Why Steemit needs to evolve as soon as possible
Steemit has two main hurdles preventing it from main stream adoption at this stage. On a top level that is, there are many more if I went into more details.
Now I'm not saying it doesn't have a future, just that it's at a point where it needs structural change, at least in one way.
1.) Delivering on its core promise of generating income for content creators/curators
Today most new users to Steemit are coming in as they've heard from friends or read somewhere online that you can make money by generating or curating content. And hey, who wouldn't love that! The "we are constantly creating free content on Facebook, Instagram and similar platforms, only to benefit large corporations" line is fairly easy to sell to people, thus convincing them to come join or at least check out Steemit.
Now in the trending topics, a new user can see seriously lucrative money waiting to be dispersed. You check the content and often see there's nothing about it that would strike you as exceptional. You think to yourself, hey I'm capable of producing something similar, better, worse, whatever it is. The thought is that if that post "deserves" to make a few hundred bucks or a thousand, then your content should get something as well (and not talking about 0.04$).
Now, perhaps you're lucky and it does ramp up some "money". That's great, you're most likely converted and instantaneously a firm proponent of the platform. However the more content a new user produces and the more time is spent on that content production, the higher the expectation of being rewarded will be. If the reward doesn't follow, a sense of resentment and of being wronged will follow.
In that case the user will eventually give up on content production - at least a long form one, unless there is a second factor to keep him on the platform. That second factor is the same as on any other social media platform - content quality and user experience.
2.) Providing quality content that is easily discovered
Although the community here is pretty much in full time praise of the content, there is nothing in particular that sets Steemit apart from other social media platforms, forums, blogs, when it comes to quality...
On the contrary, it is often inferior and it's hard to find what you like or who you would want to follow. The incentive based nature of the platform does give a reason to the user to stick around longer and try harder, but the thing is, it's not a good model. People should be instantaneously attracted to a social media platform, not try hard to like it.
Steemit's user interface feels much like Reddit, except that it is more chaotic and not neatly compartmentalized. Unlike Reddit the "channels" or in this case "topics" of course don't have admins to moderate them. Now all this freedom from moderation and censorship sounds great, but again in reality it doesn't make for a rewarding user experience.
The undemocratic nature of Steemit's voting system can prevent content, which masses would normally make viral in other channels to find its way to the top. The result of this voting system is that what is trending is what a group of influential users chose to endorse with their votes.
Further on unlike Reddit, Steemit's "topic" tags assign the content to be displayed in all the maximum 5 streams the user designates. Switching between them, a user often finds a lot of repeated posts there, which defeats the purpose of having different channels.
I understand this is a smart way to populate streams in the early days of the platform, when there is not much content produced yet, but I would argue that the feasibility of this model has already starting to become obsolete now.
The most widely used "topics" could use a restriction in the near future, where if a user chooses to assign content under it, that would be it and it would only appear there. Meaning a topic with a high volume of newly created posts would only allow the user to post there and not simultaneously appear in 4 extra topics.
Reddit's moderators are generally not some malicious bastards, they make sure the channels/subreddits keep to what they were created for and hence remove content that doesn't belong there. Meaning that when you go to one of the subreddits you'll actually get to read stuff about the topic.
Basically, content wise and structure wise, it doesn't translate to a better experience, if it did, we would have already seen a massive exodus from Reddit, considering Steemit feel similar.
The second part of the platform (the home tab) which is different to Reddit, is the same as can be found elsewhere, but mostly resembles the stream on Twitter. At the moment this is the most orderly and useful tab available to a user, but only if they stick around long enough to discover and follow users they genuinely like.
And that’s the second part where it fails in regards to content quality, it just isn’t as easy to find people to follow as it is elsewhere, in fact it’s plain hard and the only thing that keeps people at it is the smell of money.
On Facebook your feed will be a mash of actual people you know and whatever else you are into – be it news, celebrities, funny cats, religion…
On Instagram you’ll be following people you know and others that produce the highest quality in their respective field – from fitness, food, cars, nature to again celebrities.
Same with the other big shots, it’s just extremely easy to get to content you want, since there is such a big volume of users there and the competition is huge, meaning you get to follow seriously the best content producers.
Each of those platforms is technically designed to bring the best user experience for its dedicated use – photos, videos,… So are their discovery engines. Except Facebook, I think everybody can agree that search is absolute shit, always has been.
With the high interest in Steemit that is currently out there, the platform needs to evolve as soon as possible in order to retain new users. Users might let go of the money making part, but only if the second part of the equation is still there for them – high quality and easily discoverable content.
Other issues
Everything else is in one way or the other connected to the main two premises. Of course a major much discussed topic is the whale, dolphin, minnow environment. I mean seriously, like we don't have enough inequality in our day to day lives, this "groundbreaking" social media platform was designed from the get go to ensure huge inequalities. The white paper is basically one huge neocapitalist wet dream.
One great aspect of Steemit in my opinion is that it's a great social experiment to observe or study, both in sense of little guys as well as the big guys trying to mold the platform in one way or the other. Actually the part about the bots is a great experiment in its own right.
Somebody should start writing a Steemit book, highlighting its history and evolution. The splash of the whale and the cry of the minnow ;)
This post is prompted by my developing thoughts on the matter of Steemit's long term viability as a popular social media platform:
#1 - Why Steemit needs to evolve as soon as possible
#2 - Why earning 1USD a day on Steemit can mean a world of difference
#3 - The future of marketing on Steemit is one hell of a prospect
Very well written post @koromandia! I have no real experience of social media before joining steemit so I can't really give an informed comment on the subject but I myself see positives and negatives in the platform though I must be honest and say I find it pretty easy to use as someone new to blogging and a little technologically back to front.
