Hello Steemians, originally, I planned to write a comment in this post (Where do we take STEEM from here?) of @cmp2020 in which he starts a discussion about the future of STEEM. However, my text became longer and longer, until I decided to make a post of it. :)

How to attract young people?

At first @cmp2020 is discussing ideas of making advertisements in colleges, which I like: of course it should be an aim to make STEEM attractive for young people, and going into the colleges could be promising.

As teenagers often are using mobile devices instead of computers/laptops, I think it's important to support well working mobile apps on STEEM.
Apart from @appics with its very engaged team, I really would like to mention the Chinese dApp from @wherein. One of its advantages is that one can include several photos into a single post.
Furthermore I think that @travelfeed are doing a really good job with their "Travel dApp".

What should we focus on?

Then @cmp2020 cites @whatsup:

What else should we focus on?
- New Dapps?
- Content?
- Rewarding casual content that is more consistent to most social media? Your ideas?

I'm bound to say that, old-fashioned as I am, I am a big fan of rewarding 'really good content'. I know that it's partly subjective how to define "good", but I think that there are characteristics of 'good' contents which (apart from all the subjectivity which for sure exists) do allow to measure the quality of a post, for example:

• The quality of the pictures: are they blurred or are every details crystal clear visible?

• The number of pictures: is there only one photo with a line of text or made the author the effort to deliver more? (I know at times also one single picture can be great.)

• Formatting of the post, orthography and grammar.

• Does the author make his posts interesting by offering own thoughts, ideas, photos, paintings, music etc. or does he only uses external sources (if photos or ideas aren't his own ones, then of course offering a source is still better than none at all)?

• Does the author give sources to support his assertions (which is especially important in science) or just claims anything without sources and logical explanations?

To attract users who are producing 'casual content' I think it's alright to reward that to a certain degree ... but nevertheless, I would like to see the trending page dominated by more elaborated 'high quality' articles. :)

DApps are important for sure, but contrary to many others I don't consider them as the 'Holy Grail' of social networking (but to be honest and fair: I myself really like some dApps, like for example Splinterlands).
I don't think that for example the value of facebook springs mainly from superior dApps or technology. No, M. Zuckerberg simply managed to attract a huge amount of users which according to the network effect determine the value of his platform.

Already in My STEEM Vision. I wrote:

In my eyes, the unique characteristic of the STEEM blockchain, compared to other crypto currencies, is that it represents the fundament of a social network, a community based on it. This combination of blockchain technology and social media is so far unparalleled, whereby the original thought, to offer authors, artists, musicians, scientists, creative thinking freethinkers, ... an uncensorable platform with the additional possibility to get financial rewards for good content, in my opinion wrongly got more and more watered down and upstaged.

At this point I would like to say that I am aware that HIVE may going to be the blockchain of dApps. In my eyes it could be interesting to see STEEM concentrate on content creation while HIVE is setting other priorities. I wish both blockchains much success (I have good friends on both of them), and I really hope that in the end they can and will peacefully coexist (I know about everything which happened ..., but nevertheless I hope this wish will come true ... and I think most of the 'small' users want peace as well; as for example my friend @freiheit50 wrote that he just would like to be able to write his posts).
In future I will try to support both blockchains by writing content (if time allows) and upvoting content of (in preference) small and middle-sized users, among others also those who are using my communities "Fascinating Insects" and "The Chess Community".

The downvote topic ...

I am aware that here on STEEM the general sentiment is against downvoting. I do understand very well, why: most people (including me) just hate to be flagged. However, I still think downvotes (or any alternative?) are necessary to curb spam, plagiarism and abuse to protect the honest Steemians and their rewards.

If (for example - there are many others!) @haejin posts ten very short 'posts' (others write comments) per day (which nearly nobody reads or comments), just to upvote them with his own two huge accounts, then of course that reduces the rewards pool for everybody else. I only call a social network social, if people also acknowledge the efforts of other users ...

To detect abuse I recommend to check for example the "Voting CSI" of SteemWord, a great information tool provided by @steemchiller. The image below shows you where to find it (I wrote more about it here):

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Note: this post only serves to collect ideas. I appreciate every comment, even if you completely disagree with me - just let me know what you think (I won't use @penny4thoughts as I upvote comments in my posts anyway).