This isn't the Cold Equations, it's just some cold motherfuckers.
"The Cold Equations" is a well-known 1954 science fiction story by Tom Godwin. In it, a young woman stows away on a spaceship to visit her brother, but when she's discovered, it becomes clear that the ship only has enough fuel to get to its destination if she's sent out an airlock into space. It's a story that uses the most bullshit engineering imaginable to enact a simplistic morality play, so of course it's applicable to Steem.
The current metaphor is a spate of posts about how user retention doesn't really matter, the latest being this one by @tarazkp. While these are probably an attempt to put a silver lining on terrible retention numbers, they carry another message along with it: we're going to the moon, so feel free to fuck off.
In their logic, it's the future millions of users who matter, not the few here now. Never mind that millions of users come around one at a time, and leave one at a time. Never mind that the way social media works is the more users you have the cheaper it is to acquire new ones, and going over the same ground multiple times is horrendously expensive. Never mind that human beings are not fungible, and everyone we lose now is a unique set of values and skills that can't be replaced. The moon comes when there are millions, and it's only the millions who matter.
Like the story, this is a false dichotomy. There's no reason we can't have millions of users in the future and still work to keep the people we have here now. In fact, now is the time to be developing robust retention systems so that if we ever get millions of users we have some ability to actually do something with them. One of Steem's most powerful unique features as a social media system is the ability to develop user retention systems that actually reward users for participating. Facebook and Twitter literally cannot do that; it's contradictory to their economic model, and it's one of the key advantages tokenized social media has in eventually taking their user base.
But we're currently very bad at that, and responding to numbers showing that by redefining current users as unimportant is not only personally offensive, it's redefining one of Steem's biggest bugs as a feature, something projects worth taking seriously don't do. We have bad user retention, and we can blame entitlement and large-scale crypto market trends, or we can invest in making it better. Only one of these approaches is a good one.
I don't know if we're going to the moon or not. I sometimes think I'm the user here least interested in that particular prospect. But I know one thing: without the people here, the moon isn't worth going to.
I agree completely with this sentiment. I think though that @tarazkp is not saying that user retention isn't important, it seems more that despite community efforts to keep people here, a good chunk of people would be here just only during the good times. Which is pretty funny, but that's how it works. Then again perhaps they have no feeling that it will be a good time again, which of course they are free to think.
In the meantime, we can do what we can to make this an enjoyable place to stay.
People are fickle. A large percentage will quit every new endeavor they embark upon once the initial enthusiasm fades. Finding out how to leverage gamification to keep them engaged is thus extraordinarily important to increasing user retention.
@ned has recently made statements that, if true, ought to encourage investors in STEEM. Steemit is no longer intended to bring mass adoption to this blockchain. It's more a place for enthusiasts, early speculators, developers, etc. Steemit, Inc.'s new plan is the rollout of more user-friendly Steem-based applications to achieve the network effect.
I'm sure Taraz doesn't mean to tell current users that they're not an asset to the future of Steem, and I'm sure Joseph and Ned and even Taskmaster don't mean to say that either, but at some point the message you're sending matters more than the message you mean to send.
Lol. That was your take away from that post?
Yes. You can laugh at it, or you can consider that something that gives me the message that I'm not an asset to Steem's future is probably first passing that message along to a bunch of people who won't bother posting about it before they leave.
If people come in with a financial price point to reach or quit, they are going to leave when prices drop and for many, unless you can continually offer financial incentive there is no way to keep them. Like you said in your last post about ROI on the ocd bot not being worth it for users and delegators and then in this one saying you are the one least interested in it going to the moon, some people will not be satisfied no matter the conditions.
I don't expect that everyone is going to to stay, I don't expect that having everyone here is what is best for Steem or users here either. There is space for several chains and the current platform isn't going to suit everyone, so they might go to Smoke or whaleshares or EOS. They won't burn their account keys most likely.
