Antonopoulos and Steem
In a recent(?) talk bitcoin-guru Andreas Antonopoulos was asked about Steem. He is not very familiar with the platform, but had pretty good perspective.
I get suspicious when I hear the sales pitch that I "will make thousands and thousands of dollars very quickly and easily." I don't like that it revolves around making money fast instead of focusing on the quality of content or building a community organically.
When the pitch is about money, some people will get suspicious like Antonopoulos. Marketing points of Steemit have been too much about money making and not enough about real community building.
If we want to create real network effect, we need to get lots of users onboard. Real, active users who login to Steemit every day.
I've suggested couple of times that a good viewpoint is to think how Steemit should work if there were no money involved.
This is build on top of a blockchain, which means this is uncensorable and resilient publishing platform. Why not market Steemit with that in mind? There are lots of people out there who are pissed off for Twitter, Facebook and other platforms for manipulative algorithms etc. We should try to get them all here.
But there should be also better features for community building. It's really difficult now, because Steemit is just one big community. Building smaller subcommunities is hard and that should be addressed. Fortunately it's only a UI problem, the Steem blockchain doesn't necessarily need any upgrades (although something could be done, like ownable tags)
Another reason for lessening the focus on money is that when the price goes down, all the users will leave who came because they wanted to make shitload of money. Of course it's nice to tell everybody how much money can be made when the price is high, but there should be another marketing perspective when the price isn't as high.
It's all about creating network effect. To achieve that, we need lots of users. To get new users and retain old ones, we need to make Steemit so great to use that people would like it even without any monetary incentives.
The Steem community should listen to Antonopoulos on this matter. He knows what he is talking about.
Thanks for @ekitcho for posting the video of Antonopoulos.
here is another point : trying to convince people with blockchain..
we will never sell a blockchain product because there 's blockchain in it, it will just confuse people who does not know about I.T and trying to figure out what it mean.
your grand ma must just be able to use it and she would use it because of the product, because she can see her children pictures on facebook..
she will never do because it's blockchain based.
Does facebook try to sell they use MySQL or whatever, to their users ? Does Amazon explain how ecommerce, and e-payment works ? No, because they focus on user experience, content, and interaction between people, to get huge user retention..
Check all presentation / interview of steemit/steem, its obviously trying to convince people by its technology, less by the real product/user experience. It's good for early crypto/blockchain adopters, maybe.. clearly not for Mass adoption
Also the fact the money is in the center of the marketing strategy is obviously a bad point. This is why many people call it a pyramid/ponzi scheme, but it will mostly bring people and make them leave for the same reason (because they will be frustrated wining 0.003$) and because they came for this reason... which is a wrong argument for sure
We definitely need REAL business developer, positioning/marketing expert, and work on the model / managing the inflation
thanks for the share,
andreas is the real man :)
Yeah. There are some cryptoenthusiasts who can be persuaded by saying that this is build on top of a blockchain. But that's not a big crowd.
Most people don't care about the underlaying technology. They just want something useful. This is why I'm quite skeptical of the "let's put everything on the blockchain" attitude. Blockchain is great for some things, but not for everything. For most services, centralized database is fine.
I see mostly two problems now: lack of focus in marketing and slow development of UI/UX.
Marketing focus needs trial and error: what are the niches we should go after first? I have my guess what might work, but in the end everything has to be tested.
User experience has to be adjusted to encourage more community building. Also notifications will help to retain users and make them more active.
Very good points.
I used to work at a job where we sold smart phones. I started at the job during a time when not everybody owned a smart phone yet.
A lot of people attempted to sell people the smart phones by going into great detail about their dual and quad processors and RAM and megabits and gigawatts and an amazing camera that has 1/3" sensor size, geo-tagging, simultaneous 4K video and 8MP image recording, touch focus, face/smile detection, HDR (photo/panorama) and supports video with 2160p@30fps, 1080p@30/60/120fps, 720p@240fps..
The average human being finds absolutely no value in any of this.
I don't even understand all of the tech stuff when it comes to smart phones, and I sold them for a living, I never bothered to learn. I simply let them use the phones, asked what it is that they want to do that would convince them to purchase a smart phone.
"I'd like to use Facebook with my phone."
"Okay, this how you do it, see how easy it is? Anything else?"
That's basically how you sold a smart phone.
I completely agree.
The reason I was skeptical of joining Steemit at first was the money. It was the"get rich quick" stuff that's almost always bullshit - and creates suspicion towards the entire platform.
I have nothing against TDV, or people making lots of money on Steemit, but I think stuff like TDV making his $15,000 might have been somewhat harmful in the long run, since lots of hopefuls joined Steemit with the hopes of doing the same, and then left disappointed, and THEN told their friends that the whole thing is a "scam".
