" tab seems to be counterproductive, or at least a redundancy, in its current form. It has been largely proven to be ineffective and was too expensive to use for the average person who actually needed the promotion. It was mostly occupied by those who had plenty of SD to spend on promoting because they were already accomplished users. As @pfunk stated in his comment, the feature was flawed from the start and has not been improved. Right now, it's hardly used at all. Last I checked, there were ten posts in the tab and people were still burning 10 and 20 SD to use it. They probably would have been better off powering up and curating with the extra Steem Power, or just cashing it out - as it's likely that their posts would have received those payouts anyway.
It needs work. This entire site does. We need more development. Things should fall into place after that. If they don't and the site fails, then we'll know that this experiment was either a not so good idea, or it was just poorly executed/managed/marketed.
It was an amazing idea ahead of its time that was poorly executed. It always will be an amazing idea, regardless. Just look at the early adoption and excitement. It's the early majority that have taken a second look and said "Wha?"
I think we are mostly in agreement on a lot of things. I see a few things differently, but I don't think there is much need to go back and forth on them. Regarding most of the key items (falling STEEM price is a huge factor, we need more features added to the website, there needs to be a long-term solution to increase demand) - we do agree.
This is absolutely true. It is a problem that needs to be kept from getting out of control, and you can't rely on the price being high at all times to solve it. The reality is that crypto markets are highly vulnerable to price drops including extreme price drops and what needs to happen is: a) not creating too many SBD just because the price is high at the moment (which was done last summer), and b) reducing the supply aggressively or at least slowing the rate of increase as the price starts to fall (which was not done last summer).
I agree with you the promoted tab leaves a lot to be desired. That said, I still visit it to find good posts and I suspect I'm not alone. I find posts that someone is willing to spend money to "promote" as being of generally higher than average quality. Not 100%, but it is a decent indicator.
It's actually both
naw...
I have an alternate suggestion.
A legacy account...for posts that have 'paid out' after thirty days.
Make the votes for a paid-out posts pay in perpetuity..use that Steem to do it.
Create something similar to an author's back list.
There are a lot of suggestions on more "long-term" things we can do. I'm trying to come up with something that we can all to today :)
I don't have a problem with today. I like it just fine. I need more time to accumulate low cost Steem. I'd say when I have about 10K would be about right.
I don't have a problem with low prices either. If it stabilizes, I feel like it's a second chance to get in on the ground floor. But, when I look at the falling market cap, I'm seeing Enron redux. It's now at July 4 levels, and it's showing no signs of even slowing down. I'd like the platform to stay alive for long enough for steem to eventually gain in value. At this point, I'm not very confident in that outcome. If upvoting some promoted posts once a day and maybe promoting some of my own helps to achieve that outcome, I'm on board.
So how can it die?
_Steemit is controlled ONLY by its community members. There is no agenda besides freedom. Most certainly, there is no large corporation or government calling the shots.
“We still believe in the free and open marketplace of ideas,” as @cryptoctopus wrote. The Steemit community believes that when differing opinions are allowed to compete against one another, everybody learns more about those issues and perspectives. Everybody has a chance to discuss and debate ideas. May the best idea win, and may everyone treat each other with respect and understanding.
The money? Steemit does not have any mega-banks or billionaires to please. Not only does the Steemit community control the content; it also owns the whole project. In essence, anyone posting or upvoting good content gets a chance to share in Steemit’s ongoing growth and profits.
(nest)If it goes under, that would be too bad.
All I have invested is time.
Time I'd have spent doing the exact same thing on FaceBook...
so there IS no downside for me.
The upside, however, could be HUGE.
Someone's got to fund the steemit web servers and pay to keep the witness nodes running. At some point, it's not worthwhile to pay for that infrastructure. I'm the first to admit that I have no idea how close we are to that point, but it's out there somewhere. Yes, you can always keep a copy of the steem blockchain and resurrect it with new infrastructure, but the steemit web site is a start-up business, and start-up businesses die all the time. Residing on the blockchain doesn't turn it into a perpetual motion machine.
Here, let @dantheman tell you,
Steem Dollar Stability Enhancements
According to coinmarketcap.com, the current SBD market cap is 1.5 million and the STEEM market cap is 21 million, so it's not at Dan's dangerously high 20% yet, but at the rate steem is falling, it's uncomfortably close for my tastes.
Good idea. I'm personally going to visit the promoted tab more often. I have about 12 SBD so I'll probably use them to promote my posts or others over the next week or two. From my anecdotal experience I've received a couple upvotes from @smooth on my posts after they were promoted. That amounts to a pretty nice reward.
So perhaps a call to the witnesses by name to look in here more often is a reasonable thing to do. What do you think @timcliff ?
ATTENTION - THERE IS A GLITCH WITH THE PROMOTED POSTS PAGE!
If you have been browsing promoted posts, you have probably noticed - it only shows the top 5-10 promoted posts. This is a glitch. I have opened a GitHub issue for it, and the dev team is looking into it. Until then though, only the top few promoted posts will be showing up. Keep this in mind if you plan to promote posts.
https://github.com/steemit/steemit.com/issues/586
Do you know what else will be very cool? If people can fly!!!
What I mean is too much of your post depend on "The unreasonable good behavior of humans.". [In this post here:]
What I mean is - if the devs of Steem had any desire to give incentives to people to spread promoted post it is actually dumb simple to do* [ several ours of coding max] ... but dumping Steem on exchanges seems more fun for them...
I get that there are a lot of things that can be done to enhance the site, which will give more value to Steem Power. The ideas you are suggesting are not bad. I actually think something similar to what you are proposing is being considered / is in the works.
If you just want to complain about how the site needs to be improved though and suggest that we should just stand by and do nothing until "the devs" do something to fix it, then I disagree.
The purpose of my post was to suggest something that anybody can do if they want, which has the potential to help solve the problem. If you don't want to spend time browsing posts because you don't think it's a good idea, then OK.
It's a good suggestion to keep an eye on promoted posts in order to support authors and such, but I feel like its just another tab. I think that the way it is executed needs to be different, to bring value to the cost. For example, popping up on other bloggers' posts would be great bang for the steem buck. Forcing it to the top of the pages of the other tabs would be even better a la google sponsored ads. Even above the fold placement in their chosen categories would be pretty sweet.
Yes, I agree. I think that they are planning to add things along those lines. This is more of a temporary solution - to try and work with what we have.
You're right: I never promoted a post and I almost never click on the promoted section anymore. This time I felt like going elsewhere than on my home feed and I was attracted to your post which seems to be doing fine in terms of votes but not that much in rewards so far. I might consider to try promoting someday with the right post at the right timing as an experience. Didn't even know that it had to be paid in SBD. Thanks for the info.
One thing is for sure: gambling with promoting is not incentive all by itself to burn SBD, so Steemit think tanks would have to come up with some kind of (more) bent toward winning formula to boost this section.
Yeah, more of a long-term solution is in the works but it is going to take some time to develop and roll-out. This is more of a short-term / temporary fix.
So you inspired me to try my first promoted post. It took my SBD, but it's not showing up in the promoted feed. Guess I destroyed that SBD, anyway. ; -)
Update: Never mind. Now it's there. Didn't realize it would take 1/2 hour to show up.
It shouldn't be that way. I opened up a GitHub issue for it.
Cool post! I upvoted it. Curious, was it up to ~$24.00 before or after you promoted it? :)
Haven't checked "promoted" in weeks! Seems like one of the features which was a flop among others.
I cannot comment on your suggestion as I am not well versed with the economics of steemit, but it does sound good!