Steemit Will Not Be The New Facebook

There has naturally been a lot of excitement on Steemit, with users speculating that it will be the next Facebook. In fact, I bet if you could do a search, you would find that comparisons between Facebook and Steemit, topped the league of comparisons, with Reddit a close second.

Obviously we all want Steemit to have as many users as Facebook, because that will signify some kind of success. But the issue isn't whether Steemit will be the next Facebook or not, it's whether we want it to be, and quite frankly; we don't.

Just before discovering Steemit, I installed an extension on my browser called; Stay Focused, the idea behind it is, you tell the app what sites you have been wasting time on, so that it can impose a 10 minute, daily time limit. When your ten minutes are up, on whatever site you've been faffing around on, you get the "Shouldn't you be working screen.

Facebook was the first site that I gave Stay Focused to censor, as I was spending way too much time on there and it was annoying me; as there were many more productive things that I should have been filling my time with. But then I discovered Steemit and my Facebook time dropped to near zero. Just recently, I've been analyzing the way I've been using Steemit as opposed to the way I have used Facebook and it is not what I at first thought, that I had merely found a substitute for Facebook.

What I've found is that there is a marked difference between the way we interact with Steemit and the way we interact with Facebook; and that subtle distinction is clearly reflected in the characteristics of the two platforms.

Ignore the fact that Steemit is still in Beta mode and that it still has room to evolve. Because we can say that whatever Steemit eventually metamorphoses into, we can say with some confidence that it won't be another Facebook.

Social Interaction

Since the early days of simple chat rooms, when each one resembled a microcosm of the social media platforms that we've become use to. Back in those days, bitmap avatars served the function that photographs serve today, and live text acted like the walls of our social pages. Then came message boards, profiles, and most importantly, broadband; and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now we are at a point where an unspoken and unplanned social language has been formed, an underlying structure that guides our online interactions. We have collectively signed up to the architecture of social platforms. By that I mean, not just the look and feel of social media with it's likes and follows friend lists and so on.

It is the whole package, the way we choose to disseminate information on Facebook, is unique to that environment and if we started behaving in the same way here, it would feel quite out of place.

Unless you have set up a Facebook page purely for business purposes, then you are almost definitely there because your family and friends are on there. Your motivation and that of your Facebook peers, is not necessarily to read great content all the time and it certainly isn't to post it.

Even when it comes to voting, the way you behave on Facebook is completely at odds with the way you behave on Steemit. For instance, my first couple of weeks on Steemit, was spent voting, pretty much exactly like I vote for something on Facebook. If I liked it I voted for it, even if the thing I liked was a comment. But then I realised, if you constantly vote on comments, that aren't getting any other votes, then you're effecting your influence, and therefore future rewards in a negative way.

This realisation comes to us all.

-- CryptoGee

Navigating The Chat-O-Verse

On Facebook; I, like tens of millions of others, post a lot of complete rubbish, I might see a slightly amusing meme, or a picture, that I post on my wall on a whim. Or perhaps I'll watch a video or read a story that is only relevant to one or two people in my friend list. In that case I might post it on their wall, or even mine and simply tag them in.

I'll put up photos of friends' and family events; and those type of posts will get likes from the people they're aimed at, and probably no one else will notice or care.

Now and again of course, just like everyone else, I'll see stories that I think are worth posting, or I'll write something myself in response to whatever issue I feel strongly enough about. But what I would never do, is write a 1500 word article. Not only would it seem out of place, but nobody would read it, but also because it would be a huge waste of my time.

On Facebook the lines are blurred, it has already been observed by others; that while we are contributing to the behmoth that is Facebook, we are all content producers and consumers, both advertisers and customer all rolled into one.

“People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced
through friends and people they know and trust"

– Malorie Lucich, Facebook

I would conjecture that that isn't entirely the case, more than anything, much more than advertisers; we are Facebook's product. Whether you are posting a comment or a link to an article, liking or putting an emotion on a post. Nowadays of course, you don't even have to be on Facebook for them to be gathering information on you, their new cookie policy, quite proudly states that they will monitor what you do after you have logged out of their site.

All of those actions are providing metrics about yourself, that Facebook ultimately sells to other users, so that they in turn, can sell you their products and services.

“The only people who care about advertising are the people who work in advertising”

– George Parker

You are only an advertiser if you are selling something, otherwise, at best you're an affiliate for other people's content.

You are not a curator or a producer when you're on Facebook, you are a statistical data point, surrounded by an ever growing web of self-perpetuating information; at the center of which, is your name, age, sex, and location. All that is left for Zuckerburg & Co. to do with all that data you have inputted, is to organise it into a nice, neat, little color-coded, package and then sell it.

“People spend money when and where they feel good”

– Walt Disney

Law Of Coupling

I saw an experiment once, whereby a group of people were put on roller skates (I assume they were on skates purely for the fun factor) and then were each assigned numbers - stuck on their backs - from 1-10, in the group there were three or four of each number.

They were given the simple instruction, skate around and grab the highest number you can, after a short time, the 10s ended up with the 10s, the 9s with the 9s and so on, right down to the 1s. This experiment displayed the hierarchical Law Of Coupling, that is to say, quality, attracts quality.

Steemit is very much like that experiment in that not only are we all playing a version of that game with each other, by trying to pump out higher and higher quality articles, in hope of attracting the highest quality votes. Also each one of your posts, is competing with every post that came before it, each one is being assigned a theoretical number, according to the quality of the content.

The highest quality content, will eventually attract the highest quality viewers. The same goes for when you are voting, once Steemit settles down after Independence Day, the writing should get more diverse as time wears on.

If the niche or niches you decide to follow are popular and you have an eye for a good article, then your influence and earning power will grow. You won't be voting on any of the weaker articles, because you won't be following any of the weaker writers.

Competition

What this all boils down to is that in the heat of competition with yourself and your fellow Steemites, the quality of what you put out will increase.

As you get better, the thought of posting the sort of thing you might casually post on Facebook, will be completely out of the question.

Steemit will have less chatter, because chatter will not be rewarded and if chatter isn't rewarded here, people will go to where it is rewarded, albeit, socially.

Therefore, there will be people who use Facebook now, who will never be suited for Steemit, either as a curator or a producer, they won't see the point, because they won't be able to interact in the way that they enjoy.

Others will be perfectly suited to Steemit and will keep their Facebook profile open, either to stay in touch or simply to keep up with the chatter and not have the pressure of maintaining quality posts.

Then there will be the few that completely leave Facebook behind, and even fewer still will stick to that. Let's face it, most people know at least 2 or 3 people they can only get hold of on Facebook (I have about 20 or 30) and unless you are in the middle of a real-world friend purge, you will eventually return.

Live And Let Live

Ultimately Steemit and Facebook can and will survive side by side, people may one day leave Facebook in their droves, but it won't be because of this platform, it will be for reasons we can't hope to fathom now.

Steemit has broken new ground, and staked it's own unique claim in the hinterlands of the current social landscape. What direction it will go in, and how big it will grow; nobody can really say for sure.

However, one thing is for sure, it won't be the new Facebook and never will be, and for that, we should all stand up together; and say a big Steem powered; amen!

CryptoGee