Is Steem still the blockchain based social media platform?
When I first found out about Steem, it was completely by mistake. Being a bad trader, I listened to a Haejin-like TA post. I bought a few coins based on someone else's lines on a chart. Steem was one of them. I bought it for a little over a dollar per Steem, only to see it quickly fall. Listening to TA obviously threw me onto the wrong end of the pump and dump. Before I sold my coins for a loss just like all the people new to crypto seem to do. I went and finally did due diligence on the coins I had already bought.
Is this not what the entire goal and purpose of Steem was about? Social Media?
I decided to keep my Steem after reading about the concept. Watching some of the videos calling it a scam, as well as some of the videos showing counterarguments. I sent it to Steemit and powered up. What I had read described Steem as the social media blockchain. I began posting and have really enjoyed my time here ever since. Learning more about crypto, meeting cool people along the way. With SMT's on the horizon I started questioning the future direction of Steem.
Is Steem still the social media blockchain? to me.. It still is for now.
I think of the giant market of the social media companies. How each social media company has their niche. I like how the Steem community (not Steemit the company) was aiming to use the one blockchain to fill each niche. An Instagram competitor, a Twitter competitor, a web forum competitor, and on and on. That is a very ambitious goal to me. Competing on all those levels with multiple social media sites who are some of the biggest companies in the world.
Then along came the announcement about SMT's. The first SMT I heard about was Bob's Repair. This is a handyman or repair company that is planning on leveraging the Steem blockchain to reduce the price of home repair and reduce review fraud. This is not Social Media related. So what is the Steem blockchain if it is not the social media blockchain anymore? A smart contract blockchain like Ethereum with working social media applications already built?
If that is the case, I fear that the ambitions have become too far reaching. We have problems in our community as is that are going unaddressed by the developers and CEO. They change and update things, and don't tell anyone. I tried to find one peep from them about the new rewards including Steem in addition to SBD, and SP. Nothing, they did it and said nothing. Who decided to change this? Was there consensus from the witnesses? Did anyone ask the community what it thought about it? What the fuck is going on here? How centralized is this place really?
Even with the single focus I thought this blockchain used to have on taking over social media. We had a long way to go. We had much to change, much to do. Communities, Hive Mind. We have plagiarism, we have a massive gap in the distribution pool of Steem. There are less than 1500 people on this website capable of giving a whole dollar as an upvote. The monetarily encouraged action on here is to rent out your Steem to a voting bot, or to run a voting bot yourself. promoted tab and advertising is broken. Curation costs curators time and money. Plenty of issues to discuss and fix within the ecosystem we have going. @ned and the developers don't seem to care, they appear to have turned their attention to bringing non social concepts onto the Steem blockchain.
Why is Appics an SMT? Why is Dmania not? Why does Steemit delegate SP to some of these projects. Are they not exactly what you are making SMT's for? If Appics and Bob's Repair are SMT's why are Zappl, dmania, and Steepshot not? Where is the line drawn?
I wish we could focus and make this the best social media blockchain it can be as it was originally intended.
Instead of becoming bigger than Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter combined. Steem is now competing with EOS and Ethereum too. Is our army big enough to win all these wars? Or will we become too convoluted?
Woot woot,
In my weird view, the Steem blockchain benefits from Steemit because it shows businesses just how many transactions they can have on the blockchain at 1.5 seconds and for free. Because of this, Steemit's ultimate purpose is to showcase just how awesome the blockchain is. I don't think Steemit will go by the way side, but even if it did, at that point with many businesses on the blockchain, it would just be like having the training wheels off because all of your steem will be part of a growing business ecosystem.
Thank you for raising all these interesting questions. I have also enjoyed my time on this wonderful Steemit platform. Posting and voting has been the most fun I have had in the crypto world. There is far more value to using a platform than merely just HODLing coins.
I have been looking forward to the launch of SMTs as it shows the true potential for this platform. You certainly do raise some good questions about straying away from the original goal of being a social media platform. However, I'm not 100% sure it's a bad thing. I think SMTs will bring tremendous growth and value to Steemit. Hopefully some of your concerns will be addressed. I was also confused as to why I starting receiving Steem in addition to SBD and SP, but I believe it's for the greater good as all Steemit policies are.
This is a great community and I'm excited to see what Steemit will evolve into.
Yea there isnt much information coming from witnesses. You have to really search the witness category to just get tidbits. One of them mentioned the 3 way split was coming.
Some get feeling its the "old boy" club where they are mostly concerned with keeping their income because there isnt much transparency here at all.
That's how I like my information on updates about my investments. Hidden and hard to find lol.
