Steemit’s Three Major Problems
Play a game with me. Here are the rules:
“Steemit is a privately owned company, and I’m it’s CEO.”
This is the reality for the reminder of this post.
Our three major problems:
1. Retention strategy
We don’t really have one.
(subtext: please stay...)
We are expanding like crazy. Every day new users join from all over the world. However, if we don’t have a proper retention strategy, we shouldn’t have recruited those users in the first place, but rather waited until we had a proper strategy for motivating them to stay.
Users are continuously joining, writing a few posts, only to leave and never come back, because no one reads their posts, and because the incentive that brought them here was “Get paid to post online”.
When their first experience with Steemit is: No readers and mock payment, they leave, and even do so with a negative impression of the company. It is a stark contrast to the optimism and gumption so many people sign up with every day. One user that gets addicted to the product, is better than three, who leave within the first week.
2. Most users aren’t investing.
They think they don’t have to.
Well, they really don’t HAVE TO, but it is fairly easier to do so. So why is it that the vast majority of new users never actually invest money?
The answer is obvious: we at the company have failed to make it attractive to do so. In a recent post, @fitinfun suggested that renting SP - even in small quota (and even as a minnow) - holds tremendous advantages.
In other words, the company has failed to provide a structure, in which it is more attractive for users to invest money, than renting it from entities that aren’t directly tied into the company ecosystem.
Imagine if most new users came to Steemit with the intention to actually buy Steem/STB. Imagine how the price of Steem would be affected, if the average user invested e.g. $1,000.
New users come here with the delusion, that they are going to be paid for creating content on Steemit, when in fact, we want them to invest.
3. The inherent hierarchical structure
It effects user behavior and interaction.
Although the reputation system is ingenious in it’s fundamental structure, there are gross disadvantages with a system in which a few affluent costumers, aka whales, hold tremendous power over the masses.
First of all, it makes it risky for minnows to post controversial content. In fact, it’s risky for even dolphins to do so, because upsetting a few whales, can lead to your demise, by you being downvoted, if whales take dislike of specific content.
Furthermore, most tutorials suggest that minnows follow whales, upvote their posts, comment on them, and try to make friends with them. While there’s nothing wrong with people seeking to befriend one another, it seems unfruitful for us to foster a culture of sucking up to the important ones.
This creates a culture of ‘important users’ and ‘less important users’. Now, if this served as a motivator for new users to invest in the platform, it could be justified. But in it’s current state it simply seems to be bad for business.
The only reason it's not a problem is, that there are no problems in the company, only exciting challenges.
Thoughts and comments are always welcome.
I think the main problem is discovery of content. Right now you have to be specifically following someone, find it in hot or trending or specifically find it in topics or search. I'm not sure what the solution is, (Yet. I'll post when I do) but if there was some way that we could be exposed to things that interest us, whether from whales or minnows, I think it would make it easier for quality content writers to find an audience. Maybe bots could help, maybe AI, we'll see.
This is a major challenge. The widespread use of algorithms that show us content we 'like' is the very foundation of the so-called echo chamber. I'm against this. But yes, content discovery is an important and interesting challenge.
I agree that it is good to expose ourselves to new ideas. My problem is what if I'm not interested in the travel blogs or cooking posts. You could say that I want an echo chamber that is focused on the topics of bitcoin, decentralization of power, general philosophy, etc. ;) Of course I want to read both sides of the discussion...
But how do we make discovery focused on your interests while still exposing you to new ideas?
Maybe it could be topical, for example, Bitcoin is the topic, so it would show me ideas for and against bitcoin?
I don't know the answer yet but I'm researching it now for my upcoming post. I've enjoyed reading your posts on the subject and if you have any other thoughts or resources on the subject, send them my way! :)
"what if I'm not interested in the travel blogs or cooking posts" - made me laugh :-)
But yes, it's a daunting task and we're really not just talking about Steemit anymore, but about more general solutions to the content discovery challenge. Other than the suggestion below (by @codewithcheese), the concept of 'explore related' could be expanded. I think the only place where this category actually delivers it's promise is on YouTube. Their algorithms keep surprising me. On Facebook - and pretty much anywhere else - the 'related' category should really be called 'the same'. Show me more of the same. No, thanks. Show me the same topic, but a different opinion, or show me a related topic. Your topicality suggestion may be the future.
