One fundamental problem with steemit.com
How stupid it may sound, the main problem I see with steemit.com is the fact it was the first application to be created on the steem blockchain. This means it was the only place where people could come to try the steem reward system, regardless if you were coming from youtube, Facebook or Instagram.
When I hear the word "blogging platform" I don't relate it to anything close to any of these three. Yet we often heard (more in the past) "steemit is going to kill facebook", yet I simply do not see the connection between these two at all.
When people join the steem blockchain, they start on steemit.com
Right now what we are seeing, would be the equivalent of facebook, youtube, Instagram and whatever ... All mixed together in one bag. People use Steemit for what they want, it's a lab rat. There is nothing wrong with that, but could it be more appropriate to separate them into more defined sectors? Let steepshot be on steepshot, dlive be on dlive and so on...
I know maybe our audience is not big enough to split up between these just yet, but I have a feeling the reason we see almost a million "dead accounts" could be partly because of this. Steemit.com is simply not just a blogging site, it is everything social media can offer and that creates somewhat a chaos and hard for people to find what they want to digest.
I don't hear many people coming and saying they joined through Dtube, Dlive, steepshot and the many other application we got floating out there.
Not only is steemit.com a mix of everything right now, but a lot of the new members don't really know any other applications might exist because you do have to make some research on this subject. It is not always obvious if anything else is out there that would fit your need better.
Steemit is the center of all other application and when someone post on Dtube, it pops up on steemit, if someone post on steepshot, it pops up on steemit.
This basically means that regardless of Steemit.com might have been intended to be a blogging site, it is now a big mixture of everything combined. Pretty much the central hub of everything and it creates a chaos if you ask me and it could prove difficult for many users.
Taking it from my perspective, I am really not interested in Instagram, I am interested in blogging. Yet if I surf around on Steemit.com I see so many "1 picture" posts from steepshot and it makes it difficult for me to find what I am in fact looking for.
To me, it makes a poor experience when going around on Steemit and usually I just stick with the few people I am following because it is much easier.
It would make sense to me that all these platforms on the steemblock chain should start "floating" a bit away from each other. Almost like a kid growing up.
Smart media tokens might start to push all these different uses of social media out a little more and make the separation more clear. But I wonder if steemit always will remain the place where everything produced on the steem blockchain will end up, or it will eventually change?
The moment we get these clear borders and Steemit.com is not the face of the steem blockchain and more people join through the other application, I think we could start to see a significantly more people staying around.
I actually do believe that steemit.com will die out eventually. Maybe taken over by something like steempeak or steempress in a couple of years. But for now everything is tired up with each other and to me, it creates sometimes an unpleasant experience that I can imagine might scare some people away when they already got fully working applications elsewhere.
What do you guys think?
-holm
I don't see why people compare it with Facebook either.
I see it a lot more close to Medium.com. It's more of a blogging platform, and yes, as you and @sumatranate pointed out, it would help a lot of users to have the content filtered by each one's personal desires. Something like what happens on Medium when you get to choose what type of content you want to see in your feed. I don't know how this could be implemented, but it would be a good idea.
Even more, when people say it's going to kill facebook, well, I find it hard to believe because Steemit is incentivized, and that changes everything. On facebook, people post anything they want to, without thinking about copyright or the real authors, since nobody receives anything in return. Besides Facebook itself.
On Steemit on the other hand, people curate and are greatly against copied content. They praise and encourage the creation of original content from its users, which is too great an effort for most facebook users. Not everybody is a content creator or aspires to be one. So in my opinion, no, Steemit isn't going to kill platforms like Facebook anytime soon. There has to be a niche for those kind of users too.
But Steemit could use a little bit more options to personalize the platform according to what each users wants and needs from it. Though I guess the creators are already thinking about it, since Steemit is still young and under development. After all, look at how much Facebook changed across the years. We'll get there. Change is happening all the time.
Unlike other mainstream platforms, the Steem community can either wait for Steemit.com to bring about the changes we want or we can make those changes on our own. I personally don't have the skills to create a new UI, but I could support those types of projects.
I do appreciate your point that we self-monitor as a community - especially in regards to plagiarism. We have a vested interest in making sure that we grow strong as individuals and as a community. We have a vested in interest in making sure that our culture moving forward is strong and worth reproducing.
If anything should be killing facebook it would be the steem blockchain itself when someone build a proper alternative to it. I completely agree! It's about finding a niche for more than just "hardcore" bloggers.
While not a complete alternative in the direction of what we talked about, but the best one I've found so far is SteemPeak. It has a modern interface and has a lot more features than steemit.com.
I just tested it right now and it looks and feels awesome. ;) Maybe you know it and even use it already, but if not, try it out.
@sumatranate you might want to take a look at it too. ;)
There's a review on it here.
Hey Yeah I am in fact writing most of my articles on steempeak! It is a really great site to use!
I subscribe to your idea, but for now, at least in my case, Steemit is my control panel from where I manage everything else. I post on Steepshot also, but I mostly read articles on Steemit, I used DTube, but I somehow ended answering comments at such posts with the eSteem app or from Steemit and so on. For now we're gonna have to stick with it all mixed up.
The moment we're gonna have some proper mobile apps I think the whole thing will change, because most of us are mainly active on mobile. If it wasn't for Steemit I wouldn't use my laptop for days.
SMTs will have an impact also on Steemit, but I don't see it going extinct any time soon. It's still rock solid and still the main interface.
Yes the whole thing lies in development. When specific applications takes root and they become more. user friendly, it will start to help a lot. But imagine we have over a million accounts now, only like 50.000 active users. (much better than previously though)
I think there are users with multiple accounts who thought that would make a buck with their spam and tens of accounts, but left them dead when reality hit them. So from that million, many are so in my opinion. And its probably better this way.
@holm, I believe that the current Steemit.com model is both good and bad. It does provide the opportunity for cross-promotion of other opportunities - SteepShot, DLive, Utopia, etc.
But when you first arrive to the community, it can be a bit overwhelming. It would be nice if we could filter out certain types of content within the Steemit.com user interface. For example, if someone does not want SteepShot content, click the hide SteepShot box, and problem solved.
I prefer that we give the user the ability to decide what they want or do not want to see.
Yes I agree a filter system could work as well. also I believe it is good way for promoting other platforms on the steem blockchain that they appear on steemit. com!
But on the other side of the coin it does create a bit of a chaos.
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WOW You make a great contain here. thank you for share with us.
Good for people, Good for you.
Keep countinue
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thanks man:)
Lovely Wellcome
Cheers
@holm I was caught by your post congrats, on the other hand we must wait for the time. The idea and the design of all these platforms is something that not everybody knows, for now it would be the best option; for them for us and for the future user who can sign up.
Totally agrre with make services like Dtube or Dlive independent from Steemit, but we gotta wait for the expansion of steemit itself to see what´s going on. Peace!
slowly and steadily all the complexity will be removed steemit has a great team with a great vision backing it up otherwise in time like these when the ratio of sbd to steem is not looking good it would have been chaos all over