It won't matter though because as 100 million possible users come into the blockchain platforms, they will explore and come and go and spread out to the points that suit them better than a catchall space. Decentralized blockchain communities doesn't just mean Steem communities but Steem is where I focus.
The goal for Steem in my opinion is to build many places for them to enter into on Steem and if there are people who aren't willing to wait for Steem, they go and take other options that are out there which they are doing anyway, even if they earn well here.
The dead account numbers are often alts. Didn't you say a few weeks ago that you had 30 odd that you were powering down because they couldn't post with 3SP? You aren't the only one doing that either I would imagine and that definitely has an effect on retention numbers too.
There is no way to keep everyone here, especially if they are price focused like many who entered in at those peaks were. So, focus on the ones that can be supported now with what is available while upstreaming solutions to change the direction of the flow for later. That is what is happening in my opinion as various development activities are in the pipeline but, travelling pipelines takes time and resources.
I have said many times that this is not currently a place for everyone to survive but everyone is free to try their hand. Some try and decide i its current state, it isn't for them. That is ok isn't it? I think that in time when there are more options, niche interfaces, solid communities and active stake willing to give a vote to diverse content types, many will come back and pick up where they left off or, try something completely new here.
Good luck to them all.
I agree with this. All in all I think we're better off with active users who come here and don't care about the rewards than those that joined at the top and left because of the rewards. Steem has way more advantages than being able to directly receive rewards without a middleman (not counting curators) there to take a cut.
Much like my first year on Steem where I didn't post a lot and had roughly 8k SP I stayed here for the community and all the other advantages it provided minus the rewards. Think about it, what current centralized platforms are lacking. Without going through the obvious like censorship resistance and your account being banned and all the work you've pulled into it just being removed completely. I believe a lot of people will see that advantage and stay here just for that, naturally rewards will come as well over time but it shouldn't be the only retention for users and considering how little work Steemit inc are doing on this front-end it doesn't seem like its their main concern either.
If anything Steem gives you freedom to do whatever you like on more than one front-end right now and hopefully a lot more soon. For some people that's worth a lot more than rewards.
Come for the rewards, leave if they aren't high enough, is how many people see the platform and that means the only way to keep them is to pay them "enough", which will always climb higher.
Many who came in and started on bots early got used to seeing high rewards too and as the bot value dried up and it got risky, they stopped getting returns as many didn't build any network and left.
In time the place will improve in many ways and some of them will return.
Hell, there's even users that have made a killing here and have powered down everything anyway and left. Many blame the 75-25% split for that but what you gonna do.
I literally came back from your post on my mobile browser and after just reading it I couldn't agree more with @tcpolymath as indeed your whole premise was "what I think is short term" coupled with "when the markets turn" which is characterised by the "to the moon" phrase. In your whole post you didn't voice any concerns over the current state of user retention and actually dismissed it again and again. Your laughing at nothing and you've literally nothing that you could say to contest anything in this post or what I said. The same sentiment of "we're still in beta, wait for SMTs" is overplayed in almost all of your posts about steem.
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Strange. Shouldn't we be able to accommodate everyone?
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Hi, I really like your content have an upvote.
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I agree with you. It was a shock to me when it finally hit home this was all beta and they could care less who stays or goes, their focus is on the next hundred million. Seems illogical to think one can create bad will in many people at the start of something and that it won't multiply down the road. Every person who leaves is someone who not only probably won't come back, but will likely spread their bad views to those who may be on the fence about whether Steem might be something valuable for them. Growth could be quicker if the users currently in the fold were as valuable as projected users in some hypothetical scenario. Never know if you might need those in hand users if the hypothetical doesn't turn out quite as planned.
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Steem has the worst content in the world. Reading centralized facebook is much more interesting. How did it happen that money cannot promote interesting content?
Dude whatever comes of this situation I have to say I think it’s having a positive effect on your writing. I’ve always enjoyed your clear explanatory style but there’s some real passion coming out lately ;)
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