I agree totally! I want a solution as good (or better) than youtube but without giving away all of my personal information.
Thanks for your kind words. I appreciate it!
I suppose you've encountered d-tube?
Yes! I've got a few videos up already! :) I guess I meant youtube's discovery algorithms.
What about if you could become a part of 'exploration groups' whereby the number of upvotes (as opposed to the weight) by members of that group on certain posts would determine the content of a separate feed (i.e. your exploration feed). Or perhaps it wouldn't even have to be groups, it could be that as well as following an individual, you could also choose to have them as part of your exploration team, so that their upvoting activity would add to the exploration feed. Or something like that.... by putting your trust in certain users interests, you could massively widen the scope of content within this feed.....instead of just relying on what people have resteemed
You can vent good ideas by RSVP to the #beyondbitcoin #Whaletank, tomorrow is one so be quick!
I just made it in to a post and put those two tags in. Was that the right thing to do? Or by RSVP do you mean I have to reply somewhere? thanks for the suggestion :)
If you want to have you own 15 min. talk then RSVP here but better take next week since now we going to start in a couple of hours. You can listen in and ask questions and are very welcome to do so! But make sure to follow the Mumble instructions and set push to talk.
Sounds like and idea. Also sounds like a complex algorithm.
Also feel free to RSVP I really liked your analysis, you've put it very bluntly and righteously so.
I agree. Seems like tags are not enough. Reddit someone can make a subreddit and that is like a little community in of itself. So does not matter if all the members of minnows since they can easily see each others posts within the subreddit.
Good point, I really like the communities and collections features in google plus. ( communities are like a subreddit, and collections are like pinterest boards) I think these type of features could be awesome on steemit!
Many people mention the formation of 'communities', when discussing future improvement of Steemit. I think it is a natural development, and deeply rooted in humans to form groups, I might add.
Upvoted on behalf of the dropAhead Curation Team!
Your post will be Resteemed by @dropahead witness account of the dropAhead curation team!
Watch out for the #xx-votesplus tag!
By doing the above you will give us more STEEM POWER (SP) to give YOU more earnings next time.
Keep up the good work!
Most recent post: Moving #25_votes_plus to Discord
Interesting post, and all very valid points - the question for me is a) are these issues bad? and if so b) can anything be done about them?
Here is my $0.02, a bit unstructured
Retention Strategy - the world is neither easy nor fair, and that applies here too. If people come here looking for easy gains and then leave disillusioned, I don't see that as a big loss to the community. Rather, there is a form of natural selection going on, where those that are dedicated and who persevere, will over time reap rewards of some sort - maybe monetary, maybe other. Those are the people you want to retain, but that happens automatically. Of course there will be exceptions to this, both positive and negative, but if the site is able to retain a good portion of those who come here and actually contribute, then I personally have no problem with it growing a bit more slowly - it's quality over quantity
I personally am investing and will continue to do so - it would be great if more did. I guess everyone is looking for a shortcut - for me that is to use my own $ to buy steem, for others that means renting. A market has built for steem delegation and it will evolve over time. If that evolution eventually shows that the return on owning is greater than the return on renting, then people will focus on ownership - but I am not sure how to influence the market evolution, which is of course your question
I guess that many of those that are dolphins are so because they were turned from minnows into dolphins by whales, and as a result continue to support them - this makes sense and won't change. But perhaps the % of support that dolphins provide to whales will evolve, e.g if they choose to allocate a certain % of their vote to supporting new posters. I think many do this already, and the development of a multitude of groups who all support each other and help each other grow will also facilitate this. But ultimately, the real power will continue to rest with a small few - it has always been thus, not just in STEEMIT
In summary, I think all your points are valid, but I am also not 100% sure they are all necessarily bad things - they just are what they are. The site will evolve and these will evolve with it. I will not spend my time railing against the system, but I will support initiatives that I think will help. But mostly I will focus on enjoying the site and the interaction and see where it leads
Cheers
Holbein81
Ha ha - some brilliant observations in this comment of yours as well. I tend to agree with you, that these things aren't necessarily bad. I just couldn't help but put on my corporate goggles for a little while, since it differs somewhat from my everyday ego in terms of focus and observation. Also, I feel a need to quote you on this: "But ultimately, the real power will continue to rest with a small few - it has always been thus [...]". Beautiful, semi-poetic. Right up my alley.
