Social Currency
Read this document today. Not something made for blockchain related stuff, but might be of interest for anyone pondering about cryptocurrency-based social platforms such as Steem / Steemit: $OCIAL CURRENCY - Why brands need to need to build and nurture social currency - http://images.fastcompany.com/Vivald-iPartners_Social-Currency.pdf
Perhaps something that could be focused on as the general message / brand perception when one first discovers the currency, and preferably sustained throughout their lifetime experience around the network.
Additionally, here's an old Youtube video about the subject:-
Interesting document; Downloaded it for better reading than my quick scan just yet. Video gives great information for product design, and marketing. Social Currency is one of the elements. BUT this does not apply equally to any product IMHO.
Would be interesting to map Steemit onto the 6 pillars as presented in the video:
My personal take regarding the mapping; note that I'm just here for 2 months or so and still trying to understand what Steemit can do for me/us:
Very much interested how others mappings compare to mine above.
UPDATE: while writing this message, the counter of views went up to 17 while the counter of votes to 116 and no replies yet (this is the first one).
That's odd :). I posted this at 4am local time and went to sleep after. Thanks for the comprehensive response! I guess it's not something easily respond-able.
I guess it's interesting in a way since we have 3 core activities around here - creating, curating, consuming and the culture should necessarily represent one that'll drive the community (and value creation) forward. So I think the question should be, what should be the social currency that ought to be cultured around here to improve its chances for adoption etc.
Overall, I think although a critical crowd is required to sort things out, culture around here could be a little less imposing / judgemental. Build more than divide. The issue is, how can things around here be designed to have balance between the best of both worlds? Critical voices are important, but they usually plague entire comment sections of posts which is actually quite unattractive for anyone new or for anyone taking whatever they read seriously.
So I think Steemit Inc's move to a self-manageable comment section and separate reward pool is a rather good move. The challenge is indeed making good designs that promote the best kind of behaviours around here, since if you think about it, the utility / perception of STEEM is pretty special, but concentrated and involves emotions which could be detrimental, depending on one's experience around here.
While I think 1 to 5 is pretty straight-forward, I think the community around here could use more stories + sharing, combining both of these is actually quite powerful, but then again, this should be addressed by smart design / onboarding / culture / education, although I'm leaning more to smart systems design instead of telling what others ought to do.
I'm still meditating upon this :) Will write another one up when I got it figured comprehensively. It's rather tricky since even stuff like payout amounts, downvoting / flagging looks like it has unintended consequences, but are they really that important or just a small quirk? Plus I noticed that it usually takes simple, destructive behaviours to really make the currency / utility not very attractive. After all, who likes to get bashed in a social network / platform and see loud dramas amongst the otherwise rather peaceful majority.. (edit: not saying that anything that has been happening are necessarily bad features. let's see how things unfold around here lol)
Thank you as well for your comprehensive response :)
I think you have a set of good points. I'm to young with the platform to fully understand the implications of the methods of fund and power distribution, and how it all began, so no comments on that front from my side at the moment.
Indeed, on any social media you will see people who do not contribute, but try to break good interactions, and maybe in the end the channel itself. The trick is to 'filter' this out somehow for those who want to have this filtered out. Of course, we do not want to literally filter this and throw away, but we may want to give the various topics their own place in the system/user interface. For instance, comments could be hidden for those who are not interested in the comments. Comments could be sorted more intelligently; maybe the 'system' can identify relevant comments from non relevant comments and filter/sort based on that.
But maybe, some form of 'watch' (human or AI) need to be established since 100% self regulating environment may not work due to only a few who can disrupt entire systems, societies etc. That is one of the key reasons why we have governments. I'm not saying the existing governments are good in what they do, but as Steemit showed me so far, some rules MUST be in place, since it seems without those rules, power is in the hands of a few and that power is used by a few of all powerful people here for whatever reason, but with the result that it'll break the entire system in the end when this continues like it is going on right as we speak.
Yup, at one point I think post owners will be able to customise / configure the comment section.
This is a difficult topic. There's a definite need to have a "fair" system, in which I think the revised near-linear reward curve would improve. The other part of the equation is in this rather huge topic about social currency in a place where there's a limited reward pool each day, and is distributed according to activities found in a self-regulatory community..
Most of us are not used to be in government ;)
Self-regulatory community may work when the 'watch' is part of the foundation rules of the community. In the end every community has rules, and even Steem and Steemit have rules today, like how power and currency is distributed, how much Steem is generated on a daily bases and so on.
We need to think what these foundation rules are, and implement them. We need to get democracy in, and that may not be based on voting power determined by the amount of FIAT currency a user did put into its own wallet, or maybe even the time the user did spend on generating the power through engagement within the community. Fact is that more than 60% of the power is in the hands of only a few and likely will stay that way regardless the changes proposed for the next release of Steem/Steemit.
In the EU each country has the same power, regardless of the size of economy or number of residents. Each country has 1 vote, and each country has veto rights. In the same model, one can argue each Steemit user shall have equal power at all times, whether that be for voting or whatever.
A very interesting topic that I'll need more time to understand the implications of, whatever will be introduced and/or changed. I indeed hope that the new changes will do good to the community, its engagement levels, its fairness, and as a result of that the growth of our community.
Very cool man, I wonder if any or all of us can find ways to attach each of these concepts to steem.
The elements shall be applied to applications, Steemit in this case, and in the future maybe other services and products. Steem itself is the normalisation layer and is a reflection of the services using it.
Right, my mistake :) I meant steemit of course, for me a have found seamlessly navigating between steemit,busy and esteem to be helpful interms of evening the ground per say as far as my experience with the whole platform goes, so i tend to think of them synonymously.
Cool! Sooo, how maps Steemit, eSteem, Busy to the 6 points given, for you?
Yes, indeed, there'd be many perceptions of the platform, unique to different users and perspectives. For one, I find that some do not even have any bank accounts and rather avoid KYC-exchanges to purchase / support STEEM around here which I find to be fascinating. @raymonjohnstone
I agree with you; One relative unique feature of Steemit is the possibility for anybody to generate tokens (Steem) by putting in time, and use those tokens to buy other services. Now, I just hope that the number of services we can buy with Steem will increase quickly!
If done right, Steemit and a whole other bunch of to be developed services can create a whole new economy 100% detached from the FIAT funded economies. In reality this will be more a wishful thinking than real for the foreseeable future; Steem based economy will be interlinked with FIAT based economies. BUT, one can always dream a little bit :)
Very nice share. Those are really good points and number 4 sticks out to me. How everyone sees or even hears about the product is an important factor.
Some ways as a Steemit user, our actions and what we say represent the Steem/Steemit.
Yeap, actually if compared to other coins, Steem / Steemit is quite centralised in terms of perception / experience of the currency, so if the currency generally has "bad" culture, you can practically call it a "bad" coin lol.
I think you hit the nail on the head with that hammer of a comment. You can see it.
Thing is, it'll be no different in any other social platforms implementing shared reward pools, and being self-regulatory. I think this place is amazing for what it is :) just whether if it's good for "business", I guess that'd depend on design, devs, and the community.
NIce Find Kevin!
Works for me...
Frank
There should be a room somewhere with a life-sized rotating STEEM logo where I can sit in front of and meditate about the coin itself lol.
Who can make the FIRST hologram of the STEEM logo? (light bulb turns on)
Frank
join us @https://discord.gg/SFjkGYk this is similar to what we are building at the moment!
I have the App and what I see is a whole bunch of chat channels / groups.
What are you building with Discord what is addressing the 'this is similar' part of your comment?
An app?