Bringing celebrities on board.
We're coming up on 100,000 users. Although many of those are bots and squatters, and a lot have gone quiet, I want to reflect on some different numbers.
Jeff Berwick, Larken Rose and Charlie Shrem are big hitters here, they each brought in hundreds of new users and we're all glad to have them, but none of my meatspace friends know or care who they are.
What happens when Edward Snowden comes on board? He has 2.3 million twitter followers. If he tweeted a link to his new steemit profile, and it was seen by 10% of his followers, and 10% of those had a look around and decided to jump aboard, we'd have 23,000 new users overnight, more than tripling our userbase instantly. Julian Assange or Kim Dotcom could each have a similar impact.
British pop singer Lily Allen currently has 5.85 million twitter followers. She notoriously turned down an offer of hundreds of thousands of bitcoins to perform an online gig in 2009, and openly regrets it to this day, I'm sure she won't want to miss another crypto opportunity.
She has a love/hate relationship with social media and recently announced her intention to take a break, in part because of random trolls; something a reputation based system is great at weeding out.
Producer Akon has 5.9 million twitter followers, and claims that bitcoin will change the world.
Ashton Kutcher enjoys a turbulent relationship with twitter; he's also a venture capitalist with stakes in multiple crypto startups.
Social media is a two edged sword for those in the public eye. It lets them reach their fans in an intimate way, but it lets random strangers speak directly to famous people; an opportunity some very nasty characters have abused.
Steemit is already an excellent forum for celebrities to share their thoughts with their fans; and I'm sure many will realise this in time, but what if we could make a minor change to achieve a major benefit?
I'd like to suggest that the 'Submit a post' page allow the author to set a minimum reputation level for commenters.
The default is 25, but Woody Harrelson might only want comments from those over 40; or Edward Snowden from those over 55.
Most celebrities like to be available to their fans, and those with an egalitarian streak don't want the average Joe to miss out.
What I was really trying not to do was have elitist tickets. I didn’t want people to pay $170 and get front row tickets and a meet and greet. I hate that shit. The moment you allow a kid with a rich father to have more things than a kid with a poor father I think that’s shit. It’s great that $99 is affordable, but I wanted it to be the same price for everyone. - Ed Sheeran
Anyone can build a reputation on steemit, for free, and quickly lose it if they're irresponsible. That makes it a fantastic forum for high profile individuals to reach and build their fanbase without drowning in anonymous hatred; so let's start poaching them.
Have a fantastic day
Really good idea. I will be adding it to the Steemit Wish List.
I have one big concern with this though. A lot of users with low reputation are not trolls, and are just new users starting out. Many users "work their way up" by finding posts that interest them and writing good comments. If we don't allow them to comment until they reach a certain reputation, then they may never be able to climb.
What I would propose is this:
Allow users to block commenters that have a reputation score below 25. This would exclude anyone who has been flagged for spamming/trolling/etc., but new users would still be able to interact.
There is still the problem of trolls just signing up for new accounts, and trolling until they get flagged. If they know what they are doing too, they could also sign up for a new account and start again. Its not super easy to do, but it can be done.
The alternative to this would be allow users with a high enough reputation to set a little bit higher bar. Maybe 30? This would filter out new signup trolls, and hopefully new users will still be able to make their way to 30 easily enough on other posts. It could even turn into an incentive to 'earn' a higher reputation, to get the ability to interact with the celebrities.
The basic idea behind this is really good. The main thing will be to figure out the right balance between preventing trolls and not inadvertently preventing new users from leveling their way up.
Most users will set it as low as possible, to generate comments and visibility/reach.
I imagine it would mostly be set higher by high profile users, and maybe really hot women.
I can't see it being an impediment to boosting reputation, particularly as that can be generated by posting content as well as comments.
That's a really good point. As you mentioned in our other thread/conversation, most people are going to want as many people interacting on their posts as possible, so they probably will not use it. You have me convinced :)
There is one part that I sightly disagree with though. I actually encourage new people that join to not post actual posts until they have been on the site for a while and gained reputation/followers. The reason is because it is very frustrating to spend hours writing a post and then have nobody see it. I encourage people to read posts and comment for a while first before attempting their first post.
I could have used that advice a month ago :)
Hi Tim. Thought it was time to revisit this discussion.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@mattclarke/power-to-the-poster-and-some-safe-shallows-for-the-noobs