Giving Steemit A Chance : Looking At The Big Picture
There have been a lot of murmurs, complaints and to some extend unhappiness among the Steemians at
Steemit. For the content providers, there have been heated discussions amongst the minnows, dolphins, orcas and whales. One of the major issues is the reward given to and the power yielded by whales. The discussion on whether the rewards are fairly allocated is unlikely to subside in the near future and may even escalate further. Issues on fairness are by nature complex and difficult to resolve.
There are also frustrations faced by new and emerging writers that their posts only managed to reach limited audience. I have to admit, that I too am guilty of being negative and have written this post The Frustration Of Minnows At Steemit . There have also been talks of minnows leaving the Steemit platform and that user retention rates are falling although I have yet to come across any concrete numbers.
That being said, it must be pointed out that are various initiatives such as feature authors, curie, robinhoodwhale which are aimed at helping new and emerging authors to reach a wider audience. The question is the effectiveness of these initiatives in meeting their objectives.
More recently there had been discussions about sock puppets accounts as well as debate on some of the posts are actually written by humans or robots.
There are also concerns about whales powering down and how that would affect the price of Steem. Whales are seen as one of the major beneficiaries of Steemit. Therefore when they power down, some people question whether this indicate that the whales themselves do not believe in the long term potential of Steemit. To be realistic, one has to realize that even whales have bills to pay and mouth to feed. While still on the subject about the price of Steem, the main concern of investors is the current low price of Steem. As such the investors are now deciding whether they should stay invested in Steem or pull out and put their money in an alternative investment.
As a content provider, although I do not invest my money in Steemit, I do invest a lot of my time and effort to produce quality content. In fact the major part of my free time is spent at this platform. Every stakeholder of Steemit has an important role to play and infighting among the various stakeholders is certainly not going to help. Therefore as I reflect on the above issues and put things into perspective, I urged all stakeholders to give Steemit a chance.
Steemit is new and is still at the beta stage of its developments. Therefore as with anything new, there are bound to be hiccups. Steemians need to acknowledge this fact and give Steemit a chance to resolve these hiccups. While some of the issues raised are valid, Steemit should be given more time to come up with solutions to address these issues. It must be realized that some of the issues for example those pertaining to fairness of rewards are very tricky and a lot of thoughts and efforts are needed to study these issues thoroughly before coming up with solutions. In these circumstances, it is impossible to please everyone.
I would like to ask all the stakeholders these two questions. "What do you think is the potential of Steemit in the long run? How do you see Steemit in 5 or 10 years time? To throw some light on the above questions, let us take a look at some of the current or proposed initiatives for Steemit.
-Steem Q This is a decentralized video platform for Steem
-Steem Sports Watch your favorite sports here online anytime.
-Imaxess The First Hospital In The World To Accept Steem
-Steem Monitor Monitor Steem blockchain mobile application for witnesses and other users
-Peerhub Market Place We can buy goods and services here using Steem dollars
My personal opinion is that Steemit will have great potential and future. My prediction is more and more people by the hundred thousands will join Steemit. Therefore I am here for the long haul and need to adjust my expectations and my perspective accordingly. In the short term, I am giving Steemit the chance to improve itself and to serve all stakeholders. I believe that my belief and trust in Steemit will be tremendously rewarded. It is said that the one who laugh last will have the last laugh and I hope that I will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Steemly yours
Charles
One of the problems is that whales and dolphins need to spend some time sowing the seeds for minnows to grow into whales and dolphins,
upvotes are good for building rep, but they do not meet the new Steemers' expectations of remuneration for participation. Unmet expectations result in disappointment and failure to participate, i.e, leaving Steemit.
If a post or a comment is worth responding to via comment or upvote, and the whale/dolphin can adjust his voting reward, he should leave a minimum on 1 cent.
Looking at some posts and comments in the new post feed, and the upvotes and who upvoted them, it seems that some heftier names are leaving monetarily worthless upvotes. Note I don't say worthless, as they do increase the rep of the poster.
However, the newbie doesn't understand that, sees their contribution is unrewarded, and goes back to Facebook where the likes coming from friends and family are worth something in their minds.
You've done a great job of explaining that the platform is still young, and I agree with you that in the long term, Steemit is going to get big, but I think that the more invested stakeholders need to invest more effort into growing the user base.
I hope that the new users will not be too disappointed. Although their posts may not earn much initially, if they write good content regularly, their followers will increase and so will their reputation. I agree that more needs to be done. I was hoping that they will look at the big picture and stay for the long haul.
People overreact to volatility, especially when they are uncertain how the system functions. I'm betting that people who sell now will be kicking themselves in five years. I say concentrate on making good content. Even if the system does fail, you can port it elsewhere having only lost the few minutes it takes to repost your original content.
Yes, people do sometimes overreact. But if they leave, the loss is theirs.
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Post included in: Steemprentice Spotlight for September 28th
Thank you very much @virtualgrowth
In Steemit we trust^^ - good article, got my upvote!
Thank you.