The Key To Steemit's Success - "Building Value Creating Communities"
We're 'the pioneers' of this big Steemit experiment, we're scouting out ways to improve, methods of interacting and all going through a world of different emotions and journeys. We're collectively taking small steps to prepare the Steemit Decentralised Economy for mass adoption. This is as much an experiment in social psychology as it is economics.
This has taken a while to get my head around, I've had the bones of this article planned for the last couple weeks, initially coming from a 'How to get your voice heard on Steemit' how-to perspective. As I followed that train of thought and speculated into the future of Steemit I went on a more interesting journey...
I'll talk about my opinion of offering value, the abundance mentality that Steemit catalyses, the creation of value 'creating' communities and what could potentially be the next step. I'll give direct examples of comments, observations on Steemit.Chat and my experience in trading forums prior to Steemit.
Overall the incentives to offer value and the methods of cooperation may paint a picture of whats to come... the 'apps' in a decentralised economy.
First off... what is value?
Value can be the presentation of a skill set, such as an artist or short story author, sharing a travel story to inspire, introducing yourself and your followers to Steemit - increasing adoption, helping people understand something complicated or solidifying your understanding of a topic and sharing it with others.
This is only my interpretation, from my perspective. To answer a subjective question like 'What is Value?' there will be many answers and opinions that are completely different…
Value is original content
Value is putting yourself out there
Value is recognising the value in others, pushing them further and lifting them up
Value is bringing people together
The process of offering value...my journey
Before Steemit I began writing on trading forums, my motivation for posting there was to push myself and understand how to become a better trader, sharing and consolidating my understanding with some feedback.
I figured if I could help someone else understand something then my own understanding would be solidified as a result. It would be a win-win.
When I gained more experience in the markets and my writing improved ..something shifted… it was almost as if my posts began to act as signals to other traders who wanted to offer value too. I started getting private messages from some very knowledgeable and experienced traders.
There were a couple of guys that I've ended up speaking to for years, one a veteran trader with 25+ years of experience who went on to mentor me about the process and journey of trading and another who was a few years ahead of me trading the exact same markets, with a very similar style. We went back and forth sharing relevant observations and gained hugely from the interaction.
So the real value wasn't in the likes, wasn't completely in strengthening my independent understanding - the real value was in the interactions that happened after I put myself out there. The journey of improving and interacting with others step by step.
It was from that point that my trading drastically improved for the better, I didn't expect anything from my posts.. only to solidify my understanding, the fact that those posts acted as signals to other traders wanting to offer value is when I really stepped my game up.
Pushing for an abundance mentality... giving more than you expect in return...
Steemit seems to catalyse individuals to share as much value as possible, more so than any other social networks I've seen online that seem to trade mainly in social validation. Relationships that took me years to develop on a trading forum were developed in a few comments on Steemit. The rewards for offering value incentivize creativity and collaboration on a level I haven't observed before.
Instead of focusing on what a scarcity mentality is, I'd like to instead focus on the emergence of abundance mentalities on a mass scale on Steemit. However here is a definition from an article on scarcity vs abundance.
The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life. People with a Scarcity Mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit—even with those who help in the production. They also have a hard time being genuinely happy for the success of other people.
The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth or security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in the sharing of prestige, recognition, profits and decision-making. It opens possibilities, options, alternatives and creativity.
Having an abundance mentality in terms of creating value with others in my experience is about signalling that you have value to offer and you don't expect anything in return in any one interaction. You need to have an abundance mentality because in most cases you won't get much in return... in some cases however, when you interact with the right person you can both get benefit significantly more than anticipated. This is where the magic happens.
So given that Steemit catalyses adding value and thinking from a place of abundance, let's look at a couple of examples.
Leaving genuine, insightful comments...that signal to the original author
I greatly benefited from @andrarchy s post and decided to try and add some value in the comments section. He sent out a signal and I sent one back. We've had extensive discussions since about adding value, the Steemit economic system and tweaks to titles and posts.
rok-sivante's paradigm shift...
The first article I read in relation to Steemit of having an abundance vs scarcity mentality was a personal account by @rok-sivante where he argued that the mechanisms behind up-voting, instant feedback and content creation essentially provided a catalyst to developing an abundance mentality and offering value.
