Using SteemAnalytics: Are We Discussing the Right Things?
Thanks go out to @maruitso for steemanalytics.it! Let us use this service to dissect what we are talking about, in comparison to what is discussed by a larger population of users such as on Reddit.
What is Reddit Talking About?
That depends on how we look at it, do we define what they want to talk about by subreddits with the most subscribers?
Or do we define it as what is most actively posted on right now?
Either way we have some lists of topics, and we can see what the activity levels of those topics are like here!
Using SteemAnalytics, Are We Posting Enough About What Regular People Want ?
So lets take 10 top categories from Reddit by subscriber
We do discuss photography, but in general discussion level of the other topics does not seem to match what redditors subscribe to see at least. Lets not look at this by subscriber, lets look at this by topics of conversation right now though:
As with before it seems as though many of the areas of popular discussion on Reddit just aren't given much life on steemit at the moment! What are we talking about though?
If you recall the larger holders made a conscious decision to stop rewarding those who were talking about the platform as much a week or two back, and as you can see by the trends in the graph above, they were true to their word, those topics have drastically reduced in popularity. However our topics of discussion are still not in line with those of larger sites like Reddit (and certainly not with Facebook).
Take Away: we still cater to a very different crowd on steemit, this is after all a cryptocurrency based social media site, so it makes sense that the things discussed here would be very different from say on Reddit or Facebook. That aside, if the goal here is indeed mass adoption perhaps we want to keep these sorts of categorical topics in the backs of our mind as we vote for content. They say if you build it, they will come. Maybe we just need a bit more time to build the right communities to attract the masses.
I think the community will naturally evolve over time. As voting power is distributed over time the topic diversity should grow as well. People that may have written about steemit initially might have other interests they wish to support as they become more influential. What I really wonder is how fast is this process. Will it months or years? And how much faster can we make it by by actively promoting diverse posts.
Lafona...you are such an underappreciated badass...
I was going to respond til i saw your response..
Thanks Fuzzy!
You are most certainly correct, especially if one uses the history of other sites as our guide. Reddit for instance was obsessed with talking about reddit for the first few years of its existence, there were a high number of posts where people just put up an image of someone on a bus on reddit on their phone, or someone in a class on reddit. Reddit sightings were a huge topic of discussion.
It didn't evolve into something more like it is today, with a wider variety of topics discussed until a few years had passed, and largely until after Digg, crashed and burned. The process seems to take years, however people taking an active role in promoting diverse topics may make it faster. Its a great question as to how much faster, and is actually an interesting social experiment.
Dont forget blockchain tech in general is goig to be a big one as steem evolves and it will helo us teach everyone here about blockchain basics that will necessarily need discussion in the community.
You are right! The point of this post isn't that what we are discussing here now is unimportant, it is important and necessary for new users to get full use out of steemit! Rather, that we should be talking about this stuff, and also focusing on increasing conversation on topics that non crypto people want to read.
I really wanted to use this cool tool that @maruitso developed, to graphically show what we are focused on, and maybe what we focus a bit too little on. :)
A lot faster I believe.New users might lose interest when the trending page is full of internal discussions.
This is where the follow function comes in handy, you can look through areas you like and follow people producing the type of content you enjoy the most. Maybe it won't be on the front trending page, but not making it there doesn't mean the post doesn't have any quality. Depending only on the front page as a source for quality material is going to be problematic. Its like reading Reddit but only looking at r/all. I hardly find the things I like to read trending there.
The thought I take from this is that we need more science talk in here. Where are all the nerds and geeks at?
You're looking at one, its what I post about. However there are a lot of topics we could use more discussion on! Science sure, but what about tech? Considering the people here you would think tech would be discussed massively!
We aren't taking enough time to talk about what normal people talk yet, in my opinion. That's what I'm hoping more adaption and more users will bring to the platform.
The question is do users bring the conversations, or do conversations bring the users? Do we get more adoption because the content is already being posted here? I'm interested to watch how this all unfolds!
Hehe, I'd like to answer this with: "Why not both?!" :)
Simply Great Information and Presentation
Thanks!
Good info - and yet I question your interpretation of the data. Personally, if Steemit were any more like Reddit than it already is, I would never have joined.
More to the point, though, the Steem analytics you point to appear to me to suggest only that an increasingly diverse array of subjects are being given attention here, and that the dominant perspectives here are different from the dominant perspectives on Reddit.
Thank you for your input! I appreciate you sharing your interpretation of the data as well!