I'd be keen to see what others have to say though so I will happily resteem this for you.
I look forward to seeing what else you have to say in future. Hope your day is going well!
Really? No social media experience before this platform? That's very interesting, never thought of Steemit as a first time entry point for people to get on social media!
In terms of it as a blogging/writing tool, it's actually done pretty well. I've been using wordpress for several years and Steemit is very easy to use. Basic formatting of text can quickly be grasped with the use of Markdown and I really like the ease of importing images. YouTube embedding is completely straightforward. All in all, they've done a good job in this aspect and if there's something to fix, it's really just small details.
I'm glad that @tonyr re-steemed this, or I would not have seen it.
I think this thought of yours is a real gem, and is ultimately desperately needed here on Steemit.
Steemit needs more readers, people who are not here so much to write and post, but more to find good quality content. And they don't have to entirely "let go of the money making part," but they can just have slightly lower expectations than those who spend hours and days creating quality content.
Not everyone is a great author. Not everyone really wants to write a lot. But almost everyone can enjoy good writing, and tell their friends about it. Steemit desperately needs new users who come on board, read, appreciate, and benefit from the best of the content creators. They can earn Steem as curators who help separate the wheat from the chaff.
😄😇😄
For the long term viability of the platform I couldn't agree more - readers are crucial.
Now for lowering their expectations... Time spent on creation and quality of output does not equal rewards at this stage and that's the big issue currently. Will enough power users, whales or whatever we choose to call them decide that the long term gains outweigh the short term ones? Let's see.
In the real world it usually doesn't work. You can have billionaire philanthropists spending all their money on issues, but if the underlying problems are not fixed on a systemic level, the issues don't disappear, they are just somewhat mitigated.
And that is what we are witnessing right now with various interests of power users being played out - Long versus short term gains.
Exactly, that's that other part of the equation necessary for mainstream adoption if a user fails to monetize their own contributions. That's why it is so crucial to surface the very best content.
You have a point. I am trying hard to find some worthy post to upvote, not easy.
You did a good job though, keep on writing :-)
Thanks for writing this. Tunnel vision in the Steemit project isn't something users like myself enjoy having. It's difficult to avoid at times. For me the "join for the money, stay for the community" bit is true. I already have higher quality content from those that I follow than I had on Facebook. You know how when they monetized YouTube how the content improved? Eventually you ended up with daily and weekly highly entertaining channels because these people were making a living doing it. The same may happen with Steemit. @PapaPepper is one example of someone who's working to produce quality content . @inber is a fun artist who uploads her work a couple of times a day. For me the experience is better than I get anywhere else, but I'm also an investor and phycologically I can't say how much that biases me. Eventually adding filters and ways to organize your content on your page will be nice. Also ways to easily find and follow the top Steemit artists for example..that would be nice . It's still in beta and is an amazing experiment. Projects like Steem Park and the yearly Steem Fest are fun. There are also a lot of Steemit meetups sprouting up which you don't often find in Social Media. You have a lot of valid points. I think eventually, the $$ needs to no longer be the main selling point.
Well the thing with YouTube monetization is that the path was always quite clear - the better the content, the more chances you'll have in succeeding. Steemit to a new user looks either random or rigged and that's a turn off. There simply isn't a straightforward way to understand why seemingly similar content has such wildly different valuation. Not without spending a considerable amount of time in trying to understand how the ecosystem works.
And once users do understand, well that's even worse. They quit, start sucking up, begging, finding ways to play the system, create scores of bots that are either trying to maximize profits for themselves, stabilize the system, go on righteous crusades. And of course some also just go about creating/consuming content they want, without bothering about the details behind it all :)
I mean let's see if all of this combined somehow leads to an end result where quality prevails, but I personally don't see the set up automatically pointing to it.
I do completely agree with you that the platform already created proponents that no other social media has ever seen. I mean come on, who ever went to the streets handing out flyers about how awesome Facebook or Twitter is. That's some serious enthusiasm there :).
It would be interesting to conduct a study on the effect of early success or failure in earning on Steemit, to see what effect it has on retention of users. One for the bots interested in long term flourishing of the platform ;)
Haha true. Part of the hope is that virtually no censorship (only through down-voting) and more individual power will be seen as sexy. In the beginning only the whales had real power. That slowly shifted (in large part) to people who continued blogging even when the market tanked. They are Steemit famous now. Some should be and some I'm embarrassed about lol. It's really a wait and see game for me. Again, thanks for the post.
some real concerning things in this blog man, to think i had the same conversation with a friend earlier. Someone once said one day the whales will be the mellows ans vice versa. And that keeps me going. I strongly anticipate a change as well but i guess time will tell.
p.s like haw you lead by example i.e just one tag
It's about the same likelihood as expecting political and economic change in the country you live in. The parameters are the same. You have the wealthy class and you have the others. The wealthy class is the one that holds power as was always the case throughout history.
Now what makes them distribute wealth or power? The fear of system collapse and loss of their position. As long as it is perceived that their position is safe, the rules of the game don't change. When they start fearing for their position is when they start making amendments to the status quo. That doesn't mean a complete change in the structure, but usually only enough to appease the masses below them.
Why am I contrasting this to our societies? Because voting power is based on your financial worth, same as in the real world of lobbying for policies.
While we are voters on other social media platforms when it comes to liking posts, we are lobbyists on Steemit. There is no voting going on here, only lobbying.
So true. Lets just hope for the best i guess