RE: Open letter to a future Steemian
Thoughts:
Counter to what the OP says, we at SteemSTEM pretty much guarantee decent rewards, certainly far more than a living wage in many countries. We are an exception rather than the rule, though.
However, this still does not bring the vast majority of users to stay on the platform. Why? Maybe it's not all about the money, I'm not sure. Of all the friends I've brought onto the platform, a grand total of Zero use it to this day - even when I could guarantee, with my own personal help in mentoring, $80-100 a post.
One problem is, when that 80-100 becomes 70-90, one's perception is instantly 'steem is dead, it's no longer worth my time and effort when I compare it to the average hourly income at a full time job' or some other crazy comparison.
Another problem is how activity on steem is directly proportional to the value of bitcoin. If Facebook was entirely dependent on the success of Google, it would probably be stuck in the same perpetual spiral of inactivity we see here.
Another problem is that, for the most part, people don't blog. This is why twitter and facebook and snapchat and tiktok and youtube and all the others are so big. Writing long articles is not a favourite past time for the vast majority. People come on here believing it's something they want to do because they also have opinions or whatever, and the money is a good incentive. But when they realise the money isn't an incentive, they simultaneouslly realise they actually hate blogging.
Twitter offers effortless, sub-minute posting, facebook offers all forms of media catering to each and every desire, youtube allows creative freedom to go beyond text documents, to the point of productions reaching into multi-millions of dollars and beyond, and all of the above stand on their own feet, all while allowing you to sign up in 12 seconds.
I guess at the end of the day, my point is, there are so many obvious glaring things that we take for granted on all the other platforms because what they've created simply makes intuitive sense, but this place is so far designed in the least intuitive and flexible way possible, putting the burden of functionality on 'entrepreneurs' who struggle to promise a working model on a salary of basically $0/month.
What should be obvious, is that these entrepreneurs need to get together and build something far more flexible and functional that can work completely independent of the value of BTC, hell, even independent of the value of steem, making monetization merely optional, independent of delegations and so on.
SteemStem are certainly working on this and partnering with a lot of other initiatives because we understand we can't go in on this alone. We are advertising ourselves without even mentioning steemit.com if we can help it. I dunno. there's a gazillion other things to say but...
/ rant
but why can’t steem be used in the same way any of the other platforms are used ? Someone can use it as a Twitter, or post gifs, pics, or videos. It’s the expectations people put on it in terms of expected returns and what it ought to be that weigh most heavily on the platform.
how many of your friends have reached financial autonomy using Facebook or Instagram ?
I agree that the app use itself can be made friendlier and more intuitive, but it’s an open source project and there’s no reason why it can’t get there at some point in the future. I don’t hear anyone complain that their posts on Instagram or Facebook are matching their hourly wages in their day jobs, yet they spend most of their time publishing and consuming content on those platforms.
So true. It is the expectations which people bring which are the the cage which they hold them selves in.
Taking the monetary picture away, I think the answer to your question is simple. This isn't where the people are.
Posted using Partiko Android
If you try to use it like Twitter the cheetah and other bots jump on jou and label your posts as badcontent forever and a day
What’s the point of promoting a free platform if we are going to tolerate those kind of bots. Doesn’t busy.org exist around the concept of using steem as Twitter ?
Yeah to build on this, we're aiming to encourage short-form content in the future too, but at the end of the day there are so many mechanisms and expectations to prevent it - primarily because Steemit.com is the main website people know and use, despite it being far from the best - and is designed to create long-form blogs. So yeah I agree it should be open to all forms, but most forms are considered 'bloat'
With 12 standard full powered votes a day, I find it difficult to assume that the designers of the platforms intended it to be strictly long form content. There is no way anyone can publish at that rate and have it be full form and of high quality at the same time. Not even news papers or production studios with full staff on deck can output at that rate. Nor can anyone be reasonably expected to fully digest 12 pieces of full long format content. Even @ned often posts twitter or Insta style every now and then.
Well, Steem is different to steemit. Steem allows a high number of votes which is why entrepreneurs should get together and create something that can capitalize on this, but and in terms of steemit mechanisms, when you post on steemit, you go to a new editing page with Markdown functionality and a big square box to write in... this is not what you'd expect from a site that wants you to write off-the-cuff commentary on the go. And the site is described as a blogging website, both on wikipedia and steem.io.
A tweet is not a blog, a blog is typically long-form, no?
Anyway, this is a minor issue. there are existing apps out there for what we talk about, but they lack any support and fade into obscurity, unfortunately. Not sure why.
Other sites allow similar functionality, the UI and front end designs are different.
The site is still in beta, and will evolve through user feedback and iterations. It’s fairly new technology compared to what we’re used to.
Between the OP, your post, and @ketopian's below, I think there's a pretty complete picture forming.
