RE: Philly February Steemit Meetup Recap
Thanks @hypnopreneur for organizing the meetup and writing it up! By the way, the reason I left a tad bit early is that I couldn't wait to get home and start playing with Steem on a deeper level.
I left the meetup with two main takeaways.
From @knircky's talk, I gained a new appreciation of the architecture and incentive systems of Steem. While still an experiment and likely imperfect, Steem was masterfully designed and innovated greatly in order to make a social network fit into a blockchain framework. For example, I was fascinated by the account recovery mechanism built into the protocol and how one's STEEM Power determines thier bandwidth.
From @yabapmatt talk, I realized that there are easy and hard ways to get STEEM on Steem. The easy way is to use the new platforms that Steemit, Inc has delegated with whalepower to encourage growth. Also it may not be a bad idea to buy upvotes.
While I'd usually say it's unethical and pathetic to buy attention on social networks (e.g. buying Twitter followers), I think Steem is different. If Steem's economic model incentivizes detrimental behavior, then that's a problem with the economic model. The earlier the problem is brought to light the better.
And in fact, if I understood correctly, @yabapmatt thought vote selling on Steem was actually a fantastic feature, since it is a way for advertising revenue to enter the system, but instead of flowing to a centralized entity like Facebook or Google, this revenue is dispersed to anyone willing to delegate power.
My pleasure man. It's always good to see you at the meetups! I did notice towards the end that you were no longer with us, lol. But's it's all good - I like that you were motivated that much by what you learned that you didn't want to wait until things ended to start tinkering. And I'm curious if you learned anything interesting since from your explorations.
I agree that it's been masterfully designed and fascinating to hear someone clearly explain the mechanics. The interfaces of some sights maybe still be a bit clunky and inelegant, but the systems underneath the hood are beautiful. I think a few years from now we may look back at Steem as one of the projects that helped to change the existing paradigms in a major way.
I also like the pay for votes / promotion model that Matt talked about. It creates more opportunity for individuals as you point out, and there are definitely plenty of good content producers that can and do use it effectively. Sure there's opportunity for abuse by scammers and low-brow profiles hoping to get rewarded for garbage posts, but the community I think will weed them out. Overall this represents an amazing shift in power to the community and the end user. Amazing.
FYI, I upvoted my comment and plan to upvote this one as well. It seems like upvoting your own comments is a double win. You not only get the curation rewards but you also get the author awards. Am I missing something or does it always make sense to upvote your comments with all your might?
hahaha, I have thought as much too. I guess it works pretty fine. I hope you also upvote this too. ;)
I think you're right, makes total sense to me. It's crazy to me that more people don't do it!
I just made my first Steemit post since this meetup titled Ultralight travel to Key West (like a Steemian Boss). I used @yabapmatt's Steem Upvote Bot Tracker service to try to buy upvotes. I still don't understand exactly how it works, but managed to buy at least one upvote from @redlambo (which seems to have yield more than I paid for the upvote). Another vote from @smartsteem should be on its way IIUC.
Very cool, let me know what else you promote.
Hi Thanks, I invite you to follow me and help me with your vote, I will do the same.