Steem Price Falls Further... Do We Need A Culture Shift? @Promo-Mentors: Conceptualizing An Education Platform

in #education6 years ago

intro

intro

When I started writing this article Steem just dropped below $1, however right now it is at 90 cents. What has happened that Steem is almost 90% down from its all time high of $8. How much of the drop can be attributed to the bear market? What causes the value of Steem being drained out the platform? What do we need to change?

I have been on Steemit for a solid year now and I have involved myself in a few projects and communities such as @ocd, @curie and @steempress-io. I am also a Steem ambassador of the #promo-steem movement and created my own project @promo-mentors inspired by this movement. Like all promo-steemians I ask myself how to bring value into the Steem ecosystem. With the Steem price dropping almost 90% from its all time high, more and more conversations about the future of Steem have been popping up just like when Steem was floating below a dollar before the big pump to $8 in November. I think Steemit is an amazing innovative platform however if we are honest Steemit has many issues that cause an outflow of value. As Steem is the first of its kind it is hard to say what we to change in order for it to be successful or if it is even possible to succeed on the global stage. Overall I am very positive about the supportive nature of the community that Steemit has created. However, in this post I wanted to share my thoughts on: the writing culture of Steemit.

The Writing culture on Steemit

Generally, content creators on Steemit tend to only write for people ON Steemit. I myself am guilty of this. What I mean with writing only to people on Steemit is that people are not focussing on growing their audience, but on growing their post rewards. There is a fundamental difference in this. When someone is focussed on targeting a wide audience they will try multiple ways to reach them. On Steemit however it doesn't really matter if we reach a large audience, but the right audience (aka large SP holders). We are incentivized to focus our attention on Steemians and Steemians only. This contradicts what content creation is about. Social Media content is meant to be spread out all over the internet rather than to be uploaded to Steemit to get a few votes and then let it sit there for eternity.

It is true that on Steemit it is easier to get attention and get paid immediately for your content, however is this the place where it has to stop for the serious content creators? In my opinion any serious content creator would try to reach their audience on multiple platforms and tailor their content for long term consumption. If we only put out our content on Steemit it has a negative effect in that it doesn't help the platform grow. By trying to reach out to readers outside Steemit, we could end up with more votes because they might sign up to Steemit. This aspect seems to be forgotten. New users that signed up will definitely throw votes to the person who got them to join, similar to how we initially vote for the person who introduced us to Steemit.

I don't want to generalize too much, because there are, of course, many great content creators and projects who use Steemit as another medium to reach their audience and as another income source. There are people however who consciously avoid certain social media platforms. Steemians seem to have an aversion for other platforms that are not build on Steem. Many of my Steemian friends dislike Facebook for example. For whatever reason I think as content creators we should acknowledge that the other social media platforms have a much larger reach and that we should use this to get people to join.

So is it the fault of how Steemit is set up that we have created this culture? I don't think it's entirely to blame. In theory, if Steemit was a mainstream platform, in which many minnows had enough Steem Power to cancel out whales, then I think Steemit would work. The reality is that the distribution of Steem hasn't been fair at the start which has given large sp holders more influence than intended. In my time on Steemit I have never seen a post reaching trending by only votes by minnows or dolphins. Perhaps it's not surprising at all that we have created a whale hunting culture.

We need a culture change

As a user of Steemit it hurts to see the value being drained out of this platform. The Steem price fell from $8 to almost $0.8 now which is a 10x time drop already. I know some of you might say that this doesn't say much because Steemit is only 2 years "young" and I agree price movements don't predict the future. However in the two years we can look at other stats such as the visitor ranking and amount of transacting accounts.

According to Alexa rankings (see graph below) visitor count of Steemit.com has dropped since March. And according to the stats of @penguinpablo the number of transacting accounts has stayed the same since February! You could connect this drop in activity due to the price drop of the whole market which certainly has an effect, however if that were true than the visitor count would drop after January when the market started the dive. The amount of accounts transacting should have dropped too, however it stayed constant. The cause may have been due to something else, who knows, one thing that is showing is that we are not growing in active users.

