Steem: Next months are critical

After the 4th of July, which made the money matter more "solid" and "real" for everyone, I feel we will now be entering a "discovery" period. 

With this type of thing being an innovative experiment, all bets are off on how it's going to evolve. What is certain though, is that everyone will be testing the waters. 

- Right now the content being voted is very specific, in part because some "trends" have been formed on what pays out for the voter, and in part because the audience is still single-dimensional, originating mostly from IT / crypto-space.

- With the content being voted being in a narrow spectrum, some content creators can be alienated or feel discouraged regarding their content payout.

- With the content being voted being in the same narrow spectrum, a lot of content creation or plagiarizing is actively pursuing this same narrow spectrum to chase the money. 

So important things that have to find their way, in the next time period, are:

a) Increase of content and participant diversity

b) Some degree of decoupling between money-making and participation, in the sense that people will have to obsess less about money and think of it more as a side-benefit to posting something good. Content created with the intent to make money might lead to an inferior result compared to content that was more genuine and got upvoted as a result of its genuineness.

c) Developing the natural "defenses" that are necessary to prevent the system getting exploited. It's not impossible for new challenges to arise, like voting collusion or "pooling" of votes, or even development of marketplaces for the purchase of upvotes.

d) Developing the conversation aspect, that reddit has, and which steem currently lacks due to lower participation, smaller community and comments not being regarded too much as a source of income. A lot of reddit posts are richer not due to the first post but due to the content created by all those discussing it / debating it. So we'll gradually have to get there - one way, or another.

e) The price of STEEM - finding its place in the marketplace. It seems it's going pretty well right now, in fact booming - but that's to be expected because the network effect is increasing fast.

Meanwhile, participants will be called to try and understand the shifting dynamics of the system on a day-to-day basis, because the behavior of the system and its participants is still in flux. 

After this initial period, which I estimate will take us around 2-3 months, the dynamics will start solidifying and clearer patterns will emerge on how the system will operate in the longer term. 

I think by that time we'll also acquire a greater degree of understanding about which things need fixing and how to deal with them in order to get closer to a rich (in terms of content and discussion) system, that is effective, easy to use and strives to be fair.

So... Let's see how it goes.... exciting times ahead....