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RE: Steem must improve and the key metric for that improvement is "utility"
I think you are definitely on to something here. We are a community of app and content creators, but most of the content that is being produced is sitting on the sidelines unread.
But I'm not sure how this can be mitigated really...
That could mean more content producers isn't helping very much in terms of producing greater happiness. If you are buying Steem Power to support your favorite content producers there is only so much content you can consume. There are only so many blogs, vlogs, podcasts, that you can consume. Marginal utility is an issue.
I think part of the problem is lack of diversity. If we want more bang for our buck, we need to be able to find different things to spend it on. Right now most blog content here that is successful is focused towards steem and crypto, if steemit is to succeed it will need way more diversification of content. So while SMT's should help with new creations, things that are already in place need diversification within them as well. we are starting to see that a bit more with some of the new vloggers heading this way, but we still have a ways to go. I think that will come with new users if we can retain them long enough. Ease of use for steemit needs an upgrade
I think we need a slower growth rate of bloggers and more roles where people can add value in other ways. More diverse and better content from the most talented bloggers of course, but then millions of people will not be talented bloggers and how can they add value?
Not everyone is supposed to be a blogger and we don't need 5 million bloggers when only 50,000 people hold the majority of Steem Power and don't have the interest in that. This isn't likely to scale unless we have SMTs and unless we go beyond mere blogging.
That's true, there are way too many bloggers and a ton of repeat content, I think that has to do with there being not much else to do here. Obviously things are in the works, like you said, SMT's and the other third party apps on top, so I think it will expand.
I guess what I'm getting at is I'd like to see higher quality bloggers in more niches, right now we have too many bloggers and too few subjects.
As far as SMT's go, I still am trying to wrap my head around the sheer potential of them. Basically it seems like any site could add them to certain aspects like comments, could they also be used as payment? What couldn't they be used for?
I absolutely see the problem the post is talking about, but I'm not sure I see a clear solution. What's the incentive for people to be the audience. Everybody wants to be a "star" and everybody wants a piece of the pie.
The Steem Power holder gets to consume exactly the kind of content on exactly the subjects they want at minimum. The non-Steem Power holding audience isn't so important because ad revenue (eyeballs) isn't the monetization strategy.
This means ultimately providing greater satisfaction to Steem Power holders is the solution but how to do it is the question. We can allow more people to be stars if there are more variety of things people do to earn Steem Power.
I don't think the item of value be it content, applications or whatever else one might think of is what hampers this dynamic currently. If it doesn't work for one type of items (content) why would it work for a others. I don't think the categories matter that much.
I think the problem if we agree that we have one comes from the fact that most people would like to provide said item of interest whatever it is and earn from other people's SP. But the market is not infinite and neither the mean nor the average user spend a good portion of their time consuming and rewarding and their priority is always create and be rewarded. It means there are too many people vying for a limited attention and reward pool.
Not there is another problem that worsens this. A great deal of the active Steem Power is being used on autopilot and the content being rewarded is not actually being consumed. Many Steem Power holders are using it to ensure curation rewards, renting out and selling it to automated services. I'm not sure broadening the scope of the types of things being rewarded can in anyway change those incentives.
But it might thug it in the right direction indeed. But it's not a real solution to the problem you have pointed out.
The reward pool isn't some fixed resource. The reward pool grows in correlation with the desirability of SP. My argument is that SP doesn't give enough bang for buck, otherwise people would want it more.
In addition, in a vibrant market people will want to earn and spend rather than just earn. If your hypothesis is correct then that says more about SP and the lack of variable ways to earn SP.
You are missing my point. Rewards are in the mind of the Steem Power holder. If people are only earning Steem Power to sell it then it's the platform that has the problem not the Steem Power holder. If the Steem Power holder were a satisfied customer they'd again get enough utility from the Steem platform to buy more of it and avoid powering down unless absolutely necessary.
When we see lots of power downs happen and the price of Steem is flat or going down then this tells us in my opinion something about the Steem economy. I think right now the utility of Steem isn't up to par and in other words we don't get enough bang for our buck or happiness for our dollar.
For every dollar put into Steem something has to come out of it. That something is happiness. So the reward is happiness ultimately. If the platform were making people happy we wouldn't have a lot of these debates so there must be some unhappy people if people are going to power down and sell all their Steem. The incentives if your goal is to make a better world, then it's about maximization of utility, but if the goal is maximum profit in USD terms even if the Steem platform dies then this is a different goal. I think building utility outranks whatever the marketcap currently is, and that marketcap in my opinion eventually will rise to match the utility anyway.