The Steem dev team is working on providing us solutions such as Hivemind and SMTs (of which the release date of testnet was recently announced to be in January). While these are very promising, I don't like to sit around and wait for them to arrive. Instead, in the meantime, I hope that we can work together towards changing the posting culture through what I call decentralized education or peer-to-peer education. This is something I have been involved with for almost 9 months now and I have seen that it works, and perhaps can work on a bigger scale. Below I will explain to you guys what my amazing team and I have been working for the past month. I don't claim this is the next best solution, however I think every community can benefit from our education platform project. We would like your opinion on this, so feel free to break our project down.

Nine months ago I started @promo-mentors to help #promo-steem to retain new users. Promo-steem is a movement created by @starkerz and @anarcotech to reward people who promote Steemit. I started out creating a discord channel (link: https://discord.gg/vDPAFqb that has grown to over 1500 members at the moment of posting. We approached user retention by offering personal guidance and free workshops. I recruited people who I know were good bloggers, being a curator for @curie helped me a lot in this. This all started in November, and all the way up to now, we have been giving out free tips and guidance to people who want to improve their blogging. The results of giving people personal advice had shocked me sometimes. I have seen people who started out with the typical spam posts and uncentered images to catching votes from well established curating teams such as @curie and @ocd. What surprised me even more is that these people often reached out to help others in turn. After a conversation with @starkerz I came to realise that education, especially direct human to human communication is very valuable and blockchain could make this available for everybody.

The idea is to make a website where people can share their expertise. Many people have great skills that they can share through tutorials, but most importantly can teach through personal guidance. On the website people will be able to filter on questions and subject. For example whenever somebody type in Steemit they will see the top subjects popping up and if they click on the subject they will see the top tutorials. If the learner wishes to be in direct contact with the tutorial maker they will be able to join online workshops by the tutorial maker (if the maker chooses to hold workshops). Not only will the learner be able to ask questions directly, but they will also be in contact with other learners, which I think is a much more of a pleasant learning experience than learning on your own.

In my opinion a good project needs to be sustainable in funding its own costs, but also sustainable for Steem. What I meant with the latter is that people should buy or power up more Steem for a project (this doesn’t count for philanthropic projects). In this part I will explain how I think we will achieve both sustainability.

Our most important goal is to provide an opportunity for the tutorial makers and mentors to earn a living for sharing their expertise. There are many education platforms that provide (professional) tutorials which are often paid. And many free sources such as Youtube and Wikihow. We believe (professional) information should be accessible for everybody, which is why all tutorials on the website will be free. To reward mentors for their work we plan to call on voluntary supporting of consumers to creators something you see on Twitch. For the people who don't know about Twitch, it's a streaming platform for gamers where people can send money to their favourite streamers. The most successful streams earn up to thousands of dollars each week. Similar to Twitch on our platform people will have the option to send crypto or fiat to the tutorial makers/workshop holders.

By using this model at the same time we fulfill our other sustainability requirement. There will be a flow of fiat or other crypto into the Steem ecosystem, because people who want to join the workshops or support the tutorial makers need to make a Steem account/buy Steem.

To cover for the initial costs we will start a @fundition project.

To determine which tutorial creators provide quality teachings there will be a rating system. This rating system won't be connected to Steemit's reputation as we all know reputation can be bought. Instead we will create our own reputation system in which users can rate tutorial creators with, for example, a star rating.

Most tutorial makers are not good in promoting their content. This is where we will help them by indexing their tutorials and doing direct promotion on the front page. For this we will probably ask a small fee or beneficiary rewards from them, the revenue we get from this will be used for platform maintenance and the growth of the project.

