Social pressure even more important than user-friendliness

Today I listened to the recordings of the State of Steem Forum, as well as the interview with Ned and Elizabeth Powell which preceded the forum.

So much energy, so many ideas and projects people have! And some, like the ones @oracle-d have, are aiming high on the marketing side, or more generally on the services side.

But towards the end of the forum a thought came through my mind.

We identify correctly that the steep learning curve, the challenging onboarding process for the average Joe and Jane, to some extent the bad or inaccurate press, are elements that keep the adoption rate lower than it should be.

And all of these should improve and they are!

However, I feel we're selling ourselves short. Facebook is the perfect example of a loaded interface, with dozens if not hundred of options that added up in years of development. I don't have a personal account there anymore, but even when I did I wasn't very active.

I believe I am computer savvy. But as an once-in-a-while user of Facebook, I had trouble finding some options without wasting time looking for them or sometimes googling for information.

If I go one step further, my mother has a Facebook account and she's pretty active, at least on the reading part. Yet she asks me something about how to do this or that on Facebook every few days. So, is Facebook really user-friendly? I think not!

What it is really, is the first social media platform, one which is probably going to have 2 billion accounts soon. So the first country in the world, one would say, by population.

And it's likely all or most of your friends have Facebook accounts.

Put these two together, and they are a powerful argument for the infamous social media platform.

Social pressure, that's gonna drive more adoption on Steem. If regular Joe or Jane sees Steem everywhere, from an option to pay at online stores to the only way of commenting and voting on their favorite blog to a way of monetizing activity of communities inside but mostly outside the Steem ecosystem (via the postponed SMTs), to being rewarding for going to gym or walking or doing house chores, they will tell their friends, and if the onboarding process is getting better, they might just start joining together, as an entire group, with full relationships already built.

I've heard an idea during the State of Steem Forum, I think it was @crypto-talk if I remember correctly, that we need to make it easier for influencers to onboard their followers, if we want them to come to Steem.

I completely agree to that. For an influencer, especially the top ones, the reward pool is not an incentive. Influence is. If they can transfer it from wherever they have built it to Steem, by inviting their followers to join and streamlining the entire process, this can really work for them and for growing adoption.