Is Steemit Doomed - The Demise of a Promising Platform

in #steemit6 years ago



src

When I first join Steemit I though gee wizz what a cool platform.
I have never been the type to engage with social media, and over the last 10 years have posted on Facebook maybe 100 times.
But then along came Steemit a platform that rewards me for engaging with others, and rewards me for the content I create. Now for the first time ever I have had a real drive to create content to share with others, so in a way it has transformed me as a person.
Now it's not that I'm a greedy person, but let's face it money makes the world go around and after not working for the last 8 years due to my serious accident it would be nice to sort myself out somewhere to live.

Now I actually want to spend hours each week creating content which others might like.
But during my Steemit journey I have learned lots about the platform, and have now begun to wonder if it's going to be around for the long term.
I know I have faith in Steemit as do a lot of us, but there are concerns I have about the future of Steemit.

Lets dive deeper into this.

Feed Drop Off

 
When I started on here I fairly quickly built up a list of people I wanted to follow.
My feed used to come to life, with new posts being created pretty much every minute.
I haven't really followed many people over the last few months, and have really noticed a drop in activity in my feed. If it wasn't for resteem services I follow it would be pretty quite.

The drop in activity leads into my concern that we just can't hold people on Steemit. Yes there are like a million accounts now on Steemit, but how many of those accounts are active?
Also how many of those accounts are bots or dual accounts of the same user and even more concerning is how many of those accounts are purely there just as spam bots.
Is the community growing or is it diminishing?
Have we already passed the peak for new accounts and will we see a decline?

I started to support minnows and plankton because I could see they were the ones who were most likely to give up on a platform that doesn't support new members, and up votes are only given out based on how rewarding the curation payout is.
I too was like this for a while, I would only give out up votes for higher reputation people as I thought I would get more curation reward, but this is terrible and means that as you rise in reputation you will be more likely to produce low quality content because you know people will up vote you anyway.
I think the curation system should be re visited and people who support new members should receive some bonus curation, which is taken from high earning post payouts like a tax system I guess.
It should not be up to the good will of a handful of people to support the newbies. I was sitting here the other night and I thought why should I even have to feel like I need to support new people.
This then reminded me of those cartoons where the character turns into a lollipop with sucker written on it.



src

The thought does come to mind.
Why is it that I'm willing to dish out my up votes for the better of the community, and not up vote myself like most people do on here. So I had a moment and went and dished myself out a heap of up votes for my posts.
But no I'm going to stay true and do my best to support new people with generous up votes, because I would like people to stick around and that will be my reward.

But from what I can see this platform will never make it unless Steemit change things.

Broken Platform

 
Now I could just go on and on here.
It seems like Steemit takes one step forward and then two steps back.
Problems are introduced, those problems get fixed and then they come back again and again. It feels like the platform is not getting anywhere.

I feel like the platform is not moving forward, and question if it's worth putting the effort into.
I think I'm not alone when I think like this, and this would probably be why we lose a lot of members.

Over the last 6 months that I have been here I haven't really seen any improvements. We got a new logo yay. This reminds me of the castle "Dad I dug a hole, it's filling up with water".
In terms of what the user sees, it clearly says we are in beta. But we also see the problems along the way and nothing is really changing from our point of view.

Then there are all the other issues which plague the platform. Which I'm not going to get into as this post is more concerned with user retention.

If we want users to stay with the platform then it would be good to see the platform progressing.

Conclusion

 
The progression of the platform really comes down to us as individuals.
It's easy to see the problems and just go with the flow, but we need to be mindful of how this affects our community. This is why I have decided to try my best to reward minnows.
If we all do just that little bit for our new and lower ranking members, then it will go along way. We may very well be approaching that high tide mark and we just don't know how Steemit will go into the future, but going by the rate at which we lose people who just give up on the block chain then the future looks grim.



steemit-dragon-banner.png

Sort:  

Steemit isn't perfect but some parts are pretty good.

Here are a couple of thoughts from an old baby dolphin

Self voting is fine for posts - give yourself 100% every time (your vote is worth bugger all anyway)

18 months ago we all used to upvote our own comments too - it was the only way we literally earned 1/10 of a cent.

About half the accounts on Steemit are fake but they don't do much anyway.

I have done well from cryptos because discussion on Steemit got me into them - but most of the discussion is clueless muppets going on about hodling...

LOL^ tru. Easy to make a fortune HODLing when the market keeps going up.

