End-Users Should Lead to Investors, Not Be The Investors
Once again I've had a couple of conversations with people that kind of leave me confused about what people are thinking.
The Conversation that sparked this post, was about the value of End-Users.
While our end-users didn't buy in huge amounts many of them HELD and engaged and created active engagement and traffic. We were moving up the Alexa rankings which means something based on traffic and user activity. While we didn't get an immediate pay-off (during a bear market) there was a lot of growth and activity. Once you have a user base you can go after Investors, Advertisers and the Celebrities everyone always talks about. The User Base comes first. Celebrities don't come and bring their followers (unless paid) it works the other way around. Celebrities go where their fans are. So, while yes we do need development we also need to pay some attention to the community that everyone loves to brag about.
People love to talk about Marketing, I too want to see us Market, but we have to be able to curate and engage those users that come if we Market. We have had a few YouTubers and Twitter folks who had nice followings. They would get good initial visibility and then they were either attacked or ignored.
The current thinking is they didn't buy enough Steem. Well buying Steem from an ROI perspective is a good deal in crypto, when in comes to influence on the site it isn't that helpful. It's about 1000 Steem per penny of upvote. Very rough rounding involved in that estimate.
The curation guilds are great, but mostly they focus on more formal posts instead of engagement. Not that many people want to be an Author when they grow up, but most people will engage with others if they find a community that is interested in some of the same ideas and things they are interested in.
We need eyes on the site that can give a meaningful, (not huge, pennies is fine) votes and reinforce the concept that they can build a network of friends and reward each other.
The User Base has to come first. That means attracting and retaining some users by giving them things to do, ways to find each other and giving them engagement.
So, for those of you manually curating without delegation, fan fair or pretty much any appreciation thank you! But there just aren't enough people doing it.
How do we fix that and reward engagement?
I think the bear market is beginning to wind down and if crypto gets another price increase and mainstream starts to look at crypto again, we are likely to get new users.
But are we ready to deal with them?
Let's talk about in the comments and come on by SteemChat on discord to chat.
The part where I have misgivings on the higher curation reward at the expense of author is twofold.
On some of my posts I will spend 15 hours or more doing research to write what is often 1k-1500 words with up to a dozen references. I do not feel the beneficiary of my research deserves the same payout as I do.
This would in my opinion encourage more bot usage as it would give more profits to their end of the equation.
I think if it moves in that direction they should allow each author to decide the extra curation percentage, or if they want one at all.
I followed two people who had somewhat of a following on Youtube that came here and within a week dropped them both as they do not engage with us. It smacked a little like we were good enough to help their bottom line, but not good enough to rub elbows with.
It blows my mind that many seem not to. I wish I had more stake (one day I will) to curate more than I do. If I was a whale here I would be giving so many hand ups around here to every awesome person I came across.
Yep, I see validity in your views on curation vs. author rewards. But I think it would create a counter intuitive effect that people like me wouldn't have to create as many posts and maybe the true writers would get the attention.
Also, I too have been amazed for three years that most of our whales do not want to support the success of our user base... Especially after having watched it erode so much.
"ways to find each other"
That is sonething I'd like to see. I have managed to meet a few people here but it was't always easy and I had a lot of free time back then. Now that I work way more hours and have less time to use the site it is getting hard to network like I used to.
I also would like to see some curation guilds or something that reward engagement. There are a few things out there. I had a couple of comments upvoted by gentlebot but I don't know what triggers it.
Yeah, this is an issue too. Current environment and pricing it takes time to be successful. Who has time?
Not usually the middle class. Usually those who have no options and those who have Many Options.
We need to make it easier for people to feel some sort of success, although it doesn't have to be totally monetary.
I agree but I don't know what would serve as that reward. I like it when my rep levels up or when I gain followers even though those things mean very little. We need more than that though. I might try to say something nice when someone posts something that I like and that can mean a lot to people but we, as more established accounts (not that I am all that established but it might seem that way to someone on their first day here), need to be able to find those newer people and make time to talk to them which is the hard part.
Hey, @artisticscreech.
It really is sad that for all intents and purposes the followers and the rep numbers don't matter, because they're definitely means of gamification that would incentivize people if those two things could be universally seen as desirable and weren't so easily gamed (in the case of rep, in multiple ways), or more or less rendered moot because of being followed by alt accounts and so forth.
The rep irks me, because I've really tried to avoid gaming that, so I feel like I've earned my rep score, and I know many others have, too.
What's so frustrating about all of this is, the one thing most of the mainsteam will hone in on that makes STEEM stand out (the ability to earn something for your posts, comments and curation), is the thing that also encourages gaming the system, practically to its entire detriment. Talk about double-edged sword.