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As this project is very ambitious we will build it up in two in two phases:

This is the current phase we are in. I see this phase as a test of proof of concept while we can work on contributing to Steemit by providing education on content creation and promotion. Currently, we have a team of about 12 mentors of which two have years of solid marketing experience and a few have experience with promoting. Overall they are all great writers and we are going to recruit more. To ensure that our education platform will start with quality tutorials we will begin with a select group of trusted mentors. These mentors will set an example to future educators. To encourage consistent quality tutorials and workshops, we will try to raise funds and grow our voting trail to support the educators.

Discord is a wonderful platform that we use to build our community and this is where all the interaction between educators and learners take place. We have created an open source bot that allows our mentors to create workshops and users to register for those workshop. Below is an example:

If phase 1 is successful we will begin with phase 2 which is working on creating a true global decentralized education platform. In this phase we will look beyond Discord and create our own platform where educators and learners can communicate. And we will create a directory that allows users to easily navigate to the tutorials they are looking for and implement a rating system.

A preview of our website:

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We would like to know what you think of the current posting culture and about our education project. If you have any suggestions or see a flaw in our concept let us know in a comment below. If you need to write a post then you can use the tag #promo-mentors. My team and I will be going through this tag each day. You can also find me on Discord in our channel https://discord.gg/vDPAFqb or message me directly @futurethinker#8830.

If you have a passion for teaching or would like to share your knowledge once in a week feel free to send us a message! In phase 1 we are especially looking for people who can teach others how to reach an audience online, people who are knowledgeable in SEO and we are also looking for people who can teach how to write a general good article which involves cathy titles, lay-out, grammar etc.

We are looking for people who can strengthen our team. If you think you have the drive and the skills to help us making this project a reality send me a message on Discord @futurethinker#8830.

Keep updated with this project on @promo-mentors. We will start with phase 1 soon.

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I will definitely check out your discord space - this is an interesting move. :)
When it comes to price drops of Steem, I think a big part of the issue is that, by design, Steem guarantees that a percentage of the money used to buy Steem will just 'disappear' into the pockets of witnesses and Steem posters (whales).. So as a 'classic' cryptocurrency that can be relied on to grow in value just due to it being attractive to investors, it is not so great. If the utility aspect of the token were more balanced and posters could be rewarded more equally (without whale sized accounts just taking most of the rewards regardless of the quality of their posts), then more people might use the social networks and thus also then more people might be able to see past the fact that a significant percent of all money paid into Steem will 'drain away' through the social aspect.

In short, the social network aspect of Steem MUST be a success for Steem to increase its value and this has been lagging behind.. But maybe the next 6 months will change that.

Hi URA! I'd like you to explain this part, I think I know what you mean, but not sure?

When it comes to price drops of Steem, I think a big part of the issue is that, by design, Steem guarantees that a percentage of the money used to buy Steem will just 'disappear' into the pockets of witnesses and Steem posters (whales).. So as a 'classic' cryptocurrency that can be relied on to grow in value just due to it being attractive to investors, it is not so great.

Some of these "mechanisms" inherent to the Steem Blockchain have a more positive effect, when the whole context is understood. Particularly This One...

I say more positive, changed from much more LOL

Yes, the mechanism has a positive purpose, but it needs to be balanced with a thriving social dynamic to be reassuring to investors.

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follows do so little...
You need to join #minnowbootcamp Instead! :)

When it comes to price drops of Steem, I think a big part of the issue is that, by design, Steem guarantees that a percentage of the money used to buy Steem will just 'disappear' into the pockets of witnesses and Steem posters (whales).. So as a 'classic' cryptocurrency that can be relied on to grow in value just due to it being attractive to investors, it is not so great.

You touch on a very complex point in my opinion, there can be a whole post dedicated to this, which is why I would like to talk more to you about this in a DM.

In the end I think it all comes down to whether we are able to create more value inflows with our content, communities and dapps than value outflows. If we don't sell all our steem that we receive from the network we will go a long way. And I think to achieve this we need a mixture of a good code and culture.