Muppets abound on Steemit unfortunately and the really good content typically gets lost in the clutter of all the garbage posts flying through far faster than people can identify and track good content and content producers. This is where Steemit really falls down badly in my view. YouTubers that bring there audiences over with them do just fine, but the rest of us don't really get found.

I have some additional criticisms of Steemit that I wrote about some time back if you're interested:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@newsandviews/why-and-how-steemit-needs-to-improve-or-face-future-competition-that-will-come-in-to-replace-it

Lets all find out together shall we?
:)

@villan - I agree with your assessment. I like your ideas of rewarding a higher percentage to people who vote for minnows and plankton.

You have been very good with this on our fitness challenge.

Thanks, I'm glad you like that idea.
I try to chuck a few cents to everyone who up votes and supports the challenge even if their vote is worthless to me.
It does feel good to think about how many people I have helped give that extra helping hand.
Thanks for all your support to :)

It feels good to give, even if it isn't very much. One can only give from what one has.

I feel the same man. I took hours to write my introduction post and couldn't even get a little recognition out of it. I discontinued for a while fully disheartened. But nowadays i post just for the shake of posting with no intention of getting any rewards and just for the fun of it lol.
At least the followers tend to be increasing over time haha.

Yeah it's a tough slog, glad you came back :)
That's probably a good attitude to have, and I have to admit that's why I will be sticking around as I have now begun to enjoy posting. Never used to be like that :)

We are impatient creatures really. We know that the long term prospects of the platform will only exist if users can be retained, but seeing little or slow progress is disheartening, especially when the ones making visable, faster progress are mostly the self serving ones.

I don't think it hurts to create a balance between upvoting as a gain for yourself (good content of course) and supporting minnows. As you grow, you benefit the minnows more anyway, so it's not an entirely selfish act.

I would only give out up votes for higher reputation people as I thought I would get more curation reward

I can't say I ever thought of It for higher curation rewards, but I think higher reputation attracts more supporters in all social media. For me, a low reputation and a really good article means I might be more likely to double check for authenticity.

I completely agree that self up voting is ok if you post something which is really good content. I am tempted to do this for myself, but I figure it's going to be more rewarding if the platform will grow.
I would be happy to see the self up vote gone all together.
Steemit has a real problem with user retention, so really more needs to be done to try and fix that.

But that's also why I think there needs to be some kind of taxation system, where a small percentage say 1% of higher ranking post earnings goes into a pool which is dished out to people who up vote users at a lower ranking. So you earn more by up voting lower ranking users because you get a bonus in the form of say SBD or SP.

The trouble is new members are like hot potatoes. Not many people want to touch their content no matter how good it is.
This in turn leads into the problem of really low quality content for the platform. Why would you spend 2 hours writing a really great blog post when you can whip something up in 2 minutes and earn half or quarter the amount.

When I first started I could see the higher ranking members got more rewards, so naturally I thought if I up voted their content I liked I would earn curation rewards.

I completely agree that self up voting is ok if you post something which is really good content.

While self voting has its uses, I was thinking more along the lines of upvoting people you know will get you curation rewards with regards to balance. Curation also goes straight into SP which is of benefit to those you're voting for.

Self voting I reserve for competition posts where I want to try and increase the reward pool, not that my vote is worth much. I also think if you're going to do it, then do it after the majority has upvoted so you give them the better curation reward benefit.

The trouble is new members are like hot potatoes. Not many people want to touch their content no matter how good it is.

Sad, but true. At least for those who could actually make a difference. It's also getting harder to find good content in amongst the flood of daily posts. There's no reward for it to encourage it.
I recently reported an account to steem cleaners which had a bot posting copy/paste every 5 minutes. It wouldn't take many of them to clog up the new feed.

When I first started I could see the higher ranking members got more rewards, so naturally I thought if I up voted their content I liked I would earn curation rewards.

It took me a while to even discover I could get curation rewards! 😆

We are still in the early stages of Steem and Steemit to be honest. And who knows what SMT's are going to do for the platform and whether they result in Steemit dying and SMT's becoming the focus instead, a platform outside of the main platform.

For as long as whales can continue to dominate this site and make money posting legitimate garbage and junk, sustained through self upvotes and bots, this site is always going to be unbalanced and push people away. It's very hard to succeed here.