But I've liked Steemit, there are few trolls, people seem pretty accepting, I've gotten a positive response for blogs that have been about very different topics. People seem interested in what other people have to say, and behave better than they do on Facebook, for the most part. Almost every conversation on Facebook ends in me getting frustrated, unless it's among a very close circle of friends - and new information is rarely acquired by hanging with the same people all the time.
Resteemed this
Thanks for finding and posting this, but the quote that you highlighted and focused on is probably the shallowest and least interesting part of his response. I thought the other things he said afterwards were more thoughtful and engaging. And I don't agree with you at all about the money, which does not need to be a bad thing if we find the right balance.
And don't forget that we have a "decline payment" option on the posts now if you want to try out a money-free alternative.
I don't oppose making money, I'm just saying that focusing primarily on that is not a good way of doing marketing.
As we are seeing right now, activity has been declining. My guess is that biggest reason is small rewards. When people are after money, they will abandon the platform if they don't get the money.
Focus should be on user experience. Steemit should be so great to use that people will like it even when they don't make any money. So that when the rewards are low, people wouldn't become less active. Instead they would keep on telling about Steemit to all their friends. If the user experience is great, we would be getting more new users in times like these when it's hard to earn big sums of money.
And when we have truly great user experience and the price will start to go up again, we'll have huge advantages over other platforms.
We're working hard on both of those.
The money is a great part of steemit, it gives you an incentive to put time and effort into your posts. As the curation, posting and payouts continue to refine I think this will be an fantastic platform for great content. (It already is, but I think it will get much better with time.)
People like to stick to what's easy for them, it takes a lot to get them to jump into something new. I believe that the fact that you can make a few bucks is one of the things that will get people off of the social media they're used to and on to Steemit.
I have no doubt that the community building will be something that comes up in the future of steemit, but it seems like the core is motivating to keep creating and curating great stuff.
Thanks for the post!
Wrong. We just need a better SP and SBD distribution algorithm, in which normal people can make a decent living. That doesn’t mean that Steemit should be a quick rich scheme. There’s a big difference between decent living and ultra rich kind of lifestyle. Did you know that? I'm tired of the same rethoric. Maybe Mr. Antonopolous doesn't have to worry about paying bills. Everytime I hear “BLOCKCHAIN GURUS” like him, it makes me wonder if normal people ( which is the majority in the blockchain community ) are invited to the future economies and communities that blockchain technologies will offer ( and I say “will offer” because i haven’t seen any that is really helping the majority in the present time. I’ve just seen copies of copies of blockchain technologies to attract rich investors, (which ultimately will make them richer, and maybe will create UTOPIAS for them ), and to attract naive people who didn't make it in other projects. It’s very creepy and sad if you "really really" think about it. You have to read between the lines to understand what they are really telling you.
Regarding on the Steem price, is normal to see falls, specially at the initial phase of the project, because it is subject to speculation ( speculation is subject to ups and downs CYCLES. It will be like that forever. So when you see the price falling, change your mindset to INVESTOR MODE, and buy more tokens if you can. You have to consider that there is a maximum supply of tokens which will create scarcity in the market on the long run and will make the price go up. That’s the whole idea of locking up or POWER UP your Steem tokens for two years if you want to profit and getting interests at the same time ), and we have to consider that we are still a very very small community, and we are at the initial phase of the project too ( very very important ). What we need to focus on, is on promoting the platform in any way you consider appropriate. But do it, and do it now. But most important, the wealth distribution that Steemit is offering needs to change in order to put everyone in profit mode. AND I MEAN EVERYONE, not just a few ones like always, because we are very dependent on the so called WHALES( we like or not). By the way; Did you know that more WHALES are leaving the project everyday?
There's a big potential to help people to make a “fair" amount of money ( daily ) and to create larger greater communities AT THE SAME TIME. Just change the damm algorithm. If it doesn't change, then Steemit will become another POS ( PROOF OF STAKE) platform, like so many other shitcoin technologies platforms from the bunch.
Great communities need great economies first in order to prevail. And sadly, Steemit ecosystem is far away from that ( at least for now ).
In the meantime, promote promote promote promote promote the platform. Cheers…!!!!!!
Ignoring the antagonistic tone of your post, when was Steemit ever about "making a living"? Sincere question. Theoretically possible, yes, but when was that a "promise" made to the users? The tag line is "post and get paid", not "post and live off of Steemit".
Millions of people use Facebook daily without earning anything.
I totally agree with your opinion. Thanks for your insights.
I thought this was his best quote. He does seem to have a pretty good grasp of what's going on, and I do agree. Dangling huge chunks of money is probably NOT the best way to grab quality folks, because quality folks will see that as a scam. And that's what it likely would be.
Even on Steem, you have to work hard to get your momentum here.