Thanks for the reply!
It is my corporate goggles that perhaps make me a bit less sympathetic than I otherwise might be. In general, my attitude is something along the lines of 'the world is not fair, deal with it' - at least when it is warranted
Wrt power resting with the few - I don't think this will ever change, hence my view is why waste too much energy trying to change it, when you know you will ultimately fail. I would prefer to look for causes where you have a chance
Cheers
Great post - this echoed a lot of my thoughts exactly. Specifically about retention, I think a lot of the problem is misconception actually. It's actually SUPER EASY to earn STEEM right now on here. The problem is that everything is shown with a $ so people just see that their post got $0.10 rather than what it really got - $0.10 worth of STEEM. There's a big difference there.
I just wrote a post about this exact topic actually which is below. I'd appreciate your thoughts if you have time to read it. I think if people understood this the retention rate on here would be much higher.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@yabapmatt/how-to-value-steemit-reward-payouts
Cheers. I read you post. I doubt very much 1 Steem will ever be worth $4,000, but I appreciate your overall point. Thanks for reading!
Awesome post @initforthemoney!
I would love to share my experience since I’m one of those users that posted a few times and then my enthusiasm died quickly.
First of all, let me state that I didn’t join for a quick gain. I’m a freelance journalist and Steemit sounded like a dream come true: a way to surplus my income by directly sharing quality content with an audience. As you all know, newspapers are struggling big time at the moment with going digital. The number of subscribers have plummeted (and as a consequence the number of employed journalists and rates for freelancers as well).
Of course I didn’t expect to become an overnight success on Steemit. So I made quality original content. Usually I spend 16 hours or more writing one article.
Fairly fast I noticed that an article could earn 40 dollars with only 38 upvotes, or less than 2 dollars with 165 upvotes. It really matters who likes your post.
To get more upvotes I joined Minnowsupport, PAL, Steemfollower, asked others to send my articles in for curation, and joined upvote for upvote initiatives. This resulted in 4 times the number of upvotes, but only 1.3% of the earnings!
It all comes down to the whales or dolphins upvoting your post: that is the only difference I could detect between my posts (please correct me if I’m wrong). In the end, there is only a limited amount of steem (steem power, dollars etc) to divide each day. 90% goes to the miners, 10% to the content creators upvoted by the accounts with the most power.
So I can do two things:
My main income already comes from online marketing instead of journalism. With running two businesses I have to be honest and ask myself if this growth rate for Steemit posts is a viable option. In my opinion, for someone with limited amount of time who’s already spending way more time on writing than the revenue allows for (I don’t even want to calculate the hourly fee for the articles I write), the answer is no.
So, that’s where I’m at the moment with no other option than to pursue income via other means than Steemit. Or anyone wants to delegate a massive amount of Steem Power to me? :P
very valid points.
yeah its time consuming and sometimes frustrating to see no movement or big upvotes. But I guess its a long term thing. MAybe you can cut down on the time for each article and avoid spending so much tie for each one?
Another thing you can do is to schedule posts in advance with tools like streemian.com. Just an idea.
Hey Anrike,
I hear you and I absolutely understand what your're talking about. You should check out this post by @yabapmatt: https://steemit.com/steemit/@yabapmatt/how-to-value-steemit-reward-payouts
I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about that. Cheers!
Hi @initforthemoney! I appreciate the point you make in your post @yabapmatt, but hoping for an increase in value in a few years is not a viable business model for a journalist :)
There are more than 900 cryptocurrencies of which most won't be the new Bitcoin. "Over the last few years, thousands of cryptocurrencies have been created and over 90% of them have failed" according to Blockgeeks.
Talking about the value of Steemit, my biggest concern is the difference between the hook ("Make money with quality content") and the reality ("Make money in the long run (maybe), or by investing money or by getting whales to like you").
I'm afraid the payout will only become more polarized when Steemit goes mainstream; millions of users will earn nothing and a handful earns almost everything. That jeopardizes the long-term success of the platform and the possible increase (or decrease!) of the value of Steem.
