Why Steemit is The Future: a Comparison of Steemit, Reddit and Quora

I'm an active user of all three platforms and have been working on this comparison for a few days, also involving some friends with opinions on the matter.

I'll try to be as impartial as possible, because often the discussions on Steemit tend to be heavily biased pro-Steemit. (the #circlejerk phenomenon)

Here's what came to our minds:

1) Anonymity

Reddit is completely anonymous, unless chosen otherwise.
Quora can be anonymous, but this significantly reduces usability.
Steemit heavily favours "verification" with selfies, social media profile links, plagiarism research and reverse-image-searching.

What does this mean?
Freedom of speech is greater on Reddit. Bad karma? Just create a new profile!
The Quora non-anonymous policy filters out NSFW content as well as illegal/grey area subjects. They also actively downvote humorous answers, resulting in a much more "serious" environment.

As for Steemit, there's more pressure to be politically correct. As can be seen by the waves of circlejerk-topics posted continuously. This is strongly amplified by the expected whales-upvoting of pro-Steemit content, leading to a mix between groupthink and fear of missing out (#fomo).

2) Userbase

Here Reddit is the obvious winner, with Quora second and Steemit a long way to go.
Reddit is also a lot older than Quora, partly explaining the large delta.

In any case, we think Steemit could use a few huge marketing campaigns to kickstart the influx of new Steemians. An idea would be to promote a "4th-of-July"-style give-away more actively than was the case now. Stunts like these cause spikes of early-adopter conversion.

3) Target audience

Reddit thrives on social news and entertainment.
Quora focuses on more serious questions, and knowledge in general.
Steemit is still developing a proper atmosphere, searching for an identity. It will be interesting to see how this develops!

4) Links vs. questions vs. original content

While Reddit discussions are often based on a link to another website, Quora focuses on questions and Steemit heavily favours original content. Several Steemians have publicly declared to actively seek out plagiarism to downvote said posts.

We're not sure how this should be handled. While original content is understandably important to the Steemit concept, modern social network users expect to be able to share anything they like. This will most likely be the source of discussions for some time to come.

5) User Experience

Reddit is completely topic-driven. It is possible to follow users, but this is a tiny minority of use-cases. Steemit is very similar, with the exception of well-known whales and devs who get tons of upvotes in anticipation of even more upvotes, all for the possible "curation reward".

Quora is more user-driven: it's a consequence of the anti-anonimity atmosphere, resulting in Quora celebrities (both actual celebrities and Quora Top Writers) having a large following on the platform.

As for the interface, Reddit is cluttered. Quora is clean and functional, the winner for this subject. Then we have Steemit with a very minimal look and functionality; something we expect to improve as more features are released (messaging, profile pages, market place, following users, ...).

As for the "search"-function, Quora wins hands-down, with Reddit and Steemit sharing second place.

6) Moderation/curation/upvoting

On Quora, moderation is solely left to the Quora employees. We can imagine scalability becoming a problem when its userbase further grows.

The Steemit curation system is very well thought-out. As you should be familiar with it, I won't discuss it in detail here. But there's one issue we think is necessary to address: the perception that the Steemit whales decide what's wrong and right in the Steemit world. This is a concern, as it could prevent user adoption if this perception starts spreading; or if this "attaches" to the Steemit brand. Worth a thorough analysis, in any case.

Reddit can have different rulesets per subreddit, and is thus a very flexibele system.

7) Summary

Quora is an evolved form of the "serious" part of Reddit. Both are very popular communities, but they vastly differ in what makes them powerful.

Steemit has the potential to become the evolved version of both Quora and Reddit, much as a result of its unique curation/rewards concept. However, there are some issues that need to be addressed, preferably as soon as possible. In any case before mass user adoption.

Feedback/ideas/random thoughts are more than welcome!

Thanks for reading,
r4fken