I've been on the STEEM blockchain through steemit.com for 202 Days and my experience has been mostly positive. I never really used much of social media to begin with so I can't say much about comparisons. What I can say is that I've met more great people on steemit than all of the great people I've met Away From Keyboard. Real relationships share ideas; not DNA. But none of those good stuff make me stop being critical and complaining. I always see flaws. I always complain. I could wake up as God tomorrow and I'd still complain that I actually have to create the perfect world I want to see instead of it just appearing out of thin ether.

Ever since @lukestokes (a great witness) pointed me to Smart Media Tokens, I've been a big fan simply for the reason that many of my complaints can be addressed using SMTs. I've actually made 3 separate posts discussing the possible applications of SMTs. I'm not a programmer. I just blog about the things I want to see. So I'm kind of an idea person. You can check out my ideas below:
KidSTEEM
AeroSTEEM
ShortSTEEM

It is my philosophy that a project needs 2 primary things to succeed. First it needs a vision and then it needs a vision to carry out that vision. DPoS is one of the cleverest ideas ever. With the right talent behind it, we now have BTS, STEEM and several more less popular projects and the upcoming ETH-killer. Despite the problems STEEM had, the devs have been very focused in pulling off SMTs and @freeforever shared this post https://steemit.com/steemit/@freeforever/breaking-news-steemit-ned-just-tweeted-big-companies-reaching-out-about-smts-you-would-scream-out-loud and I was delighted to see this on top of the recent Binance listing.

SMTs need Ideas

Smart Media Tokens have been introduced as something similar to a social media specialized version of ERC-20 tokens of Ethereum. There are tons of ERC-20 tokens and many of the top 100 cryptos are ERC-20 tokens. If you look at the top performing ERC-20 tokens one common trait is that they are all very clever ideas. Ethereum provides the basic tech for amazing projects like BAT, SONM, MCO that are going to take the world by storm by solving some very real problems. If humanity needs to grow, it must make complaints. We won't be using our smart phones if people were satisfied with those old phones that looked like bricks. We wouldn't have flame throwers if nobody said: "I want to set fire to that person/thing and I don't want to be close when I do that and I want to get it done instantly "

Although I haven't finished reading the whitepaper (which you can find here: https://smt.steem.io/smt-whitepaper.pdf) The stuff I saw made me super hyped. For an example, how does a Fee-less DEX sound to you. Think about the existing ERC-20 tokens. What about a zero fee DEX for that..... there is the 0x protocol and barely anybody is using it. Now how many of you have checked out the STEEM-SBD market straight out of your wallet? The token creation process is heavenly simple compared to Ethereum. It's still some work. But the ease of use is very significant. If the devs make a mess, we are all screwed. But looking at the care and attention given to the project, SMTs can only get so bad just like SBD price can only go down so much (1 USD).

But the tech is only a part of the picture. Waves is already capable of handling several times the volume of Ethereum and it comes with a built in DEX, great wallet features and using Waves is far easier and more user friendly compared to Ethereum. Actually the SMT creation process somewhat reminded me of Waves. But at the time of writing,
ETH has a marketcap that is 154.3677665111469 times higher than Waves. Why? Waves has almost nothing running on it. It's like a game console without games. That's why we need projects utilizing SMTs

Here is a question: If steemit is about curation, what is the most overlooked fact and underserved utility?

Here is my answer: steemit isn't the only place with great content and there is no effective method to curate content that is outside of steemit and STEEM blockchain.

We shouldn't act like Apple Inc. or some fake news publisher. Even Facebook of all disgusting things allows people to share content from all over the internet. So far I've been sharing some YouTube videos on Zappl and it all went nice. But that doesn't solve much of the problem. If you engage in curation content that isn't a part of the STEEM blockchain, your efforts are seen as low effort content or downright plagiarism and such views aren't destructive to the platform at all. I myself is a spam hating long content creator. But I've got my needs and complaints.

I can't be writing a post to incorporate random awesome and valuable content I stumble across the internet. We need to think smart and figure out a way to have our cake and eat it too. Let's start with an excellent example of the value of ShareSTEEM.

Zero Hedge is a batshit insane Austrian school finance blog run by two pseudonymous founders who post articles under the name "Tyler Durden," after the character from Fight Club. It's essentially apocalypse porn. It has accurately predicted 200 of the last 2 recessions.[citation NOT needed]
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge

Basically there can be no self respecting sensible economist (pro or hobbyist) that doesn't know Zero Hedge and Economist, New York Times columnist and Nobel Memorial Prize winner Paul Krugman hates the site which means it's a great site. (Just go to https://mises.org and search for Paul Krugman if you want to know how much of an idiot this imbecile is).

@zer0hedge is an account on STEEM that is mainly posting stuff from https://www.zerohedge.com but isn't affiliated with Zero Hedge. Many of the posts on the account gets over $100 worth upvotes and the account has been accsed of plagiarism many times. But you can check out the blog and see all the disclaimers and the amount of value it provides to the users of this platform. You get a well curated stream of content mainly taken from Zero Hedge and there is only one negative that can be stated: It's somebody else's work.

It's also not giving good inspiration for the new users because why not just adapt content from all over the internet. These are not simple copy-paste and it does take real effort to find and bring these content onto the blockchain. If a minnow tries a similar stunt, the account is at a risk of getting nuked.

We need an efficient way to incorporate the content from around the internet in ways that greatly help the users of this platform while earning "Fair" rewards and giving necessary commentary.

That commentary part is very important. Why? Because the stuff we find on the internet may be not fully agreeable or incomplete according to certain individual's views. I must have the ability to add something to the content or clarify my own views regarding certain matters. Take a look at this:

It's a video that I'd like to share but I think the creator is missing certain points and getting certain other things wrong. It's too much trouble to make a huge post or DTube video discussing my take. I could just share the video and add some comments of my own. With Zappl I stuck with 240 characters. If this was say..... a post from https://mises.org I could get flagged by @cheetah if I copy-paste too much.

Then comes the problem of abuse. People could start simply posting other people's content in the name of curation and reap massive amounts of rewards. This and intellectual property rights is the reason people don't want to see the kind of content I propose for ShareSTEEM on steemit. But there are ways to deal with all these using SMTs.

Upvote caps and non-linear reawrds

First of let me say that I don't want to see those n^2 rewards curves on steemit. I joined after they were removed and things would have really sucked for me if they existed. But for curating content that exist outside of STEEM, non-linear is the way to go. The main point is to share. Making money should be for original content. Sharing is awesome when more people benefit from it. So it's only natural that the rewards should be made to increase as more and more people upvote the helpful/useful content they come across.

To make sure that there is only a small amount of money to be made relative to original posting, a maximum impact per upvote can be enforced. It would act similar to a virtual limit on SP. If this limit is 500SP, all the votes from from accounts from a higher amount of SP will be calculated as if the accounts only had 500SP

Why not just get rid of all the rewards for ShareSTEEM?

Incentives Incentives Incentives
Why on Earth should anyone other with ShareSTEEM then? Don't be a commie. Don't bring up gift economy. Those things are nowhere near hyper-efficient. If you don't need hyper-efficient, then you should either go back to Fakebook, learn to complain or just stick with Reddit and keep earning glorious nothings.

As usual the post got waaay longer than intended. Hope you had something valuable to take from the post. I really wish to see a social media platform that is specialized for sharing content from other platforms while giving commentary and earn a few pats on the back (rewards) for all the valuable work.

Resteem and Spread the Message. Make it Happen on the Blockchain!