RE: Stickiness on Steemit by Intermittent Reinforcement [The Casino Effect]
Yet another amazing post by @dana-edwards
While Dana's post is mostly focused on user stickiness due to the casino effect. A huge player in that casino effect is the possibility of your comment going top tier. This is post stickiness and it's the hardest thing to get right here because the sheer volume of content being created every minute is just overwhelming.
@dana-edwards I think the future here may actually be to create steemit darknets. Closely knit social groups who visit and promote one another's content with tit for tat reciprocation, thereby lifting eachother up. Take the term darknet to mean that it's something closed to the outside. A network of people who are primarily focused on their own network and not the outside world. Not the nefarious more modern meaning.
One other thing to remember is that blog stickyness is a function of reciprocation. Going through as the topic creator and upvoting any relevant comments, increases the length of time you stay in the "active" section of the site. The longer you stay in "active" the more time you have for people to see you and thus the probability of a whale or two dropping by with a visit from the money fairy.
Timing helps a lot too. @blueorgy just released a tool today to help you time your posts a little better for maximum chance of a whale sighting... http://catchawhale.com/
Additionally I have a guide here that is helpful if you want to get your post trending as quickly as possible. https://steemit.com/steemit/@williambanks/how-to-make-your-blog-the-next-trending-topic
Again, @dana-edwards thanks for the enlightening post.
I have no idea what the future holds for Steemit or Steemit technology. What I do hope is that the platform remains fun. I recognize that some people will find the casino effect fun while other people don't. But when we look at social media, my hypothesis is that perhaps the reason people don't consider social media a "job" and think it's "fun" is because it uses intermittent reinforcement where they don't know how their posts or content will be received. People like being liked, and people like being rewarded, and if anything I would seek to expand the reward mechanisms so as to amplify the effect rather than to dampen it.
The catching a whale stuff might be fun and all but I think that is very short term. Some limits on Steemit is the fact that Chinese people and others can't sign up. Some legitimate concerns about Steemit is the fact that it's too English centric and too focused on writing. People in other parts of the world who don't speak English might want to join Steemit and it is only when they join that people will understand that it's not about chasing whales but about finding a niche and catering to an audience. Steem Power will be distributed over time and someday we will see trending posts which aren't even in English.
No to argue with you @dana-edwards but we do have a strong and growing multi-lingual community. In fact just last night I saw a fascinating post in persian. Would have been nice to understand persian, but the point is the international community is growing rapidly.
I love a comment that shares other good comments on steemit. That's a good sign of a community that has an abundance mentality vs a scarcity mentality.
You closed-network example strikes me as very nefarious indeed, where's the value in those dark echo rooms?
I don't know. I have no clue what's next either but I do hope for some things that for now, seem fantasy...
I also wrote here why acting like ahab is not great regarding your catchawhale and the rest: https://steemit.com/steemit/@razvanelulmarin/you-are-not-ahab-stop-chasing-whales-write-some-good-stuff-instead-maybe
Thank you for reading