Two Things Which Need to Remain True for Steem to Succeed
It must never be too difficult for new users to break in and start making rewards.
The whole attraction of Steemit.com for new users is that they are rewarded for their contribution, and their attention. If you join, make an effort and go unrewarded, you will likely leave as the site did not meet expectations. If more people are leaving than joining, Steem is working on borrowed time.
Spending a significant sum on Steem Power should always give you visibly meaningful influence.
Similarly the attraction of Steem Power is the ability to influence rewards, to choose what you like and have them paid out a little etc. If it takes 5 figure sums of money to achieve this, it has no attraction to ordinary users, and they will not want to buy in for anything but speculation. Speculation is fine, but it's not sufficient for long term stability.
I like how you laid this out. Short, Simple, Sweet. :)
Perfect Common Sense.
Life isn't suppose to be this hard survival type game. Life is about Sharing our Best Efforts.
Steemit is the place for the whole world to share and learn together. I see the potential is tremendous in keeping the principles simple. You made a great post here in a short succinct way in which anyone can comprehend.
The Genius here of our STEEMIT is in being Pro for Giving. It's a Win Win mathematical certainty. Mutual Best Benefit.
We live in interesting times indeed. Thanks so much for your post. You've supported me to expand my awareness in the simplicity of the expression of that which is so awesome about steemit.
Keep On STEEM'N ON :)
Presumably both these factors can be measured and tracked in an objective way. Are any trends emerging in either?
Both of these have improved significantly since the whale-vote-experiment started in March. @eroche did posts with graphs on reward distribution in March and April.
So just out of interest then, how much steem power was needed, in the most recently analysed period, to guarantee a reward increase of at least 0.01 on every upvote?
Prior to mid March, I had about 90k SP and was doing 1-2 penny votes.
Today @lenatramper is doing 1 penny votes with less than 1.5k SP.
Sounds good. I have now followed @eroche so I can see any future reward distribution graphs they might produce. ;)
I am putting my hope in communities, it will be interesting to see how it pans out.
I agree. If people don't feel rewarded for their work they will most likely give up.
But how does one build a following on any social media platform? It's irrational to think someone can sign up for Twitter, start firing away tweets, and have anyone see them at all. Without doing the work to interact with others and build a following, no one will see what you post. I'm here commenting on this post because you spent the time to comment on mine and link to it. And now I've followed you. That's how social media works.
Things of value take effort, including building a following.
That said, the long term success of Steemit does involve more and more people building their own following. If that barrier of entry gets too high, we won't see the success we want.
The follower model is inherently pyramid-like. It's not sustainable, and why Twitter hit a plateau so much earlier than its competitors. For the same reason, Twitter is trying to de-emphasize it, by throwing in other stuff into people's feeds (but users don't like it because it's obviously not why they joined Twitter).
I think we will end up more like Youtube, where following (subscribers) and subject, trending video feeds etc. are blended fairly well.
I agree, a blend seems to make the most sense. I wonder also how much it comes down to personal preference. I pretty much only watch videos from channels I've subscribed to because of limited time. I don't want to wade through all the other stuff when I know the people I follow on YouTube consistently put out great content.
Good discussion, thanks.
That's only true on a follower based system. On Reddit, brand new accounts make the front page all the time, because it is subject and community oriented, not follower-based.
Good point. I wonder how much of that has to do with the interface? @jesta's chainBB may help with that as well.
Yes, it pretty much is a consequence of the user interface. Thankfully it is going to change fairly soon, so we'll probably be debating some other social issue in a couple of months.
They better not take away my right to be angry about something!!!111!!!
Heheh.
We can make them stay as long as they were given a chance to enjoy the platform. One way is to earn rewards. But there are also issues with this before if everybody is raking good amount of rewards, it might create a negative perspective about the platform, it might turn into a money making website and not social media.
Its beautiful to see good amount of rewards on the trending page, and we also wish that someday we can also have that kind of reward. This could be the usual feeling of any simple individual here in the platform. And if this desire takes too long to realize, that might be the time they will say that they are wasting there time.
I don't agree. It is the nature of satisfaction that you start with expectations, and then if those expectations are not met or exceeded, that you come out with disappointment. Disappointment on first impression is the worst thing we can do for growth.
It can also be seen empirically that prior to mid March, virtually all rewards were going to established users, and new users were not sticking around. It was only when this trend changed that we started to see growth again, first in engagement (comments per post, for example), then in users, then in price.
THIS!
I remember demotruk, when I first started, you upvoted and it was very encouraging then (and even now). New users are very skeptical... they will -- and from my own experience -- leave the platform whenever their expectations isn't met.
The best thing to do, of course, is not have any expectations at all. But alas, the world isn't wired that way. Everyone wishes for something, for their own selfish reasons, and if they can trust the platform to meet their expectations - they bring everyone else to this platform.
I have already told my friend about Steem (without creating any major expectation) that this is a platform worth checking out. I don't know what goes inside his head...
But I am very sure he and everyone else come here, invest time, to meet their expectation - of either rewards, fame, or respect.
Im not telling it for myself, it for those people who decided to leave the platform. I had been on this line, that failure came from dissatisfaction due to too much expectation.