Shifting sands and investment decisions

As you may have seen, my @steemcommunity partner in crime announced today that she is powering down the account for the Steem Power to be used on other projects. This is her first power-down and when we spoke privately she expressed 'sadness' at pressing the button. I can't argue though, the SP held in that account is just a poor investment right now.

@steemcommunity was put in place not to be a community, but in an attempt to help support communities on Steem to grow their accounts and reach. It was a bold project, particularly as the general fuel for 'success' around here is Steem Power based. We had the time, the energy, the willingness to help, but even combined we didn't have the Steem Power to support at the level we had planned to.

We did try though, and with the support of @yabapmatt, @curie, and more recently @esteemapp, have hosted weekly posts to encourage smaller accounts to both engage and power up their Steem. Those initiatives are still running, some at a loss, and all of which take time and effort, with little personal reward.

Well no-one asked you to do it.

And this is true, they didn't. But we didn't join with 10-20-100k SP, and have a reasonable understanding of the difficulties a newcomer faces. From managing your account to looking at the utter bollocks on trending thinking 'why, what is that all about?'. I guess we felt something was required to encourage and help, and that feeling of being of use, for me anyway, was enough (and still is) to take that time to help.

As we spoke privately today, one of the conversations was about the state of Steem at present, and in particular with regards to the Scot tribes. Paula has been busy earning real money, whilst I've been slumming it and throwing all my time and STEEM at the new 'communities' and their tokens.

Paula stated that she may be missing the tribes, but everyone is running their own project or their own tribes.... that Steem used to have a good community..... and that all that's left are community leaders and devs.

Too many little islands to have an impact. I'm no different really, now I just want to use my SP to support my own project and those that engage with that.

I see her point, especially with wanting to use that SP to support her own project. The 3.8k SP in the @steemcommunity account was used largely to support communities, and honestly, they didn't really return the favour - even on the one post we put out each week.

Islands though? I was unsure:

I don't see them as islands, more like small boats setting sail for new lands. One of them is gonna land, and hopefully find untold riches

Right Paula?

small boats with no gps, reading the stars

lol

Which of us is right, time will tell. I've spent more time in the tribes though, and do see the potential of some. What I haven't seen much of as yet is advertising and marketing of these tribes to on-board creators, curators/investors from outside the already existing Steem community.

I would hazard a guess that over 90% of the tokens have been purchased by existing people (not accounts, I've seen more alts than ever before). I am not sure if the tribes will manage to bridge the gap and start bringing in the above from outside Steem - actifit, spliterlands, and as outside bets, dporn and creativecoin could be in with a chance. Or will we have to wait for SMT / Communities / a bull market, for anything serious to happen?

Another thing I've noticed with the tribes is that the spammers and thieves are back. I've not always been a fan of @cheetah and @steemcleaners, but on their huge list are a number of outright fucktards. And without the aforementioned accounts having stake in these tokens, the moderators and users that give a shit have a tough task to stop the bullshit from getting out of control.

Anyway, I'd like to think the tribes are boats seeking new lands and not islands, and the abusers are just 'have a go' pirates who can easily be thrown overboard. Helsing anyone?

_{Where is this post going now, I'll have to scroll up and read......}

OK, I think most of that makes sense.

We are certainly not going anywhere, but you could see a little more of me (and my alts) than Paula over the coming months. My investment into the tribes should ensure that is the case, as I desperately try to support as many of the content producers across multiple 'communities' as I can each day.

I've not managed a #stem / #steemgeeks post yet, but hold the 9th largest account. I've managed one post for #creativecoin and that was a struggle, but hold over 11000 of those if you fancy being creative. I'm closing in on half a million SPORTS tokens, and hold around 7k PAL and LEO. Those numbers make me a Whale in most cases, and as you might expect by now, the vast majority of my vote is there for you - it's just I get a better return for visiting your shop with the author/curator percentages.

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_{Mine, not the boat...}

I'm going to go with the boat analogy to finish, and say it's good to see many I appreciate sailing along too.

Cheers

Asher