STEEM’s identity crisis and What I hope Improves

This is not really a good thing because Livejournal is capped out and not used much these days. It’s capped out because it caters to small circles of niche content. A strength but also a weakness towards growth. Livejournal is friendly, welcoming, with great content. Back in the day I used it to keep up with my real life friends who have since moved away. I can’t even access my account anymore. But it was fun for the time I was there.

Steemit is not like Facebook at all.
It makes me laugh how people complain about the poor quality of content on Steemit but have you randomly browsed Facebook? Oh the humanity! It’s so terrible, Steemit is a jewel by comparison.

Medium oh… how much I resent Medium and it’s LinkedIn flavorings. It bugs the hell outa me to see ICOs using Medium for their blog and not Steem/it. How could they?! It’s like, blasphemous. But they do it because Medium has positioned itself as the place for “thought leadership” and especially business. And so ICO’s want to attract that audience naturally they would base themselves there.

What’s funny to me though is they go on to send out their airdrop minions to shill on Bitcointalk forums and Discord -- a far cry from Medium’s whitewashed picket fence. At some point the crypto leadership should choose. You can’t maintain authenticity with that kind of base hopping in my opinion.

It’s a Catherdral & Bazaar scenario being played out that makes for an interesting dynamic but sends a mixed message. If you shill on Medium then use Kickstarter. If you are fund raising with tokens, you should be using a crypto platform – like Steem.

On to some problems I see…

Problem 1:

Relationships and Communities, i.e. Engagement in STEEM caps out

1. At some point an individual cannot maintain meaningful engagement and “keep up”
2. Time cost to build and maintain relationships: meaningful engagement, comments, conscientious voting, curating is high.
3. Time spent to create own content and blog posts is high.
4. Big rewards will follow those with external celebrity status or expert knowledge which they have previously built up and invested in externally naturally giving those an edge.
5. Niche content is rewarded with active and lively engagement but finite audience (capping out)
   

Solutions:

• Steem/-it/-busy/-D et al are their own worlds that could be more accessible from the outside regarding engagement. Some kind of for lack of better word, unified brand of STEEM should be integrated with all of these services so they look related. Something simple as a seal or logo in the top corner that is EXACTLY the same on every site would help. And I do mean exactly. Not differently sized or colored to fit the website better or anything like that. Must be same size, shape, color – an official looking thing. I know there is an official STEEM logo but these sites all do their own thing with it.

• More integrations with external parties that already use vote/like systems. This should be a concerted high priority effort on the part of the Steem community to actively seek this in a business-like manner and with experts who have knowledge about business partnerships. The Steem leadership could be faster and more assertive about convincing existing parties to use the Steem SMT instead of rolling their own and remaking the wheel. Again, someone with expert business knowledge would help this team to lead and the community should financially pony up to support this effort as it is costly.

• More call to action to sign up for a Steem account.

• It needs to be clear how Steem can be converted to usable money and somehow that should to be weaved into any marketing messaging about Steem in a very simple way.

• Folks should write simply about Steem and use easy to understand language. The irony of this extremely wordy post is not lost on me.

Problem 2:

“Follow for Follow” demands and the Golden Carrot
• A way should be devised to make it easy for someone to acknowledge a follower’s support without expending time crafting reply comments or expending vote power.

1. @APompliano (https://twitter.com/APompliano) is a great Twitter example in the crypto space. He doesn’t know me and I’m a super small fry on Twitter but he ALWAYS likes my comments. Every time! I don’t care if he has an assistant do it, or if he automates it, or what he does – it means a lot to me that he likes my comments on his Twitter. It keeps me as a follower. I’m easy to please but I think others might feel the same way I have a feeling. I’m not sure what this costs him to do this but if it’s automated then it’s not much. Steem should make it easy for individuals with a lot of followers to have a small appreciation in this manner. See below:

2. People expect a peer to follow back. Only a “blue checkmark” a la Twitter or someone with high reputation can really get away without following or commenting back. Realistically this also plays into the capping out scenario. But other platforms such as Twitter favoriting a tweet costs nothing but a second of time and has the potential to satisfy a follower to keep following. There should be an intermediate way of pseudo voting that does not use vote power or contribute to trending – i.e. does not give value beyond a simple “like.” Maybe a “Cheer” kind of option. After all, in the real world we go to the polls to vote – a more considered and serious endeavor. But of course, we can clap and cheer for any stranger or thing we causally see in our daily activity. Not every action is “vote worthy” of getting in the car and driving to the polling place, flashing our ID and going into the booth for a heavy session with a scan-tron and pencil.

• We all can’t be “rock stars” but yet we create content and keep the platform going and hope a post goes viral or is discovered by Curie. This is a golden carrot situation that will exhaust the quality content creator’s “brain energy” and not work long term. There needs to be a way to make content continue to be viable monetarily long term.

