Important SteemIt Questions and Solutions- Is it Sustainable? Are Current Posts Values justified? Where do we go from here?
I too, like many other here, are extremely excited about the potential of Steem but that doesn't leave me wondering about some things that I just don't have a clear answer for yet. Thus, I am once again reaching out to my fellow Steemers for their thoughts.
Are Current Posts Values Justified?
Over the past week we have seen a huge rise in the value of posts. This is extremely exciting as I, myself had an article that was trending on the homepage and was even liked by @dan, one of the founders. The value of this post at writing is worth a whopping $5000. Without doing a true word count, this is about $5 for every word I type. At this rate I will retire next week.
This is awesome but at the same time it leaves me wondering....Is this post properly valued? If so, why are my other posts so very much undervalued as they deliver similar content? Are these types of values sustainable?
Now I fully understand that the value is determined by the community and that is great. I also think that true value will iron itself out as the community grows and matures. I mean for gods sake, the #1 post yesterday was of a man putting on makeup so let's hope it matures.
Where Do We Go From Here?
So where does this leave us? Where do we go from here? At this point I think only time will tell but I think a couple things need to happen.
1. We need to lessen the disparity of the values of upvotes between the whales and noobs. The whales at this point dictate what trends and what doesn't and what trends succeeds and what doesn't fails. You should not be able to buy influence on the open market, it should be earned through content and curation.
2. We the community need to do a better job of curating valuable posts. Again, I hope this gets better as we mature. But in the mean time, make sure the content is original. Too often I find plagiarised content, especially in the Travel topic. These are easily identifiable and typically are simple copy past jobs that looked hurried and unformatted. These need to be downvoted. What worries me is that I have identified such articles and provided proof with links to the original article. Yet, users are still upvoting and commenting. Truly baffling.
3. We need to continue to grow this community and diversify, from a demographic stand point. Right now, it's easy to see what articles will trend and what will not as the majority of the community has a similar background and fits a similar demographic. We need more women, to balance out the male preferences and more non-tech personnel to battle the tech heavy users.
In Conclusion
SteemIt has a real opportunity here. In these first few short months it has exceeded many peoples expectations but the road ahead is long and challenging. Being the first to market does not mean we will survive but if we tackle the issues the community faces pragmatically we can begin to iron out and solve some of the issues at hand.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? AGREE/DISAGREE WITH THE CURRENT PROBLEMS AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS? LEAVE YOUR COMMENT BELOW!
A lot of the problems are to be expected with a new technology such as Steemit. There will be growing pains but this technology is strong and the potential is enormous.
Are some posts overvalued and are some undervalued - yes. Personally I think the solution to that would be more category structure. If people post quality content that they are genuinely interested in then it will naturally build the categories and users can focus on what they want to see. Sometimes categories are on the right side menu and sometimes they are not. I am not sure what the solution is to this but it may start bringing more organization to the massive amounts of posts coming in, some that are high quality and just get buried.
We don't want new users that have talent to get discouraged.
Ya, i think it's going to be difficult to avoid following reddit's trajectory, where a few popular subs squash out some really cool original stuff.
Exactly @tinyhomeliving - we do not want to discourage quality posts. I do think the value algorithm will evolve with time.
I heartily agree with all of your points. Especially on the wales. Your influence should be based on the work you do,and your popularity.and we need quality content. My misanthropic side wonders vhether quality will be very popular,but we have to try.And we need to see integrity in the posts,not posts tailored to generate hits.It is not a good platform if we have these posts trending based on very commercial factors. Maybe we need to find a way to reward quality.
Exactly. How do we reward quality. That is the question.
Hi. Sorry to do this. Can someone answer my question regarding Steemit's payout system? I haven't had luck getting any answers and thought you might be able to help. https://steemit.com/steemit/@ynotplay/question-how-does-the-steemit-payout-system-work
And to add to the discussion. I think that the whale problem is real and will only get worse without intervention. Steemit will need adjust how much weight they have in the near future. They can and often are colluding to upvote each others' posts to make sure they stay on top and as a easy way to earn money.
The average user will also realize that they should follow the whales and upvote/comment their posts because they are almost guaranteed a high reward. It becomes an easier way to earn money than taking time to write content themselves. It's a self-perpetuating vicious cycle for Steemit.
Also, I think it may help if users can subscribe to topics via tags so that smaller more decentralized communities are formed on the network. Quora does a fine job of that. I talk about this and more in my post titled "How will social media and the internet change as Steemit enters the game?" https://steemit.com/steemit/@ynotplay/6wmgmr-discussion-how-steemit-changes-the-social-media-landscape-and-the-internet-forever
I'm a new blogger so please check it out and help a brotha get started. Thanks!
Totally agree on the fact of growing the community and share this great opportunity globally.
Yep, on point.
the 80-20 rule is inevitable. 80% of the profit will go to 20% of the population -- in some cases it's 99-1 rule. just the facts. but it doesn't mean the small guys can't be investors in steemit for the long run.