I note where you write:
Yet ketopian highlights how they don't HAVE to blog here. They could post FB content here, and some people do.
The issue in all of this is a combination of 1) Expectations; and 2) the Social Factor.
Expectations people are attracted here with are usually about money, so people do grade the experience in those terms. Yet we all know how long and hard we have to work to earn money here. And that we have to include the Social Factor, which many don't at all, not realizing that they need support from people to succeed here financially, and that they also WANT support from people beyond just money.
The social factor is that if you have support from people with enough SP, you'll make money on here, but will you have fun?
Will you have meaningful comments and relationships that grow out of those?
If you start on here knowing no one, then Discord is probably the best place to start the ball rolling on getting support and finding people interested in things you're interested in who are willing to get involved beyond just posting.
Searching by tags (instead of using trending) and then commenting on posts with active comments sections and a responding OP is also a good way to start the social game. I credit much of my early traction on here to finding great people to follow early on then leaving very meaty comments on their posts, comments they wanted to engage with. Over time they wanted to also see my posts, and the game was on!
But another part of the social factor is that people downvote here. And when they do, if they have enough money/reputation they take away some of your money/reputation. And they can post mean things about you too, ridiculing what you do.
I mention this because while you CAN post quotepics and one-liners on here like on FB, if you do you're likely to be punished for it by those who feel the platform SHOULD be a quality blogging platform.
Thankfully there are other steem dapps besides steemit. You can just leave a quotepic on something like dLike, I believe. You can just drop an image on steepshot. You can just upload a video to dtube, with maybe a sentence of description so someone knows why they're interested in watching it. And so on. Having to write long blog articles is apparently a steemit requisite, but not a steem one.
However, needing to socialize off and on the platform to build relationships is a requisite for success. Even if you buy a lot of steem to power up, you still won't find this a place you actually want to be if you don't form a community around you or join one. Because we are all social beings. I don't think anything is wrong with that, other than an unwillingness to accept it and adjust accordingly.
You can post FB type content here but it wont be well received as that is not the development stage the platform is in. For FB content to work you need to have a close network of people who you know. On steem at the moment for the most part people don't know each other in real life and they need something more than FB content to draw them into the new relationships. I think the FB type content is better served on a DApp running its on SMT rather than the top level of the steem blockchain; but time will tell. It is a little chicken and egg with the user base but while we try and have the top level be everything to everyone it is going to be difficult to make the majority happy.
What's interesting is that dtube doesn't have blog posts, but steemit does have dtube posts. Steemhunt doesn't have blog posts, but steemit does have hunt posts. Etc.
Where is the place that there is only blog content?
I think that's part of why people get annoyed on steemit. I imagine steemhunt folks would feel the same about having blog posts mixed in on there.
The dLike type content (which is a lot like FB I think), is being shown to people looking for blog articles because those people have no dapp dedicated to what they value. So they try to police everyone a way no one else (on other dapps) is doing.
Yes. I think SMT's will solve a lot of that and we can categorize content into sub platforms. View posts in Steepshot and you only see those posts from steepshot but on the top level viewers like steemit/steempeak/busy you get a mesh of all different content with a broken trending system
I just hope something is made for blog content that isn't considered "top level." It would seem to me that busy/steempeak should be that, but do they intend to? Does anyone intend to?
Time will tell.
ok so i look at some of these posts that people post "photography " some of the most horrific photos get like 300.00 .......then if you look at mine i have some substantial work real photos not some one sitting down to eat with a group of friends ..........i repeat REAL photography ....not a big story line but about the photos i take and every one no one seen them ....so my question is why bother or...how can you claim what you say is true no joke go look at my photos then go look at the ones getting like 150.00 200.00 even 350.00 i kinda agree with the guy up top
You can consider Steemit a pretty decent reflection of reality in this sense. As a professional musician I constantly see shite get to fame and glory, take jobs they don't deserve and end with massive paychecks I could never dream of. Why? Because the old mantra: 'it's who you know, not what you know'.
Exact same thing applies here. Suck up to the right people and you get what you desire. Be an honest, hardworking blue collar and nothing else, and you rarely get anywhere (unless some twitter video goes viral and somebody boots up a kickstarter to support you)
Some of the greatest work in the world is locked away in museums where almost nobody goes - especially not for a price - to see them. The people are not searching for, nor rewarding, things based on objective quality standards, unfortunately. This is actually not so much a Steem problem as a human problem, imo
you have to post quality content like this
!popcorn
Every art abd discipline should have an audience I on the contrary stop by fine photography and art and music and less on crypto related or philosophy, we are all different and thatvis why we must be consistent building our feeds, but curating high quality speaks good of the pkatform as it soeaks badly rewarding low quality, though subjective we all can make thevñ difference of a shit post. Itbis true that networking builds up your possible rewards but high rep should not make you lazy knowing you get the cake anyway, up the ladder to help down the ladder, but it is not that way, usually
It is amazing that people expect different rules to apply here to reality. Income distributions on steemit are not fair; but neither is life. Steem is a reflection of the financial inequality which is already present in its user base, nothing more, nothing less. At least with an inflationary system there is a chance over time to reward hard work with upward mobility; which is a lot more than can be said with stratified financial systems which lock the lower classes out of the economy completely.