#undy's bot helper lol

Oh man reading this got me psyched up and thinking I should end my Guild Wars playing days and go back to Steeming again with a purpose.

Someone when I lost my energy and will I also lost my purpose because I have to agree that most of the time we are writing for a specific Steem audience and not writing for mass media.

Thanks FT for these thoughts.

Hey Maverick! Hope you are doing well bud!

You should come back to us ;) Eve, kay and the rest and even Grumphy whale miss you !

Sounds like he's a lost gem...

He's not lost, just off "chasing tail!"
But he is a gem.

hi MAV

😎

Hey Undie! it has been too long!

Your "Nuts and Bolts" approach to the problem is great! I think a lot of what you say above in the article is positive, and should be a good template for future STEEM-Growth and lead to expansion of all Steem-Based platforms! BRAVO!!! 🤩

In theory, if Steemit was a mainstream platform, in which many minnows had enough Steem Power to cancel out whales, then I think Steemit would work.

THIS IS "In Progress" 👍 (more below)

The reality is that the distribution of Steem hasn't been fair at the start which has given large sp holders more influence than intended.

Sounds like Pure 💩 to me... pardon my French ;)
Everyone on Steemit now could have joined SOONER, and bought their stake at prices LOWER than Steem is now. I kick myself for getting into some bad deals in Crypto, where at the exact same time I could have bought a literal ORCA Stake for the BTC I was pissing away at that time. Whose fault was that???

MINE and Mine Alone! 😬



OVERALL, Great post, but lamenting about Unfair Distribution is a total waste of time. (you seem to just mention it and go on, but I state this for the other readers) In fact, that "situation" is reversing itself as we speak. Whales are selling at relatively cheap prices, and we Dolphins and smaller fishies are gobbling it up as fast as we can. Hence the prices oscillating between low 80¢ range to just under a dollar. Great deal for the whales, orca and such whom most of which got in in the single digit ¢ent ranges, that I just missed [grumble-grumble]

The "unfair distribution" is fixing itself, in part. Do the rest with the outline above and I think we'll have a WINNER!

Cheers!
-Undy (who just missed single digit-steem prices)

At the early start Steem could be mined which gave early miners huge influence. The effect is still felt today in what I described in the post. And I wouldn't be so sure that it gets better, the big stake holders still get most from delegation to bid bods and get most of the curation rewards.

Great post, but lamenting about Unfair Distribution is a total waste of time.
Luckily it was just a small part of the post!

Ok, that is factual. But even a bigger waste of time lamenting the fact! You stated it an moved on, which is great. Makes your other moves even more bold and decisive, working on a platform that has such an infrastructure in place.

This "Early Edge" has led a lot of folks to blog about those events, and call the whole thing a Ponzi Scheme. Unfortunately… Thanks for the reply, gonna follow this effort and see if I can muster up some support!

Regarding "Getting Better" there are (reportedly) lots of "whales powering down", Ned was rumored to, Jerry Banfield, and others. I have not looked at this claim, but market actions seem to lend credibility to that theory. IMO, that creates cheaper steem which is a good thing, and we can grab it. ;-)

I hear SALE! ;)

"Limited Time Only!" 😎

No doubt the identification of the problem is 100% in my mind... I keep on saying, almost making me sound like a broken record, that the necessary change is cultural, not just code, and in this sense the mission of @promo-mentors is addressing the core of the rott, sort of speak.

As you point out, we've focused so much on remaining inside our echo chambers that have failed to project outward, thus creating the non-sustainable system we have to day, if not on it's own, certainly contributing to it's short-lived rallies.

The community on discord has grown considerably, and in my biased opinion, the current team @promo-mentor has is doing a fantastic job, but keeping it on track will require a sustainable implementation.

Let's face it, as painful as it may be, true and pure altruism is not long lasting. So, taking care of the teachers is at the core of the success of the project.