Don't get me wrong, I think Steemit is a very important step to show ordinary people the possibilities of cryptos and monetising quality content. But in my opinion and experience with Steemit as a professional writer, there need to be changes to the payout system, better curation and improved findability of content for Steemit to work in the long run...
..if the goal of Steemit is to revolutionize and monetize quality content, but maybe the real goal is to invest and trade Steem, or to get Steem to buy Bitcoin. That's perfectly fine also, but then the people interested in Steemit will be traders and not writers, artists or photographers.
It simply takes too much time to make content to get Steem when you can also buy it. Even when I split an article up in shorter pieces, it still takes hours to make and I only earn Steem for a week. Then it loses its value.
Please prove me wrong Steemit! I'll stick around and follow the developments closely. Maybe a better approach is to simultaneously post content here and on a personal website eg., and monetise both. If I understand correctly you won't be killed by cheetah for posting original content simultaneously on multiple platforms, right? Has anyone tried?
I'm foggy on your point 2.
You seem to be saying that "the company" screwed up by not incentivizing people to buy directly from them, but instead to lease SP from other users.
The problem with that argument is that there is no "company" when it comes to buying STEEM. Whether you buy it on the internal market for SBD or externally for Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, you are buying it from another person. The Steem blockchain and steemit.com are both open source and as far as I can tell, there is no way we could even give money to those "directly tied into the company ecosystem" unless we sent STEEM/SBD directly to their steemit account as a tip.
Other frontends take a cut of the author rewards for posting on their site, but as far as I can tell, steemit.com deliberately doesn't do this exactly to encourage more users to come in. Imagine if you were only making 0.01 cent per post and steemit.com was taking a cut of your rewards!
So, I'm not sure what you are saying with point number 2. More people are going to invest in Steem when they realize that STEEM = Steem Power = More STEEM, but I'd reckon that the forthcoming steemit app and post-beta website will make it much easier/more apparent to do so. Remember, we are only in beta here with about 25k active users. Facebook wasn't monetized like it was when it was only accessible to college students in the beginning, either. But keeping it free and useful sure did encourage people to use it. steemit is like that, but since its a) decentralized and b) pays you to use it, it's much better than Facebook and I don't think it will have any problems growing very fast.
Nice post, thanks for sharing.
Well...you are spot on right about the 'cash flow' situation. I obviously didn't think that aspect through, before I wrote it. So thanks for a reminder on that.
What I was trying to say with number two was maybe more an observation, that people have been so accustomed to everything online being free, that they may be reluctant to invest in a phenomenon as Steemit.
That opens up another interesting question: what kind of people will constitute the main user base on Steemit in the future? Or maybe rather: could Steemit become so mainstream (mainsteem...) that people started posting babyphotos, random rants, and sharing the same type of stuff they now share on FB? Or will the platform rather appeal to 'bloggers' in a very wide sense. You seem to believe the ladder is the case, but at this point, anything could happen, I think.
Cheers!
OUTSTANDING.
I would be more OK with the whales being if they got their on their own, but many of them BUY their power. Now we are back at problem 2, if the only way to become a whale here is to buy your influence, that is going to make this a platform where rich people push their agendas over time. There are a couple whales I will continue to follow because I like their work, but I will NEVER upvote another whale. They never upvote minnows, I will save my puny vote for the minnows. Someone has to feed the baby fish, dammit, those whales are fat enough. And I trie dwhat my husband so delicately calls "giving whale head" and got a whale to notice me! He commented on my comment! His comment was how much he loved my comment! But he could not bother to hit that upvote button and let a few pennies roll my way. Would not have cost him a thing, but he saves those votes for other whales so he can get richer of his incestuous whale sex. :) So I am swearing off whale blow jobs too...
I am going along for the ride, see where this goes, but backing up to problem 1...
My BIGGEST concern is that this is a big AI project designed to keep useless eaters busy. If I do not see ACTUAL benefit coming from this platform, as in people coming together to do things more meaningful than make memes or papapepper reading his audiobooks or banfield blowing his horn... (where IS the PIZZAGATE resistance on here?!) I will find something else to do with my time. I do not know the founders. The one thing I have seen is they brought a pet on board last week and immediately gave her a reputation score of 53. She had posted 2 articles and made about a dozen comments of "thank you." Apparently she gives REALLY good whale head.
God, I hope you have a sense of humor!
