RE: Steemit: The Next Generation
So far this morning I've read lexiconical's post wondering if Steemit is only meant to be a beta to bring people to the STEEM blockchain to establish a user base, so that it can pave the way for SMTs, and I've read yours @themanwithnoname.
Interesting how two different authors look at a similar subject but from two different sides of the coin (is there a pun in there somewhere? not sure).
To Your Post
I like the idea of the tabs that allow you to get to things quicker. If you can do it in one click from the homepage/your feed page that's better than two or more.
Second. Since I'm actually in favor of the resteem becoming much more than it is (taking over curation in general, and therefore how things get to the trending and hot pages rather than everything we do going through the almighty upvote), I'd much prefer having a separate resteem feed I could peruse. That way I could also keep track of my own stuff instead of cluttering it up with things that I resteem.
Resteem Aside
(What would really be cool is something that allows us to decide if we want to follow someone because they're a great creator, or follow someone because they're an awesome curator. Not everyone is good at both, or they'll like stuff we don't particularly want to see.
Maybe then, resteems come in based on topics or specific kinds of posts we're likely to read, with a filter system we're able to set on our own.)
Back To It
Okay, since I thought outloud here for a moment, let's get back to the idea of a separate resteem feed.
I'd like to have three feeds when I log in—one for the folks I'm following, one for my blog, and one for all the resteems. Then I could pick and choose between which ones to dive into, and none of the columns or feeds would seem cluttered. I guess if you wanted to turn off some feeds, you could add that feature, too, but since what information you get here is determined largely by who you follow, either in their own posts, or those they resteem, if you shut off any of those (most likely the latter based on what I'm reading from commenters here), you might miss out on information you really wanted to know.
Somewhere To Submit
There is actually supposed to be a place to submit ideas, depending on what it is. I get confused, though, as to which they are, but I believe steemitdev is one. There's a tag that's supposed to be for such things too but just like every other tag, I'm not sure how well it conforms to just Steemit upgrade ideas.
And Cut
And, we're also still waiting for Hivemind or Communities, which is supposed to make our lives "better" at some point. It's a UI fix, so if they are truly working on it, that can drop independent of a HardFork.
@glenalbrethsen As was said months ago Steemit inc is aiming to strengthen the steem blockchain by growing the steem ecosystem. Even though Steemit is a major player for the steem blockchain they may just be looking at the bigger picture by trying to focus on SMT's.
And it looks like a really big picture. I get why they're doing it, too. It will probably be the single most effective thing they can do to get more people to use STEEM. SMTs are meant to bring entrepreneurs to STEEM, which in turn will bring more people—consumers—to STEEM.
I'd hate to see the social media platform we're creating, even with all it's current warts, get lost in the potential stampede of smart media tokens. Of course, if I can manage to figure out something to do and then successfully launch my own token, I will undoubtedly be singing a different tune. :)
I'm not very in-touch with the plans for Steemit, etc... I have heard of SMTs coming, but don't really know when or what that would look like. I get the idea of tokens and that it's probably something like the way ERC2- tokens are issued on top of the Ethereum blockchain, but that's as far as my information/suppositions go. I'll have to research it more as it seems that is becoming a trend. I've read a few other articles that mentioned SMTs recently.
That's an interesting idea. Like you could have check boxes to "follow author's blog" and another to "follow author's curation." That's intriguing. And I hadn't really thought about the resteems clogging your own feed. I hadn't been doing it as much recently after I realized that I didn't resteeming for contests. I stopped doing most of those contests because I didn't want people to stop following me because the contests I resteemed (and lost) were clogging their feeds. After that I stopped requiring the resteem for my contests because it's only fair. :)
There probably is a place to submit ideas. I haven't found it though. That's still one of the downsides of having a decentralized system. There's no customer service department that is tasked with making sure the customers are happy. In a way, we're the customer relations department, so posts like this are how we spread ideas around. I might have been able to submit it to utopian.io, but I believe that's for specific projects you want done. I think I've seen them flag people for misuse (even though it was a development project) because it wasn't in the right format. I don't know. I figure we do the best we can and see what happens.
Hiveminds and Communities?! That sounds interesting. Haven't heard of them. I often get in the routine of posting and commenting, and I don't do much exploring on what is happening in the big-picture. That might mean more authors to follow. ;)
As always, thanks for stopping by and thanks for your insightful and illuminating comments. :)
SMTs, or Smart Tokens, are down the line (unless they push them up), so we probably won't see them for a while yet, but the idea as I understand them is they will actually sit on a person's own website and allow them to monetize it through the STEEM blockchain.
What I'm guessing they hope that will do is increase STEEM accounts (either the SMT will be attached to one automatically or you'll have to have one opened in order to use the SMT—not sure which is meant to happen), so that sites that already exist independently can tap into the STEEM blockchain and become a peripheral part of the STEEM ecosystem.
I'm afraid a side effect of doing so, however, might mean that the UI updates we're all looking for will become non-existent, as opposed to at least promised (even if there hasn't been a whole lot of updating, anyway).
Hivemind/Communities is the same thing (I think Hivemind is the github codename). What it's supposed to do is make Steemit much more topic-oriented rather than a throw it on the wall and see what sticks shotgun approach. If it ever happens, it's supposed to improve post visibility, thus increasing the chance for rewards.
I do quite a bit of reading, and not just from the creators I follow. If I have questions about things, I'm finding I need to run a search of some kind, because I'm probably not going to find that specific of a post looking through corresponding tags.
Yeah, it would be cool to have things topic-oriented, or topic and feed oriented.
SMTs could provide a huge boost for Steem. The downside is it could become a lot harder to level in Steemit. If the prices go higher, you get less for each payout, so the amount of time necessary to level increases. I almost think they should have pegged STEEM to $1 and had SBD float. Then you could progress at a better clip.