• While a vote or comment on an old post doesn’t count or matter for the author anymore a built in TIP Button (yes, I know this is not an original idea just saying I think everyone who thinks this I agree with) could appear after 7 days that (1) opens up an easy interface for me to be able to send STEEM or SBD, pre-filled out with the URL in the memo or some indicator that it is a tip for older content. Or, (2) add to the Wallet a “Tip wallet” that you deposit a budget to just for this purpose and it would have a setting for a default tip amount. Say I deposit 5 SBD to my “Tip Wallet” and tell it to give out 5% tips as a default (.01 SBD). Then when I hit the Tip button on an older post it just does it. Tipping does not effect trending or any other stat. Make it easy!

So much could be done with the Steemit UI

I think many agree and it’s already been discussed and covered a lot. I prefer to use Busy.org for the UI improvements.
@riverflows wrote a great article on all the features recently so check it out:
https://busy.org/@riverflows/why-i-prefer-busy-org-to-steem-com

Promoted listings needs Improvement

This is going to be an unpopular opinion but here goes. So the way the Promoted listings could be presented is to be integrated into the direct main feed as well as trending feed. They should be labeled promoted, but it’s gotta be done. People will complain but it’s the way of advertising and we all want a good way to promote our content on Steemit without using bid bots. Selling weak advertising positioning is just, weak.

Bite the bullet Steemit and do it. You will be absolved by putting the proper label on it. Do it fairly though – don’t stack and make it clear what it is.

Also I think it would be cool if you offered me a way to get a daily digest to (cough, old school) email. Right now I use a service called GINAbot. Oh how I love @ginabot. So much. She makes me appear as a stalker I’m sure some of my friends on here must think but it’s all because Gina let’s me know when you post, via Discord alert. Super sweet!

Anyhow, if you had an email digest option you maybe could slip in an advertisement/promoted thing as well. Since you would have my email you – Steem dev/Leaders – could send really important messages to me that way too that you need me to act on, it’s ok with me.

Cluster my followers

It would be handy for me to be able to group or organize visually my followers on my profile by categories of interest and their level of activity. This helps me as a writer to make decisions about how to spend my time writing if I have a lot of ideas.

Plagiarism is bad on Steemit

• Intentional: user is looking for a quick buck
• Unintentional:

1. user is simply logging something they found interesting and does not know about markdown for quoting, or
2. they are using it in a very personal way to aggregate their own news interests.
3. Facebook/Twitter confusion of liberal sharing of news articles – intention to “share” with friends something they like or find interesting

Solution: Assuming the person is unintentionally plagiarizing

Just because someone publishes on Steemit doesn’t necessarily mean they intend to have votes or even that they want it to be read publicly. Some people just sign up because they want a free journal and they like the idea that it is permanent and on the blockchain.

Nowhere does it say on the Steemit site -- at least in an obvious place -- that it is required to post only "original and quality" content when you sign up. In fact, this is something that people just like to gripe about as if it is assumed.

Well, it’s not. But I totally do not want to see aggregated news content or someone’s “forward” or share of what they think is cool so I get it that is not a good experience for me as a browser. I agree it sucks to see that kind of content.

• This should be handled in the UI honestly. Maybe a drop down box on the post for “personal, public.” Of course, it can’t be private, but if you check “personal” it won’t show up in the new feed and also it could give immunity to cheetah/downvote services.

• A Steemit disclaimer message 1 sentence could be at the top of the post saying something like “this is a personal post and the content may contain material from other sources” or something like that.

• I dunno if this kind of content should be allowed to be upvoted but if someone does it shouldn’t go on trending because it’s personal. But that’s ok to me philosophically. If my friend wants to upvote my daily food log that I ripped off from Rachel Ray’s recipe daily while I’m dieting and throw a few cents at my dieting effort that should be ok and not get people’s pants in a wad. Or maybe have it a “Cheer” option discussed above in the Golden Carrot section.

Solution: Assuming a person is plagiarizing for a quick buck and scam

• I don’t have many ideas to be honest as I’m new here. In college the professors made us use a 3rd party service called Turnitin http://turnitin.com/ that checks for plagiarism.

• Maybe on the Wallet area some “donate to…” services could be offered, some checkboxes of validated Steemit cleaning/cheetah services. Say you could donate 1% of your earnings or whatever to the services you choose. Having them on the Wallet area would make it easy to do that.

Having to go figure out how to delegate SP and all that is too hard for a lot of people. I’ve been on Steemit a few months and I just haven’t had time to go think about that right now and it requires research, time – hell work. Just make it easy for me. Sorry 50 SP is too high for me for a minimum delegation. I would like for it to be more in the micro transaction realm.

Sum

@conradt has asked, What would you change about Steem? Thank you Conradt for the inspiration to write and place to feel comfortable getting it all out.

Steemit and STEEM services do more with the Wallets! Offer pre-packaged vetted services, easy ways to tip after the 7 day window, more ways to promote, more ways to show appreciation, more ways to show readers we care and acknowledge them. Vote, Tip, Cheer!

Communicate within the Wallet more about how to manage the money, how to sell it, educate within the Wallet space. Engage real business people with knowledge on how to break out of the niche and expand out in partnerships. Make some UI changes to bundle some comfort items, services, and include everyone without assuming the worst.

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