RE: How the trending page looks to a newb... And how the trending page could look!
Aesthetics can certainly be subjective, but what we know for certain is that the internet is flush with social media sites.
If you look at the picture above, in one short sentence, Google told their audience exactly why they're important. They didn't have endless lists of blogs scrolling down the page. Any website can do that. Heck, you can build a Wordpress site in a few hours that does that. They knew that people are being bombarded with information everywhere online, and that less is better.
Steemit has a highly differentiated product from not only other social media platforms, but from other cryptocurrencies. That's the Steemit advantage, and they must make that message clearer, and keep clutter to a minimum.
People are bouncing because the main advantage(s) of the site are not spelled out. We already know what the advantages are. The 1st question people will ask if they land on the site is, "why should I join?"
Make the main advantage to joining Steem simple and compelling, and sell it. My observation, is that it's primarily a marketing issue.
(Let's not get into noobs trying to understand Steem currency)
We always come back to the same questions: what product, what customers? And there are two visions: the techno-crypto developers and the marketing of a social media. One day, can the two visions work together?
Well, I can speak to your 1st point.
Steemit, as a platform (social media product) has to compete with every other social media website for eyeballs and attention. Why should people join, and why should people stay? (rhetorical) The internet, esp. social media, is an attention market, in the sense that we're speaking about here.
Customers are the eyeballs that Steemit has to attract to its platform in order to provide value to its currency. Obviously, no user content, no value.
Perspective is important as well. As Ned mentions in his online interviews, Steemit is also a new experiment. It's also in Beta. Personally, I think Steemit has a lot of potential for use, but it will need time to grow.
The main consideration of this thread is user-adoption. It's one thing for people interested in the digital currency niche to slide over to this project, but it's quite another to lure 'mainstream' people away from their social media spaces, where all their friends reside. In that sense, Steemit very much is a product competing for users, or customers.
If Steemit desires to go 'mainstream,' it will have to solve one big problem. Is the value proposition of joining Steemit worth enough to people that they would leave their social media space, and friends, behind?
If the Steemit team can tackle that question once they've had time to develop their platform, they'll be well on their way to achieving large-scale adoption.
This.
"Steemit has a highly differentiated product from not only other social media platforms, but from other cryptocurrencies. That's the Steemit advantage, and they must make that message clearer, and keep clutter to a minimum."
Absolutely. I hope we can get this advice to the dev team.