Hi,
Although I am still fresh on Steemit, I also share your concerns.
However, I believe that you cannot lose what you don’t have at first place, with the exception of time lost in dead-end situations. As you said in your post, Facebook activity, for example, is not compensated through any monetary or other rewards, apart from the joy of social interaction, so Steemit activity is much better and rewarding in that sense, even if Steemit faces problems that can threaten its existence in future.
Personally, I have witnessed the rise and demise of websites that used to publish user-generated content and reward their writers, such as Infopirate, Helium.com, Triond.com, just to name a few. Some of these websites are no longer around, and some others have stopped offering their users any type of reward.
As long as there is quality and genuine interaction on Steemit, Steemit will continue to exist, although writers’ rewards may drop or rise. At least there will be some rewards.
One last thought is that, my experience with all these websites that I was part of made me wonder what really motivates me to write online. Because if I find a way to improve myself first, then it is possible to help others improve, as well. Just thinking that so many people are active on Facebook, without receiving any payment at all, makes you realize that people write and are active online, in order to express themselves, interact with other people, etc., with monetary (or cryptocurrency) rewards playing no role.
Of course, this does not mean that the content posted on Facebook or any other social media is necessarily of good quality. The key factor, I believe, is social approval.
Major newspapers keep publishing content that is written by professional journalists, and new books are being written every single day. However, even these articles and books are in need of curation, which is something that Steemit has already adopted.
Another point that I would like to make in this long comment, is that most online writers, including myself, fail to realize the importance of being focused on a specific niche or subject, rather than being a Jack of all trades. In this way, it will be easier to build and interact with a small community that shares the same interests more or less. I believe that this was the reason the social media were developed in the first place.

Hmm I have never heard of those websites before, but these are some good points.
It's amazing that Steemit hasn't really taken off like I thought it would, I think a lot of that has to do with the block chain being open and not being able to control privacy. Which is one of my concerns for the future of my platform.
If we keep losing so many people then I don't think the platform will grow to it's full potential.

As I’m nearing the end of two months here on steemit, I can really see your point. I know i’M not the best curator and my spelling in terrible but for the input and feedback I put into Steemit, I thought the reward would justify it. Unfortunately there are a lot of creases and no one ironing them out so good people like ourself’s Are just sinking to the bottom of the ocean. We need to all just take more time on each other and stick with it for now because this could potentially be the greatest platform around.

Yeah it seems like it's not really getting anywhere.
Imagine if it grew to be like Facebook

Like anything, I think that it's a matter of you only get out of it what you put into it. People see the money attached to the posts and then start creating expectations.

When I uploaded my first video, I got $29SBD before it corrected down to about $22SBD. Of course, I knew results weren't typical, but I got my hopes up.

But now people are more cautious, the value of steem is dropping and so is the value of our accounts. Followers can scale back their voting percentage based on how much they know / like certain people rather than the quality of the posts.

While I am still in the 'testing' phase of this platform in terms of posts (what works and what doesn't), my intention is to create content which most beneficial to the community.

I also have to take a 'wait and see' approach to what I post in terms of performance, but in general terms there is a 48 hour window in which each post might be seen by my followers and then the upvoting stops.

Then I also have take into account that people want to 'save' their voting power for really good posts, etc. I get that too. I will have to take a few days off to get my voting power back up again.

I think though that the key is to find non monetary value in what you're doing here. Meeting new friends, sharing music that people might not have heard before, etc.

My feed is talking about the crash that seems to be continuing until there which doesn't help.

Yeah it's all about whats the trending platform. The dollar value doesn't mean much, but you gotta either put in alot of work or invest alot of money to get somewhere fast.
Starting from scratch is a tough slog and we are lucky we have a group of supporters, some people have no one and have it real tough

I recently found my old account, and started posting stuff on there just as a test.
Boy, you really have to rely and support your followers and building them up and be grateful
otherwise no one will even see your stuff let alone, upvote or resteem it.

But now that I have a foot in the door, hopefully I will be doing a lot more with the community in
mind and bring up some the 'plankton' with me.

I've noticed that as the price of STEEM and SBD go down people are less incentivized to create content and the number of active users posting goes down. New people definitely have a hard time sticking around for a few reasons but mostly because of the terrible user interface.

Who knows, maybe one day things will shape up, in the mean time just take Steemit for what it is- a permanent journal you can upload to the internet forever and never have to pay for upkeep.

Yeah the price of steem dropping doesn't help either.
Absolutely the user interface would contribute, and the face that nothing really changes with it. Have been here 7 months and haven't seen any improvements from what I can see.

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.17
TRX 0.16
JST 0.029
BTC 62067.61
ETH 2414.80
USDT 1.00
SBD 2.57