Low user retention means Steemit never really grows
I want to post about a couple problems with Steemit that I think are worrying. Reading this post from December by @miniature-tiger I started to realize that user retention is a big issue here. I'd noticed that some of my cooler plankton friends had gone silent and I think that's pretty normal here, unfortunately.
Now there are two main reason that I can see:
A big load of new users flooded the system when bitcoin was booming and they became disappointed when the price went down and they weren't growing quickly enough.
People come to Steemit for the SBD with dreams of making it big and unless you are a well-known youtube crypto blogger who can bring a ready-made audience, it ain't gonna happen. So after a month, maximum, people give up and leave.
I don't know the numbers but basically at 10% we have an active user base of approx. 70,000 users, but I'd wager 70% of those at least are new arrivals who will quickly leave.
So that brings me to my second issue which is about content and “proof of brain”. Now @darkflame has a cool post on proof of brain, but I think he/she has a different take on it than I do. The major topic on Steemit is cryptocurrency and true believers stick around looking for the next innovation. But with all the voting bots and buying votes, getting good return on a post is really about gaming the system and learning how to play the bots. Then when a post has a lot of attention, many other users pile in on it for curation rewards. But the content itself DOESN'T MATTER at all. The vast majority of Steemians are in it for a quick SBD or two, but actual “proof of brain” IMHO is severely lacking.
With such low user retention and readership shifting constantly, how can anyone who is looking to grow their blog based on actual content and interaction in the traditional content model stand a chance of success? So it occurs to me, here I am two months into my Steemit experience and this post is probably pretty typical. User posts 10+ times about various topics, gets a little Steem back and then starts writing shining posts about issues with the system. One month more maximum and they go silent. We shall see what happens to this blog. I hear EOS is developing a social network platform as well, which is troubling considering Dan Larimer started Steemit. Oh well life goes on. This is like my 5th blog, so we shall see …
Being two months in. I completely agree with you hope the message gets received by the majority
I think a bit of a problem is that people can't comment on posts without being a steemit user. This means your posts are playing to a small global community - probably about, as you say, 70,000. A small town. I guess it depends what any poster is here for, and where their natural audience is.
And not even 70,000 because 40,000+ of that figure are just people passing through .. the number of dead accounts far outweighs the active ones. Now that might be true on blogspot and Medium as well, but as you mentioned, at least there random readers from outside the system can "like" and comment, I think. Number of views counts for nothing here so why should I promote my posts on twitter and FB, etc? Its very frustrating.
I think we should be rewarded here for number of views and also be given some incentive to stay longer. Perhaps gaining certain reputation thresholds would unlock SBD rewards. As it is now the bots are taking the lion's share, and they even get curation back, so it feels like a major pump and dump, or even like a pyramid scheme. Cryptocurrencies are trying to feel relevant, but mostly they are just enriching key inside players, or so it seems.
I guess each of us has to decide what we want from here. I'm not earning much, but I didn't expect to. I wanted to learn more about the blockchain and cryptocurrencies and develop my writing. In addition, I have had some other benefits that I didn't expect like becoming involved in two communities which provide support for other things I want achieve in life.
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