Celebrating that Steemit is Gaining Star-power and Why This is Just the Beginning

They say that there is no better way to measure a platform than by the value it provides. Luckily, value is not a short commodity here on steemit.

Barely a few months old and Steemit has already knocked down the middlemen for authors, artists and filmmakers, and as a consequence a brand new playing field was born. So it was easy to guess that it was only a matter of time until some of the most respected authors in the world began finding their way here.

When Game Changers Connect

Last Saturday I was greeted by a remarkable surprise as I found out that one of my favorite writers has joined steemit. Yes, I’m talking about Neil Strauss, the rightfully renowned journalist and six times New York Times best-selling author, the man himself was here among us.

The reason why I’m happy that he found steemit, is not because of his deserved recognition, but because of the value that I know he could bring to any platform.

I saw first-hand some tiny snippets from behind the curtains, and by first hand I mean small videos that I’m naturally very happy to receive. I’m not sure how much I should say about the subject for obvious reasons, but this is what I can tell you: I watched how Neil and some other society members were accessing a young man called Andrew, they were helping him dig inside himself, find the fire inside him and change his life for the better. They asked all the right questions, what they did in a short time, many of us spend years to realize.

I have never seen anything like that anywhere else. So much so that immediately after watching the video, I decided to send him an email just say thank you.

Obviously that was not the entire message, and I was fully aware that the email was probably just going be swallowed in the ether due to the obviously high number of emails he receives, but I didn’t care. For what it’s worth, I just wanted him to know that his work has an impact on people.

So Neil, if you’re reading this today, and as both a long time steemian and a new ambassador in your society, I wanted you to know that I’m thankful for all the purpose and attention that you put in your work, your unique way of approaching issues, and the fact that you take the time to surround yourself with the best people in the world in their industry just to bring us the best value possible… That is something that I truly admire.

Thank you @neilstrauss! And welcome to this beautiful game changing platform!

After the necessary greetings, let's dive in to subject of the day, about some of the reasons why the best is yet to come for steemit.

When We Were Young, Steemit Young

Long time ago, about two or three steem-years back, (give or take 4 to 5 weeks in real time) we were having an interesting conversation between @stellabelle, @infovore and myself. We were talking about the future of steemit, and what would happen when it starts growing. And this was part of the conversation:

Actually, I’ll let my friend snipping-tool recount the story, I find his memory to be quite sharp:

You see, what I said back then wasn’t based on hope alone. It was based on a great deal of analytical efforts after years of observing the decentralization trend taking on the world. And my guess is, more prominant people will keep coming to steemit, as more and more renowned people are starting to adopt peer-to-peer technologies. This is already happening.

Let me give you some examples:

Take this conversation between Jared Leto and Chase Jarvis:

Jared Leto: "For me it was an opportunity to take the vision that I had, or whatever vision that we had as a team (30 seconds to Mars) to life. And I think that working with big record companies taught me a lot about being independent. Because there could be a lot of bureaucracy involved in big companies like that.

We’ve always been independent-minded and big believers that you shouldn’t wait for permission to get into action, so that if you take those kind of steps and if that is your philosophy, then you end up doing a lot of different things."

Chase Jarvis: "Yeah. I think one of the things that I’m aware of – as you’ve just alluded to - is that it’s the first time in the history of the world where the gate-keepers are either not present or are way in the background relative to historically…

If you wanted to hang in a gallery, you needed the permission of a gallerist. If you wanted to be in a magazine you needed the permission from the photo editor. If you wanted to be in a film you had to wait for somebody to produce that film, and decide whether or not they wanted you in it.

You’ve mentioned being independent, is that something that I’m just tuned into or is it, or do you feel that same groundswell that independence is the new… It’s almost riskier to go with the old system than it is to remain independent."

And he's not wrong, it's almost riskier to go with the old system, and more importantly, more and more people are now aware of that fact and they prefer to break free from the resistant guardians of the status-quo.

Let me give you another example

This quote is from a fairly recent conversation between Edward Norton and Tim Feriss, it also points towards the same, that de-centralization is getting trendier by the day.

"One thing that it’s exciting about the networked world is the empowerment of a distributed cultures of people outside of government agencies, outside of corporate contracts, outside of everything. To be able to assemble and rally together… People can proactively address things like that, we can move resources without anybody else’s say so.

We can decide that we can get together around things, we can assemble resources and make things happen with incredible speed, incredible speed! And I think that that’s really, really exciting!" - Edward Norton

The latter, three times Oscar nominee Edward Norton, even went further and participated in creating Crowdrise a great crowdfunding platform for anyone who needs to fund their goals, projects, or whatever they seek in life.

And these are not isolated cases, in fact his seems to bejust the beginning.

So don’t be surprised if tomorrow, one of your favorite writers, podcasters, or Youtubers make their way to steemit.