Try @steepshot, @xlcaptainblacklx they have a better interface than @steemit and will probably upvote most of your posts.
We earn anywhere from $0.05 to $0.20 per post on @zaclucasrice's account. It isn't a huge amount of money but it's a start!
Just an FYI, I looked at your photography, and if you'd like more upvotes or engagement you should be using the photography tags that are active and supportive like #photofeed #photomag #photocircle etc..
I wish I read this before posting my comment lol !
With respect to photography you need to engage in the communities that value it such as @photofeed , @photocircle, @photomag etc if you want to get noticed. The values in trending are irrelevant as they are paid upvotes. It is like complaining that your photos are not up on the billboards as you drive down the highway. It is not the best photos in those advertisements, it is the people who paid to put them up there who can choose what they are.
@xlcaptainblacklx agreed, you can't look at trending to get an idea of the kinds of profits photographers are making on Steem. Most of the trending payouts as @intrepidphotos said are from purchased votes. I think I have found relative success here on Steem, but it is not to the tune of a $300 payout per post. That's unrealistic. However, by engaging in the active photography communities on Steem, a good number of my recent posts have multiple dollar payouts pending and my latest has $25. All except one recent post were from organic and community upvoting without paid votes.
Posted using Partiko Android
Fair enough but who sees these photos. What kind of following have you built up that will appreciate the work that you put up. Those people earning large amounts have people following them who will give them votes maybe not entirely down to the quality of the post but due to the relationship built over time.
If you were on Instagram and had a thousand nobody's following you do you think that you would be earning money and gaining sponsorship deals? I doubt it. If you had 10 million followers and multiple celebrities on your account you would have companies pushing to give you money.
Content is only one of the factors in earning money. You also have time, hard work, investment and connections. Any of these can help you but all of them means success.
Do you just post photos and expect people to give you votes and money for them? Not trying to sound harsh but photography doesn't interest me so on my feed I would just skip past most of it. What you need is to find people that have an interest in it and willing to support good work. There are plenty of them out there but you will need to catch there attention first.
Posted using Partiko Android
Very good points. Again it comes to expectations. On IG no one would be expected to be rewarded so they happily give away their content for others to monetize.
Re not liking photography perhaps you have just not found the right type of photography to interest you ;-)
Hey dear sir i wellcome you to my whatsapp group we will talk there ok
Great point it's also the time you have to spend and the fun you get out of it.
Very salient points made in addressing ongoing changes on the platform. Your observation about how the mainstream social media giants are able to attract and retain members hits the nail on the head. Ease of use and content discovery are main drivers in keeping on those platforms. Community engagement also plays a critical role in this process. One might ask, what is in it for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., to offer low-key friction entry and interaction for their respective user bases? That's because those users are the product and selling information about those users is big business; and with the exception YouTube in some cases, users receive no compensation for their contributions. Nevertheless, people return to those platforms because of the overall user experience. In my opinion, Steemit should not be about a money grab as such an environment would limit its appeal and severely impact its future prospects. Technicals are very important but if the UI and UX are neglected, then the vision/mission will likely fail. Let's hope the Steemit team will take the points being made in this thread to heart and make a true effort to make Steemit the social media platform of choice.
Yes ease of use and content discovery ; which is why steemit is dying as a proof of concept and other steem interfaces will take over.
You guys (StemSTEM) are one of the shining lights on steem. I think you have hit the nail on the head about people not liking blogging. They come here expecting to be paid for simple social media content and then realize that to make an impact they need to produce quality long form written content or quality original creative works (art, photography ,etc) and then hustle like a musician trying to get their first record deal. The reality is that for most people that is unachievable and they leave disappointed. I am hoping that SMT's and DApps like APPICS will solve this for the masses who can onboard a dedicated app which is closer to what they are traditionally used to. This will leave top level steem for long form bloggers and their followers who are interested in consuming that kind of content. As a photographer I have 80k followers on other social media platforms and I can count on one hand how many I have successfully transitioned over to steem.
Again love the work SteemSTEM is doing at a time in history when anti-science is on the rise. I hope to contribute to it next year once I have a bit more time free as I have a background of 15 years developing renewable energy systems and trying to manage clean tech startup companies.
Gold comment!