I would however, consider you taking this into an SMT realm. Meaning, that you could see if you could apply this whole concept, a system for education compensation for both students and teachers with a Token.

At the stage we are at, the project would be probably using ERC20 tokens, just to lift it off the ground, but nonetheless it seems to me more plausible for you to secure funding or delegations for that matter if you take a page or two from the other young SMT projects on this blockchain.

In any case, you got my support as always.

Changing some one's mind is a bit harder than adding code. But as far as the culture change steps need to be taken in order to keep it sustainable. One first thought is Witnesses get way to much to run a node server we all know less than half of the witness only run a witness node and nothing more. Now that's not to say they are doing nothing for the network (They maintain the integrity of it)

Bots are also a huge factor more and more accounts are just delegating for the sake of earning. If we could do half and half for curators the bot army will subdue. Author/Curator Win win more eyes on real content and less automated content, thus creating a social network where both collaborators work hand and hand.

SMT's are a way of coating the stink that surrounds Steem and Steemit.

"Let's create different tokens on top of Steem... yup that should help create real communities" I see none of this happening but worsening the effect.

I would love to help -- please msg me on discord

@futurethinker#8830 Hi! Just read your steemit post on culture change and education -- I am interesting in speaking with you!

Hello @joeparys!

What is your discord username?

Doesn't pop up what is your discord ID?

SMT's are a way of coating the stink that surrounds Steem and Steemit.

I see your point in this and I agree mostly. But this doesn't mean it's the end of the Steem blockchain. SMTs could make Steemit and Steem token "not relevant", but the dapps that will be created on the Steem blockchain they could be much more valuable if they implement features that don't drain value as is happening with Steem.

Awesome thought!

I would however, consider you taking this into an SMT realm. Meaning, that you could see if you could apply this whole concept, a system for education compensation for both students and teachers with a Token.

We have been thinking about the advantages of SMT and I think that having a token for promo-mentors could increase the student and teacher interaction a lot. The reason that we do not choose for ERC20 for now is because it can add a lot of complications to the interaction, because ERC20 work differently and much slower than sending Steem.

We will however most likely implement SMTs when they are out. Unfortunately, this is several months away :).

@askanything ias an educational tool, I upvote questions. Asking questions is one of the best way to learn. If you want me to upvote more questions, you are welcome to delegate some SP to the @askanything account.

Thank you or sharing your thoughts and your vision FT. I found myself nodding in agreement through much of this post. It's an honor and a pleasure to be a part of this team you have gathered. I am delighted that you are providing a channel to help our fellow Steemians and to reach those who aren't on Steem (yet). And at the same time giving me an opportunity to do those things that bring me joy - building a vibrant community and sharing knowledge with the people in that community.

Thank you for creating this opportunity.

I feel very honoured to you know you Kay! Without you I think I would have been very lost with creating our website! ;)

dont forget me 🤪

Haha I would need to make a seperate post for you lol

We sure do!

I entirely agree with you that most contents herein are mostly for consumption by fellow steemians for apparent reasons. I'm all for any program that will bring in fresh people as the activities here have considerably dropped in the bear market session.

Hey @greenrun! The bear run indeed has lowered engagement a lot! But I think this is good so that we can attract more people who are less focussed on the rewards!

I like the glass-half-full thinking on this scenario. People that are heavily in it for the money had dropped off, much the same way the bear market dropped many noobs by turning them into bagholders. The real cryptocurrency enthusiast are still keeping on.