That old boy club is a bad image for a social media platform. I know a more fairly distributed start for a competitor will be really bad for Steem. I just still haven't decided if the first mover advantage it has is enough to keep it in front of the others. I guess I should ask Tom from Myspace.
The three way split in rewards has to do with limiting the amount of SBD produced which was a side effect of its price increasing.
If there's more SBD value (by price) than the available STEEM, the peg gets even more broken, and SBD is essentially debt.
It's basically the printing presses cooling down. It's a function of the chain, linked to the price feed broadcast by witnesses.
I'd love to run a witness node myself, but the costs (time, server space, etc) are prohibitive for me personally.
Ohh interesting..
I thought I read somewhere that hyper inflation was built into the SBD in order to bring the price down when it was above 1$. For a long time to total supply of SBD stayed fairly low, but it has went up drastically over the past couple months.
As far as I understand, they didn't make any change, it is simply built into the system.
You can check this:
https://steemit.com/steem/@tarazkp/the-sbd-steem-debt-and-payouts
https://steemit.com/steem/@steembusiness/houston-we-ve-got-too-much-sbd-read-what-ll-happen-now
This is disheartening to me. Basically something has gone so wrong that some internal mechanism initiated in order to try to fix it. Then nobody really talked about it. If less SBD is given as a reward wont the demand for SBD go up?
I am not sure what the effect of this could be in the long term.
Did you check the articles?
I looked at the Steem business post, I will look at tarazkp's article when I get home.
If my own rewards are any indication, then the fraction of STEEM I was getting disappeared when the internal median price went back over $2 USD. I'm back to just SBD/SP.
I bought in on the advice of a stock advisor. When it was over $5. Should I not take advice from him anymore? lol This is a great place to meet people. It's also a great place to hide. wink wink
I've only been here a short while, but in that time, I've wondered if the STEEM blockchain is really meant to be just a Social Media platform, or if it's actually just another way for investors to make money.
Most things around here are not truly set up to make money for creators and curators, as they are to make money for those who time their votes, pay for voting bots and delegation, and in most particular, those who receive the payments for their bots and delegation.
There's millions in SP just sitting doing nothing. There's millions more being delegated to projects that may or may not be good for STEEM as a Social Media platform, but provide another opportunity for those with an investors mindset.
So, while the basic accoutrements of a Social Media platform may exist, and while there are certainly people here who are using what's available as if it were social media, it sure feels like the investor has the greater influence here.
I'm glad you wrote about this because I've been thinking about it and the answer is no. And it is no to our own detriment.
People need to let go of this notion of quality content and only care if the content is original or properly credited. Those with a lot of SP better think long and hard about their investment.
The best practices of the big social media sites all say that less is more and use pictures. Long form Social Media does not fare well. Medium is a great platform but it is not social media, it is just broadcast blogging.
When you tell someone they can use steepshot to basically instagram for earnings it is a lot easier than saying you have to become a blogger to earn.
We have a great thing going here and if everyone moved their social friends onto the platform everyone would win. Lets make this a social media platform instead of a giant complaining platform
I would say that it is. Whether it will remain the premier blockchain based blockchain social media platform remains to be seen. I have a feeling that investFeed may corner that market. We shall see.
Investfeed sounds as though it's taking aim at one specific market. And that is the investing market..? Can you post art or books on investfeed? Can you stream political videos or video games on it? If not then it is a non competitor really.
I'm not sure, I haven't used it. But I specifically said blockchain social media platform. i.e. a platform on which blockchain only content is housed. It's not meant to compete with Steem, more like supplement it.
If that is the case. Eventually Steem could have a similarly named website that only pulls posts with a certain investment tag and it could do what investfeed does in addition to what it does now. Like dmania only has memes and steepshot only has pictures. You could make another website that only has technical analysis. And pays by Steem, or an SMT could come along, trading view could use the Steem blockchain for their own token running as an SMT. Leveraging the Steemit userbase would instantly give them a decent amount of users from the start.
You are correct though, the community has yet to build a blockchain content only interface.
Agreed.
In response to your having bought STEEM based on someone's lines on a chart....
:D And yes, Steemit is the blogging/social media blockchain. Steemit blockchain = most active in the world with the highest number of daily transactions!
What about when Bob's repair is on the Steem blockchain. Is it still the social media blockchain. Is Bob's repair social media?
I've been here. I know it has the most transactions . I know it's one of the only currently useful blockchain. I know we are ranked better than Bitcoin talk forums on alexis. That there are more good people here than plagarists and scammers.
That is why I am still here. There have been moments otherwise I would have walked away. That and all the cool people I have met here. They still far outweigh the bad aspects.
Thanks for your comment though, more people need to acknowledge that Steem is the not the most popular blockchain, but it is still the most useful and used blockchain.
Oh spoke before reading comments 😂