Looking at the ground and seeing Steem

This demonstrates the first follower principle and speaks through what is happening clearly enough.

This is how I see all of us on Steem at the moment - the crazy leader. But, slowly the first followers are coming in to see what we are staring at, what attracts us and in many cases, what makes us crypto fanatics. Stare at the ground long enough and slowly, others will crowd around too. The difference is, this isn't kids in a mall playing pranks or a guy at a rave high on ecstasy dancing to a bass beat on the side of a hill, there is substance here.

We aren't staring nothing, there are protocols, apps, economic opportunity, security, learning, games, data matters, creativity and solutions to many kinds of issues being formulated daily. The blockchain industry is a hive of activity that is continually growing to include more and more aspects and people into its folds. These in turn are attracting, more and more.

If there were suddenly 1 million active Steem users, how long does it take to get 2 million and then 4 million? There is a critical mass where the gravity starts to attract more toward it and that mass is going to have a different experience than it did on the centralized platforms. Rather than being pulled to one point, the mass will gather around distributed nodes, the applications and services that deliver a more tailored experience, rather than one-size-fits-all.

Because of the distributed and organic nature of the process, this happens more slowly but grows stronger with overlapping strengths that shore up individual weaknesses. The failure of one node doesn't kill the organism.

What is also interesting is that at some point, the first leaders can step away and the pattern of behavior continues where the followers and users keep acting. In the case of my brother's group, they slid away fairly early and then watched from the outskirts as the crowd gathered. In the case of Dancing Guy, the last people in had absolutely no idea from where the movement or trend began as they didn't see it develop, just joined in through others. A distributed network.

As I have said many times before, eventually crypto and Steem will be ubiquitous and those coming in will naturally join through one of hundreds or thousands of various channels in and will not necessarily know of the humble beginnings, the drama and scam and most likely, the first names at all. Steem is a protocol and will hopefully become part of the backbone infrastructure that is the tokenized economy - most people aren't interested in learning the name of protocols, let alone how they work - they just want to be able to do what they need to do and have them work. This takes development.

Steem is getting there as is the entire industry but, it takes time and a lot of growing pains along the way. It is definitely not ready for millions upon millions of users, even if the infrastructure can handle it because, the community isn't ready for it. When they do arrive though, it is going to create an attractive mass that draws attention toward it and, there needs to be enough to see to hold that attention long-term. That is happening slowly too.

The people who have been here the last three, two or one year and made it through to this point are proof that it is sticky, even in bear markets. Sure, a lot of people think we are crazy people staring at the ground but, more and more are staring and seeing what we see.

Steem, Steem everywhere...

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]