Why SteemIt isn't ready for mass adoption
SteemIt looks absolutely amazing at first glance, but when you look at it from from a technical and economical perspective on a deeper level, you will find there are still a lot of problems to overcome. Below you will find some of the main reasons why SteemIt is not yet ready for mass adoption (and that we are very early adopters).
Intrinsic value of the STEEM blockchain
Right now the main reason for purchasing the STEEM token is because of speculation (trading). To make the STEEM market more liquid and eventually more stable, potential investors need more long-term value while holding STEEM. The ultimate goal is to make the STEEM blockchain so valueable that even venture capitalists will be interested in investing, without specifically wanting to use to social media platform (SteemIt). A year ago i read Steemit's Evil Plan for Cryptocurrency World Domination which gives some more insight on the future of the STEEM blockchain.
Ease of use
This is one of the main obstacles to overcome. Although it's currently not the worst, there is a lot that could be improved. The user interface for steemit.com specifically could use a lot of upgrades. Extensive, easy to access help and preferably extensive video tutorials should be available too at some point.
Then the biggest problem: the difficulty of cryptocurrencies. This technology is so new that it isn't anywhere near user friendly enough to reach mass adoption. Imagine having to teach your mom how to exchange STEEM into Bitcoin and then into fiat. The procedure is cumbersome and there is a large potential for errors.
After 7 days your content can't earn money anymore
This current implementation is extremely harsh to content creators. Imagine going trough the process of writing a book and then when you are finally ready to publish it, the publisher will only pay you based on the sales of the first 7 days. That's extremely unreasonable and many people wouldn't want to publish their content anymore. Although most publications on SteemIt won't quite require 100s of hours of work, content creators will likely deliver a lot lower quality because of this extreme limitation on SteemIt currently.
Most user are powerless
With the current implementation, 100s and 100s of users have less power than 1 person with a lot of STEEM POWER. This is the opposite of the preferred behavior. The ideal situation is that 100s of people are exptected to be much more reliable in curating content properly than just 1 person.
On top of that imagine the following situation: A group of wealthy malicious users joins SteemIt, their posts will make 10s or even 100s of times more than average posts and because the group simply owns too much power, the current majority that is online at that moment will be unable to curate it (in fact what currently happens is that everyone will upvote it to get curation rewards from it, rather than attempt to curate the content properly and flag it). This group can dominate the network, decide what content earns what, what content should be trending, which users should get lower or higher reputations and so on. To a certain extend this is already happening on a daily basis. Currently you see a lot of popular users earn ridiculous amounts of money on content that is sometimes far below the expected quality and there is almost nothing the majority of users can do about it.
Interesting point of view, and you are totally right!... I guess that the power rule must change or evolve to solve this problems when steemit gets mainstream... i think it is possible...
Yes, the 7 day payout is rather limiting. Perhaps there could be payouts in two tranches - 1 after 7 days and another after 30 days.
I defiantly agree that seven days is quit limiting. However, Steemit is paying the Author. If you want rewards after seven days it will have to be donation. Which, anyone can donate and everyone here should take note that an up vote after seven days has the same value as Face Book "Like". I think it may also be a built in failsafe that one Author cannot take all the cookies from the cookie jar, if you will. I am also for this article, well written as it is, I am also, on a smaller note somewhat in disagreement.
Have a good one!
Q
How is it even possible that one author would get 100% of the reward pool? This week some article about an MRI scan made about $15K and that's probably not even 10% of the reward pool this week.
I saw that article about the MRI scan. I thought to myself, How hard would it be to build a reputation, fake and ailment and Cash In! After a few heart string photos, Resteems and Upvotes allover the place and BAM! I obviously have know idea if that is the case with this particular article, but it sure as hell would make a Story! This is one of the Biggest reasons I believe payouts stop. I could be totally off the mark with this one. If I am missing something please let me know. I am, after all only a week old. This is so crazy the community here and I think people are Generally good by nature. I read another article of a person who was asking for donations because He and His expecting Girlfriend are having a hard time making ends meet. Stating that any donations would be returned with a %25 interest attached to them. I wonder if that interest is attached to the Price of Steem when Donated or the Current price when repayment is made.
This reply is turning into a Blog post.
Have a good one!
Q
That's something I've observed in this social media since the beginning. It seems like the system pays you not according with the amount of votes but to the amount of Steem Power the voter(s) have. :/
Yup, that is the idea - that those with higher stakes (earned through contribution or bought through trading) have more say in which content gets rewarded. It's a feature, not a bug. The game theory is that powerful curators have a vested interest in turning this into a great platform with great content (to make STEEM more attractive to investors, which in turn increases the value of their stake) and are thus incentivized to vote responsibly and rationally.
It's an interesting experiment worth trying, yielding funny results sometimes. Looking forward to whether the theory will prove its worth in the long run.
Some good points. The kinks are still getting worked out so Im confident most of these issues will be addressed when we get out of the beta stage.
I agree with you
Great insight @calamus056, I definitely agree with you that the 7 day window for earnings on content encourages overall lower quality content. Do you think a diminishing return over time would be better than a hard stop at 7 days?
I have also thought about the prospect of a handful of power users manipulating the network, content and proceeds to benefit each other. This absolutely needs fixing before mass adoption. Reminds me of Digg way back in the day and the influence that power users had over whether content makes it to the home page or not.
There needs to be other ways for content to pass a quality filter on top of curation.
Great post. Thanks!
Interesting, I agree with being able to earn after 7 days, but don't see and issue with the current power structure. Those that have put in the hard yards should be rewarded. Everyone starts at the bottom.
Your bang on! I dont see this getting adopted by the average user unless they clean up the ui alot! the bloggers will hang around for the cash but we need regular users who just scroll and vote just as much as creators who release alot of content!