"The more I got rewarded, my subconscious began grasping a game-changing insight: the potential to create and share value here is a whole different ballgame. The further this realization sunk in, the more my commitment grew to being a person of value. AND the more I backed that commitment up with action - writing content to really make a difference for those reading it, in some way or another"
How Steemit Is Rewiring My Brain To Become A Better Person
It's such a subtle shift, but it's something I've felt too. When you get used to offering value in day to day life and it goes largely unnoticed... then all of a sudden you throw yourself onto Steemit where you get rewarded for it a big shift happens.
So @rok-sivante experienced a paradigm shift personally, what if we were to assume that others were feeling this shift too?
What would that mean...?
What would happen when people with an abundance mentality who were looking to offer value.. interacted with each other?
...even better, what would happen when entire groups of people worked collaboratively... all offering the most value they could... creating significantly more than the sum of their parts...
Developing value creating communities...
So far we've established that value can take many forms, Steemit catalyses an 'abundance' mentality and forges relationships between individuals to offer value collaboratively. The next step and where Steemit is shifting now is in value creating sub-communities on Steemit.Chat. After that we may see interactions between established groups and 'apps' that will be developed as a result of these interactions.
There are some pretty remarkable things going on just 'below the surface'... private mentoring groups on Steemit.Chat, Project Curie, Steemcleaners, Robinhood Whale... collaborations and discussions offline in meetups with a genuine feeling of community.
When you get two or more people together offering value they benefit more than the sum of the parts.
In order to make this brief I'd like to showcase one of these private mentoring groups.. the 'Andrarchists' created by @andrarchy.
There isn't really any leadership, in fact it's a pretty anarchic group but it's one of the best examples of people coming together and sharing value, hints and tips to improve the presentation of their posts with much less focus on promotion.
In fact many of the members of the group have gone on to make top trending posts consistently after the interactions and guidance of the collective group. Those same members are now 'paying it forward' with newer member's.. as @andrachy puts it in the 'pinned mission statement'
...The most important of these tricks is to find other content-creators on your "level" and work together to improve one another's content as well as upvote it. A high tide raises all ships (that's the saying right 😃 )
I'll break things down properly in future posts, I just want the broad idea out there.
In Conclusion
Around a month ago I wrote up a two-part post on 'Digging Deeper Into Steemit' - in the second part I talked about 'hubs' or apps developing. I can now see a path to those sub-communities developing to the point where there is significant demand to develop an app or 'sidechain' that will add value to Steemit as a whole.
It's all about community, building something together, offering value and creating value through interacting privately and publicly. Not having your voice heard? Find others with similar interests, create a specialised group and make it happen.
We're the pioneers, we have to make it comfortable for mass adoption. Make it clear where people can offer value. If anyone has added value to you 'pay it forward'.
This is the key to Steemit's success, people coming together offering as much value they can and collaborating, creating more value... where the total value is greater than the sum of all the parts.
If these relationships then go on to create a comfortable environment for mass adoption to take place, for 'apps' to be developed...we may just have created a virtual society founded on offering value and a truly decentralised economy.
Your ideas here resonate with mine. I realized early on that nobody would care about anything I wrote here if I wasn't actively reading theirs. And the only way to prove that you're actively reading other posts is to comment relevant insight or information. I'm very excited about this platform. There's been some negativity lately, but I think that's probably just a normal growing pain. People with the positive attitude and abundance mentality you describe will make this a very attractive platform.
Yep, I agree. I think It's just the case of getting enough people together with a similar mentality and then supporting eachother.
It was much easier to develop those relationships when there were only a few hundred people on the site. The comments sections were essentially a chatroom where you could share ideas and chat to people outside of Steemit on the chat.
It's important now that these sub-communities are developed over on rocket.chat first. If anyones feeling discouraged that's where to go. If there isn't a group, then create one :)
Is rocket.chat the Steemit chat in the top-right menu?
Yes, use the same name here - but it's a separate account so you'll need a different passwrord etc
Thanks for commenting, just checking out your blog. Economics! Good stuff
I love your article, wingz. The message you are trying to get across is one I believe should be heard loud and clear.
"the total value is greater than the sum of all the parts" is what you said. This is a very important point and something we must all strive towards if Steemit is to succeed.
Steemit thrives on sharing, support, communication and now even digital and real world friendships too. How much more positive can you get than that?
I have noticed the content quality is progressively getting better in contrast to the spammers of a few weeks back so understandably post production has slowed. But I take this as a good sign and something I hope we can all build upon in the future.
Excellent post, wingz.
Thanks rea,
It kind of hit me most at the London Meetup - all of a sudden everyone around me was trying to offer value. That was the real -world version of Steemit.