I've wondered to myself why something like the trending pages couldn't be populated by resteems (a pretty underutilized tool) rather than upvotes. I know there's some gaming issues there, too, but it would be nice to remove something from the almighty upvote. You'd most likely want to keep the ability to resteem to one central account (so no gaming by using multiple alt accounts), which could lead to Know Your Customer settings of some kind—a whole other can of worms—but you'd think that in this day and age we'd be able to come up with ways to make it all work.
All you tend to hear is why it won't, with no readily agreed upon and viable solution offered in its place. And therein lies the rub. Agreeing on something that most will find mutually beneficial.
Hey, @whatsup.
Since we're on the same page regarding consumers, the question becomes, how to bring them in and actually have them consume? You and I had a brief exchange about upping the curation split, which I see @nathen007 is in favor of, and in that we talked bid bots and how they would be more likely to benefit from it over any other, aside from the upper orcas and whales that might still manually curate, follow a trail or autovote. Something like that.
We have a perception value problem here when it comes to a lot of things, and curation is one of them. I wonder if curation is even really worth 25% of the take, when too many people don't even read what they're upvoting, because they're following a trail or otherwise have autovoting going on. How's giving people more curation when they're not already reading going to help engagement—meaning eyes on the content?
I'd be willing to go 40%-60%, creators/curators if I thought it would actually result in more meaningful upvotes and engagement. But throwing more rewards at it, I believe, just tends to make more people do less to earn it, not more. Even so, I don't know if there's anyway to truly predict, which means we don't know until it's actually up and running.
I realize the main reason why we have so many creating is because that's where the perceived rewards are at, and maybe it has something to do with the current creator/curator split. The problem is, perceived value. Only in this current way of thinking, outside of some surveys or beta testing, do people who consume even get rewarded for what they do. In the majority of cases, people are still paying to consume, while getting only the entertainment, information, inspiration value out of it.
Excellent points, and again auto curation rears its ugly head. Will comment more later but thanks for a great comment.
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Hey, @nathen007.
Hopefully I didn't come off blaming you or something in the process. I'd noticed you were talking about a bigger split, so I thought it would be good to mention you to hear more of your thoughts, since we seem to be coming from different angles at least. I think it's been talked about a lot, but apparently more needs to be said before maybe we can move it to a solution phase of some kind. Since we agree that more consumers are needed, we can always start there, right? :)
Excellent points. I do think if we increased curation than we would see less creation and more consumption. We would also see some gaming, but that happens anyway, so why avoid it.
@whatsup,
All investors wanna see Bull Market, but they forget Bear that makes more people engaged with their investments! So, here at Steem this is the time to get more engagements and we all know what will happen next!
Cheers~
Some really good points raised in this whole conversation so far. After the first two comments I was all ready to write my own reply up, then a few comments more and I realise there's no simple answer!
@practicalthought and @glenalbrethsen make a very good point in that increasing the curation cut may encourage more bidbots and autovoting, but not make an impact on actual consumption. What advertiser or marketer is going to want to spend their money somewhere no-one's actually guaranteed to be looking?
Then @soyrosa makes a very good point about end users coming in for apps that offer "something more than a buggy UX with 'some weird coin'." Currently the apps on here really are still in development and at times can be frustrating to use. Many are great on the desktop, but when you try it from a mobile are disappointing. When the user base is 50/50 desktop and mobile, you want to be able to access your account fully on both and currently Steemit is the only one where you can (and we all know how stagnant Steemit is).
I have to wonder whether the blogging side is even going to be the part which brings in the investors. It's so controversial with the "rewards" that maybe it will be dTube and gaming where the eyes will be. Partiko has taken a step with viewing ads for rewards, but I don't know how effective that is for the advertisers. Click here and get distracted while it finishes the countdown so you can get some points.
@artisticscreech said something thought provoking for me, "curation guilds" which reward engagement. Now there's an idea. Is it doable? We have comment contests and engagement leagues, but isn't exactly rewarding organic engagement so much as encouraging it. Not a bad thing, but it can be less genuine when people are trying to hit targets rather than enjoying the engagement for the sake of it.
Unless we get people on here who are here just to consume and have no interest in the earning potential, we're not going to have a natural, organic social platform the average consumer will be attracted to. Currently the only ones doing that are often outside visitors who don't have an account so they can't engage with likes or comments. I have a friend who I sometimes send links to articles one here that I know she'll enjoy, but she's an engager and a sharer, not so much a creator. I'd suggest her opening an account, but as things currently stand she'd be unable to interact much each day due to RCs, so what's the point?
Sometimes I think the monetary set up causes issues which end up with the system shooting itself in the foot. As you so rightly point out, the current 'investors' have a different perspective to the type of investors we're now trying to attract. As a creator, we may not like spam, but if we're looking to earn, then maybe it's something we'll have to learn to put up with. We can bump the comments up or down the pile as best we can to bring the real engagers up. Come to think of it, maybe that's how we'll reward the engagement and keep the real users in. If you're the genuine reader on there, then you're the one who's going to get the votes. So maybe we should bring back the ability of low level accounts to interact plenty.