"but he saves those votes for other whales so he can get richer of his incestuous whale sex." - almost made me choke on the pancake I was having for breakfast. Poetic, yet slightly tacky - I like it.
Let me address a couple of your other points:
Upvoting whales. I beg to differ here. I will upvote people who write quality content that resonates with me, no matter who they are. If I pass a stranded car on a deserted highway stretch, I'm not simply passing by, because the stranded person drives a Masarati. I'll strive to treat people equally, no matter their current situation. Also - I do follow your logic, but you could use the same logic to refrain from upvoting this post. Now, I'm not a whale - but still, what difference does 2 cents make for me right now? It's not about the money , it's an expression of opinion: "I like your stuff, show me more". We shouldn't focus on the money here, but on the content. That being said, there's nothing more pathetic than people upvoting whale posts, that are non-content bs redundancy-posts. That's wrong and may be a key problem imo.
Coming together with people. I'd like to think we can come together no matter our rep scores. For instance, I'm following you now, because I like the humor you use, and the intellectual ping-pong I think we can have. Others will follow other people who also post 'beautiful sunset over [insert]" posts. That's a good thing.
Thanks a lot for engaging in this conversation!
You have a very valid point on #1 but this is why I feel my votes are better saved for minnows, a little selfish but honest. The key here is making your name known around here. Minnows are fairly predictable for me as I am one. We look at those votes, see who is voting up our posts. We remember those names. I doubt whales even look, and even if they look and like your comment and even if you make such an impression they follow you... not the same impact long term as being the little fish who gave you a hand up when you were krill, or even swam alongside you in your minnow time. Those are people who will actually going to READ the posts, and engage in conversations based on actual common interests, not just a mutual adoration society.
Thanks YOU for engaging in intelligent conversation with me! That is what gets lost with autoupvotes and resteem bots and such, the "social media" aspect of all this.
And you did get my incredibly valuable .01 upvote ;)
Ha ha - thank you for that! I am, after all, a fellow minnow.
Your post had been curated by the @buildawhale team and mentioned here:
https://steemit.com/buildawhale/@buildawhale/buildawhale-curation-digest-9-21-17
You have received a Whaleshare upvote (@officialfuzzy) thanks to @buildawhale and @akrid. Keep up the good work and content.
Great post outlining some of the issues the Steemit community has. Of course, if more minnows invested in Steem the overall price would increase because of the shorter supply, however I believe that with time and more serious creators joining the site everyday becoming hooked, the price of Steem will inevitably increase. (or i hope so anyways ; ] )
indeed. I choose to share that same opinion :-)
I really agree with this part:
I think this is true unfortunately.
But don't do that. This of it this way, the whales don't need you to upvote them, you are actually wasting your upvote on a whale, they dont need it!
Use your upvotes better by supporting minnows and upvoting only minnows as much as possible with as much power as you can.
This makes the community really grow. Of course you want to be on a whale's map but upvoting all their stuff is not a good strategic option for minnows all together.
Don't you think?
Your article is very interesting Mr Folmann, thanks @initforthemoney for this point of view.
Thank you very much. I agree with the whales not needing our votes, however, we are told CONSTANTLY to go get those curation rewards. And where are the biggest curation rewards...? At the heels of the whales. Nonetheless, the money I've made on curation rewards so far are a just pennies. That being said, I do understand that building this system is a huge undertaking, and that it takes a lot of trial-and-error before things run smoothly. I'm not even convinced there is a perfect way of doing things, - just pointing out some observations. I'm glad that it resonated with you!
Yes super exc observations. My comment for not upvoting whales was just an observation in general as well but definitely the whales are needed to stay up top new things and great contents because they do provide this most of the times. So its important to follow and engage with them. I am saying that voting power is valuable and since it runs off temporarily people in general should use it in different places strategically and promote upvoting for new people. The feeling of getting upvotes is nice and all new people should feel it when their contents are good.
I think we just need for the value of Steem to go up like with the rest of cryptos right now. Its a bear market at the moment so we just need to be patient for a moment. It will go back up but who knows when.
Steemit is an awesome platform and community. Everything is great and will be even better as time passes.
True that the whales are needed and that most of them share content with value. I'll be very exited when steem price goes up, although I was kinda serious about the retention strategy.