When you have everyone coming to the same realisations about offering value and then creating communities based off it to add more value... there are so many future possibilities. A very exciting time.
What I've been thinking for a couple of weeks now, is that while people here are all like Capitalism, yeah! And all Communism = taxes, boo! I feel that steemit is actually the best type of alchemical marriage of capitalism (it is a digital coin with an economics attached) and communism (people giving their best value without expecting much in return). So in my book it is great!
Interesting perspective. In my head you give your best value and on average get little return in communism.
With an abundance mentality you give your best value and on average get much more in return, but this comes from a few incredible interactions. Most interactions will have a pretty low return.
Capitalism is merely a transaction of value. Thanks for getting me thinking :)
Well, all the gift economies are communist in nature. Free Software? Communist according to wikipedia, and have nothing to do with taxes either. Thing is abundance mentality is all about communism. That is what Marx was talking about, and he was basing his thoughts on the works of Adam Smith. Capitalism allows, and incentivises the deepening of division of labour, which in turn allows more complex goods to be created. It also puts the producers of those goods into dependency on eachother, and with each iteration of deeper division the margins shrink. Everything is well, if the markets are growing, but if such growth stops, then at some point those margins get equal to zero. And there is no return on the investment and stagnation. At least that was the situation during the time of his writing.
That is what the gift economies, and other attempts at communismtry to solve. With software industry the situation became much better, but it is also shifting the whole thing into the mentality for the abundance, because once you discount for the energy to operate all the computer infrastructure the cost of producing copies of software is zero! And hopefully with 3d printing and the like the same would be fore physical goods.
Anyhow, I never did much thinking on that whole communism, anarchism, capitalism, whateverism thing, but the atmosphere on Steemet made me consider them and educate myself on them. I'll probably write a post about this whole thing, although I suspect it will meet some really good opposition. I really hope it does, because I have problems with expressing my ideas coherently, and the opposition will show me where there are flaws in my rhetoric, rpthus allowing me to improve. :-)
Really interesting path to go down. I like your approach, if it's successful then its a bonus but the real value to you personally is in exploring and incentivizing yourself to improve your understanding. Which is fun :)
Also, having that instant feedback on ways to improve your message is always a great attitude to have.
I'll be looking out for your posts in the future. :)
Well, the goal of any debate is to understand the position of the other party, that is the only way to get better, it is also a path to wisdom. Oh, also I like to play devils advocate, especially when the prevailing opinion is quite biased. There are problems in realization of most systems based on the nature of people that do the building. And I feel that both approaches need to be utilized to achieve best results.
I like your optimistic point of view. I really hope that you correct and that all work already done so far will not go to waste.
I guess that why you need to have an abundance mentality and just keep pushing... all of my posts so far have been about journeys I've gone on. I create value for myself, solidifying my understanding. So whether or not any work I've put into something gets noticed or 'rewarded' ... I still have that value for myself, that's worth it to me.. it's been a fun few weeks behind the scenes.
Thanks @oldtimer
Love the idea of abundance mindset. As I am just starting on Steemit, I do hope it helps me to foster the abundance mindset. Also just have to say that I love the frog picture. I think I was able to follow you so I can look for the followup article.
The frog is great! Haha. Thanks for commenting. I think Steemit is probably one of the best places to foster an abundance mentality. It might be pretty tough at first but there's lots going on below the surface. Communities of people trying to lift each other up. :)
This is a great read :-) Thanks!
Totally agree and convinced! Abundance mentality is bringing value to individuals and also a collective group who share common sets of goals. I am really enjoying it so far!
Thanks @coinbitgold , I think once people will begin to realise the social capital that's being created due to having an abundance mentality. It has the potential on a macro scale to have far more of an impact on Steemit in the long run.
I really agree with what you wrote in your post.
The most interesting part of Steemit is in my opinion related to the fact that it allows for people sharing common interests to gather together, chat and exchange ideas. And the most interesting part is, in my opinion, the uncommon interests of a group of people that can trigger interesting discussions.
" the uncommon interests of a group of people that can trigger interesting discussions"
I like that, there's almost a 'think tank' vibe to certain groups and interactions that I've observed. I think there's potentially huge untapped potential. Lots of interesting patterns emerging as Steemit matures.
You probably know more than me about that ^^
A journey into the soul of Steemit itself!
I'm just getting started :p
@wingz at the end of this amazing article.
Great read, buddy, you 100% delivered.
Thanks for your input over Steemit.Chat much appreciated :P