Let’s Talk About Mass Adoption of Steemit - What Do We Need To Cross the Chasm?

in #steemit6 years ago (edited)


Let's talk about Steemit’s adoption.

People usually talk about the bell shaped adoption curve. The innovators represent the first 2.5%, and the early adopters the next 13.5%. And they say that once you pass those first 16%, the technology has crossed the chasm and that is what is necessary for successful mass adoption.


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This is an important subject. As some of you know, I spend quite some time on researching new blockchain projects and I notice more projects similar to Steemit are coming. For example Narrative, which will be based on the NEO blockchain.

Of course Steemit has been around for quite some time, it has already a lot of users and it is growing fast. But is that enough?

Honestly, there are still quite some things that need fixing on Steemit. Ranging from spammers, people gaming the system, whale wars among other things.

One thing I would like to see is an improved search functionality. The current one is just crap. I believe that we need it in order to create a healthier balance between content production and content consumption. It is just too hard to get a set of good search results.

If you could only pick two things to fix, which would you fix that would greatly improve adoption of the platform in the long run?


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Good post and congrats on 60!!

Some of the things I would improve I think are coming in the next release/fork.

  • Groups - Make it so that you can join groups rather than have to make a burner account to resteem and join people.
  • Onboarding - make it so that it doesn't take 2 days from application to approval
  • Business Accounts - I would like to make a business specific account that is separate from my personal one and do B2B stuff on STEEMit.
  • Search was already mentioned - Google search?!!?
  • Maybe clearer integration with the other STEEM blockchain technologies? It may be confusing to some (as it has been wtih me in the beginning) to have to login with steemconnect when using services like minnowbooster, dtube, steemfollower, zappl etc.

Other than that, it is good to work those things out before the real flood hits!

Thanks Zeke and great reply! Some good improvements there :-)

If you would have to pick, which one would have the biggest impact on adoption in the long run do you think?

I would say groups. It would help the new folks get their bearings and join like-minded people in topics of interest. Plus they would be able to have some success out of the gate when they put together good blog entries and haven't gotten a following yet.

I would also like to see group private messaging as well so the crypto operation could stop using discord and google who are datamining our conversations.

Definitively @cryptotem I will try to work hard on improving the "writing board.
For the people that is here since a few months ago, maybe there is no problem using the current posting window but I get some feedback from newcomers telling that it is not intuitive at all to add content, type of letters, titles and so on when you write a post...
I think we should improve that point to improve the user experience while using steemit for instance...
Busy looks more simple to the eyes of newbies.

Nice @toofasteddie and true! Basically quite some functionality is already out there. It is just a shame that it is built into a different tool while it should be just built into Steemit itself!

First of all, I am coming for a complete Noob perspective so I don't know much about how difficult it would be to change certain things...but if I had to pick 2 things I would like to see changed is like search function like you mentioned. I have such a hard time finding quality posts to comment on. I like to search through the new section because of I like to support Plankton like myself but I have to wade though thousands of posts to find that hidden gem.
I think that all the posts from Zappl, Dmania, etc should be seperated in a different layout both in the search and in your personal Steemit page. I really have avoided using Zappl and Steepshot because I don't want them showing up right over the blog posts that I took hours to write (it takes me hours because I have never written content before)
The other thing that I think would help the promotion of Steemit is maybe an affiliate sign up bonus (even if the incentive was a small amount of SP delegation) to encourage users to bring their friends onto Steemit.
I am actually working on a blog post about this from a noob perspective today and I realized that the future success of Steemit is dependent on the health of the crypto market as a whole. Since there is such a steep learning curve with Steemit people will need to learn the basics of buying crypto before they can even think of starting here. It would just be too overwhelming otherwise. I am however extremely hopeful about the future of Steemit :)

Great comment @emmyem84! Yeah, even some easy filtering options would drastically improve the search results already or at least a way of excluding posts with certain characteristics (specific tags like you mention, or just filter out posts that have less than 100 characters of something).

On the promotion part an affiliate construction might work. Personally I am not always a fan of those since it is a 'push' incentive rather than a 'pull' incentive. But that is my opinion. Might work though!

2 things need to happen in my opinion. We need a major upgrade to the user interface for mass adoption. Yes we like it but it's glitter that draws in the crowds. There needs to be a name drop by a celebrity. Once Oprah mentions it then it will blow up. LOL.

I do agree that I hate that the system is gamed by bots and programs, but what platform does not have some type of scheme going?

I agree with @emmyem84. Some sort of promotional killer affiliate bonus for friends and family

that you get to join. It would motivate plankton/minnows to keep adding quality content during the slow early stages. Also there needs to be an easier way to search for media to resteem. Many that have been trained by the other platforms .ie INstagram or pinterest will find searching here for content kind of tricky. If those 2 things were upgraded... we would see a flood of new minnows...

I agree that we could use some UX improvements indeed. Gaming will probably be always there, that is true. I do hope it will become a relatively smaller problem though. We'll see.

Very helpful propositions there by @cryptotem, @zekepickleman, @emmyem84, et al.

My prayer: may this post get to the appropriate people so that solutions and necessary updates can be made.

Meanwhile, I believe that the steemit team are working assiduously to make the platform better. Don't forget, it's Steemit 'beta', so there's a large room for improvements.

Thanks again @cryptotem for your post.

True and I do think that it is awesome they keep on devoting their time to the development :-)

I agree completely about Search. There should be the ability to do an advanced search, user search etc. I think they just pointed Google to it with an off the shelf site search.

I am sure any LAMP programmer could easily set up a search system by configuran an open source search script!

The second for me is a simple mobile app simply for sending and receiving Steem and SBD. I am exchanging value with Steem all the time with real people!

A nice app is also a good one! That could definitely help :-)

Sorry please i have a question. What do you mean when you said "whale wars"

With the 'whale wars' I refer to the down-voting battles on the platform that are going on between some people with a lot of steem power (i.e. berniesanders, haejin and others)

this is very interesting to learn to make stimeet more berfariasi, actually I have my own research about
cryptocurrency portfolio, crypto related with this.
tapih I still hampered to publish so the stimeet users can know about my research this.

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