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Hey, @minismallholding.
First of all, wow on the comment! How in the world did you do that on Partiko! Special skills! I'd still be typing. :)
I think we've got a good conversation going here about causes and effect, and maybe if we can get it directed somewhere to the folks that actually move and shake this place, we can up the priority on it. From what I can tell, we've got some alliances and some councils and some initiatives and some worker proposal stuff—all great, all useful, all needful and necessary—but they all seem to be focusing on dev work or something else. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like we've got the end user thing going yet. We've got people doing their own thing and running as fast as they can, but I don't know that we have that one overarching group like these others are trying to create for these other more technical needs.
Maybe we just need liaisons from the different communities and user initiatives (red fish, minnows, etc.) to come together after talking amongst themselves about what they would like to see happen. There seems to be a lot of meaningful community work going on, but are they the ones getting the major delegations or backing? Are they the ones where the focus is? This post says we're putting the investors before the users/community, and it's really hard not to agree. :)
Haha! It helps having Swype, although it isn't always the best at gauging what word you're trying to write...
Can't disagree with anything you've said there. It's quite the conversation whatsup has started and it would be great if it could reach the eyes of the movers and shakers.
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I don't think blogging brings in that many, but I totally do think the social network is why we can move our users and retain at least some, through a nasty bear market.
That's a very good point. I guess without the social network we wouldn't have anyone blogging right now. It's the communities who are keeping going in the biggest way, ignoring the drama going on elsewhere.
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taking from content creators to give to those who are supposedly consuming the content is short sighted at best IMO.
As mentioned elsewhere, a lot of the upvotes on posts come from automated posts, not from someone taking the few minutes to read or listen to them after the creator has put time and effort into creating them.
A more productive way to increase the content consumer's return is for content creators to be better (and I can be just as guilty) about upvoting non-spam comments which would increase rewards for the actual consumers rather than the automated ones.
That can be done now.
It's interesting that differences in culture which happen.
Some of the content I create here ends up behind the paywall on Medium.
There people pay $5 a month to belong to the site. Content creators who want paid have to join the Partner Program, earning is not automatic. Consumers who want access to the content pay and earn nothing for reading or clapping (upvoting).
I've yet to see anyone complaining about the authors earning whatever they earn.
Now, we have a long way to go before the content here is to the point that people actually come here for the content. We're not going to get there if we are cutting down what content creators make.
So let's start upvoting and rewarding those who do engage without spam on our posts to increase real curator's returns.
I actually think the effects could be counter-intuitive and I have no desire to see Author rewards go down.
I think if we rewarded consumption and gave people a reason to curate, we might see better rewards and better up AND down curation.
There would be less noise which would allow for better curation of actually engaging quality content.
True.
And End-users come for great apps that offer something more than a buggy UX with 'some weird coin' - something like the quite new (non-crypto) Vero app that does social media/content sharing but in a new way - and what if we could get that on Steem.
I'm dreaming...
Hey, @soyrosa.
You may be dreaming, but you're definitely dreaming in the right direction as far as I'm concerned. The last time I brought something up like you just did, having leading edge apps to match the cutting edge technology of the blockchain, I was told the issue was in the decentralization. I have no idea if that's right or not. I'm not a dev. However, somehow, that's got to be overcome. I believe it's definitely an issue. Where it fits in this overall scheme, when it takes priority, I don't know. I just know that ultimately, you're right, it needs to be addressed, along with a lot of what else is being said here. :)
We have far too many suppliers and not enough customers so the suppliers become customers for other suppliers to maintain cash flow.
Dangerous ground...
We need initiatives to encourage real people to consume content. We have so much encouragement and financial initiatives for the creators but without consumers, its just ever decreasing circles. I personally call for a 60/40 split in favour of curation. As it stands, 75% is a massive profit margin!
More curation rewards for manual curation would be great. But I think this move would make it more profitable for vote sellers than improve or encourage curation.
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That's why small changes would be good.
No. Make it big. Don't announce it. See everybody lose their shit.
That's the kind of drama I would like to see - and expect - around here ;)
After all, I think it will only make bots more profitable. Why not at least get some entertainment out of it
I would also like to see curation rewards increased in small increments over time. Start with 30% and slowly bring it up, I think it would get gamed less like that. I am totally for it.
It's almost like, the time people spend here, on the platform is needed for its own inherent value.
Careful... one can get booted out of the cool kids club for that viewpoint!
I know... :)
for me ai think it's not that easy to engage all the time because in my case sometimes I want someone to notice my writings also. Not that I'm being demanding but I think many people will understand if I said I wanted to have an audience in my work. Because the time that I keep on writing and no one try interact on it, it feel's sad and I began to think that maybe I'm not that good. You have a point in your content that it hit's me. lol
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