RE: Steemit is suffering from negative network effect
Doesn't Twitter (and many other social media platforms) have the same "problem" you're describing here? If a new twitter account tweets out to 0 followers, they shouldn't be confused as to why no one saw or interacted with their tweet. I'm not convinced there's really a problem here. This is just how social media works. Gaining followers takes time and effort. Writing an amazing blog post on some random blog doesn't mean people will find it. Building a following matters and that isn't effectively done with "follow me too!" comments. It takes time, engagement, and real effort.
I've been blogging for 13+ years while being mostly ignored. That experience has helped me write things here people enjoy which is leading to a growing following. I don't think there's a shortcut for that process.
I do think some small UI tweaks could be made which might help a little, but ultimately this platform deals with the same chicken and egg problem of every other social platform.
Q) "How do you get a lot of followers?"
A) "Consistently write a lot of great content over a long period of time."
Q) "Who decides if the content is 'great' and how do you ensure people actually see it?"
A) "'Great' is determined by a lot of readers who find your content, usually by following you."
Q) "So... how do you get them to follow you?"
A) "..."
Nope. They don't show everything to everybody.
Getting followers isn't the only problem. The deeper problem is "how to find like-minded people and engage with them in a meaningful way". We don't need just minor UI tweaks but complete redesign.
I want to prioritize posts that are shown in my feed(s) based on rules that I set up myself. For example, "all posts with a certain tag", "all posts by a certain author", "posts that are commented by users I follow", etc.
I want to have notifications to my email so that I don't miss anything really important. I guess daily/weekly digest emails would be quite popular, too.
I want to get notified for discussions in my posts and in posts that I have commented. Currently I am missing a lot of interesting discussions because I just don't stumble upon them. I can't take part if they are practically invisible.
Currently it just takes too much time and effort to find and read all the good posts. If we get even more users on the platform, the situation will become horrible and I don't think I will spend as much time here anymore.
When signal-to-noise ratio is getting worse, the solution is to find ways to strengthen the signal automatically, not just force users to suffer from all that noise.
"Great content" is subjective. What is great for one is not necessarily great for another. The system needs to allow people with different tastes to find themselves, form communities and interact in a meaningful way. Now all content is just dumped for everybody to see.
Very well said.
But many social media platforms started that way. It took a while for Facebook to implement algorithmic filtering and for Twitter to follow with the same. I agree with the final goal, but I'm patient with the time needed to get there.
Thanks again for a detailed, valuable comment. I'm glad you found this reply (even with all of Steemit's shortcomings) worth replying to. :)
I'm just trying to raise awareness of this problem to make sure it will get prioritized properly.
Based on the latest hardfork proposal, Steemit Inc wants to prioritize getting as much new users as they can. I don't think that's very good plan. It won't go well for anybody, not for the old or the new users.
The first priority should be to develop the UI/UX to the level that can handle millions of new users so that everybody will be happy. After that has been taken care of, we can start to talk about user acquisition.
I appreciate your concern, but that doesn't appear to be the path other successful examples took. Growth is key, more so then every person having a perfect experience. If growth took off (even without improved UI), Steemit signups would be crippled. Seems to me that's a higher priority over UI. But guess that's the backend programmer side of me talking. :)
I'm looking at this from the business perspective. It doesn't make much sense to try to get us much people to join as possible, if we know that their experience will suck. The users retention rate will be low and the brand of Steemit will suffer.
It would be much better to focus on the user experience first and let new users buy their own accounts. That would make the whole ecosystem much more valuable faster than focusing only user signups.
Have to disagree with you there. Facebook and Twitter didn't grow to millions of users by requiring an initial investment. I think requiring an up-front investment would kill growth.
The value of connected systems often comes from the network effect and who can get it faster. Craig's List isn't a great UX/UI, but they have the network effect lead. Steemit needs exponential growth in order to have a chance at overtaking the incumbents. Yes, some will sign up, have a bad experience, and leave. It's a numbers game. How many will we lose based on how many will we keep? That should be how we prioritize things. If we get the network effect value, those who left will eventually come back, hopefully to a better UI by then.
Steem is totally different ecosystem. First of all, this is a blockchain and there is a cost for creating a new account. FB and Twitter can create as much accounts as they like, basically without any cost. We can't.
Just look at how much money people are throwing in the blockchain world. A Steem account is valuable cryptoproperty, it's not only a login name to a social media site. We should let our users know this, rather than acting like a Steem account doesn't have any value at all.
And of course I understand how important it is to have way to get accounts for those who, for some reason, don't want to or can't buy an account. In an earlier post I proposed that SBD should be replaced with Steem account token (one SAT gives a right to create one account) and users could earn them as rewards. That would make the system more viral and decentralized.
Read the OP again. ;-)
I know very well the network effect. But it's too simplistic to think that only thing that matters is the number of users. It can turn to a negative thing, too. That leads to chaos.