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Go Blockchain! :)

This all sounds amazing and I can see the core of it is addressing that bleed of value going out of steemit without much coming in, very forward thinking. Some of this article is kinda above me as I'm focusing on being a writer of stories, rather than a student of blockchain. But, one thing I see in this idea which I feel might be handled better is:

Most tutorial makers are not good in promoting their content. This is where we will help them by indexing their tutorials and doing direct promotion on the front page. For this we will probably ask a small fee or beneficiary rewards from them

My reasoning behind my opposition to that is purely a personal opinion based on what I would think if I was looking for a platform to publish a poetry tutorial, for example. I would be seriously turned off to have to pay to share my knowledge. But there needs to be quality control, I see that. I think the rep system you're proposing could do that along with assessment of potential tutorial contributors to keep rubbish of the site. I don't know how feasible that would be logistically though, just some thoughts ;-)

I also found what you said about steemit authors posting/promoting their work outside of steemit interesting. I've been waiting for someone to develop an app that will post automatically to a wordpress site when you post on steemit. I stopped publishing on my wordpress site years ago and now that I've learned how to post on steemit, I have forgotten how to design a post on wordpress so well. I'd love to start posting to my wordpress site again from steemit but it seems like there is only a plugin for wordpress to steemit.

Interesting article and project @futurethinker

My reasoning behind my opposition to that is purely a personal opinion based on what I would think if I was looking for a platform to publish a poetry tutorial, for example. I would be seriously turned off to have to pay to share my knowledge.

Exactly this, which is why the promotion will be a feature tutorials creators can opt to choose for. We will never force a tutorial maker to give up part of their tutorial rewards, instead the tutorial maker can choose whether he or she wants to use our promotion "service" for which the price will be a part of the posting rewards. This promotion service could be a curation service in which we could reward the quality of the tutorial through an upvote and good rating.

How does this sound to you?

Sounds interesting and that confirms how it will work a little better. Good luck with the project buddy :-)

Thanks will need it! ;)

Powerful post; you mentioned the disproportionate influence that SP creates.

People starting out, I'll speak from my experience, I read about 25 introduction posts. I looked to the introduction posts that had generated the most I could find (a range between 50-100+). So, I put in some effort and crafted the first post to introduce myself. A week later I got my first 0.005 steem.

Next - Content only holds value for 1 week. Many forms of content is VERY limited by this constraint. A video for example, might attract a handful of views and a few likes within that 7 days... what happens if the video goes viral on day 10 and gets 1000's of more likes after... well, it is gone.

Next - Unless you are a whale and have people just waiting for you to post so they can get a chance at curation rewards, then any success depends on bots OR the long and drawn out efforts of slowly attracting people towards your own content... and I've learned recently about the epidemic of resteem bots (about 1/3 of my followers have 0 original posts and only resteems).

Most people do not have the time and dedication to collect pennies for articles written that might take a few hours to write and format, add images, sources, etc... then to watch it disappear into obscurity while giving a few cents, then to look on the trending page seeing garbage click bait that is 2 paragraphs and a picture getting 1000$ worth of steem. That is a kick to the balls that people generally won't want to put themselves through.... so, they just stop posting.

That's really only looking at the negative end, I wouldn't be here if there weren't some positives to offset that, but I understand the perspective that if a system seems unfair, people will not stick around.

If people are not sticking around, then there's nobody buying steem and people selling, so, the price will drop.

rant over.

Haha we have the freedom to rant here ;)

Next - Content only holds value for 1 week.

I agree on that the 1 week limit on receiving posts rewards does indeed incentivize people to write for the short term, the mentality is "what can I write for today."

However the value of a post can be ongoing, the information in the post can be consumed infinitely so long as the steem blockchain is live. We have started to associate value with money, and have disregarded the fact that when write a post for the long term and people like it, they can come back to your blog and upvote your other posts. Additionally, people can earn different ways on their blogging. Not only through upvotes, the conventional blogging.

Thanks for coming by btw ;)

Well, its a bit of a double edged sword really - If I stumble on an older steemit blog post and I see that it has few upvotes its like a quality filter, so to speak, that tells me if I should invest a chunk of time into reading it. Thus if everyone is writing for the short term to get that built-in reward from upvotes it gets very repetetive content.

I think too man are so focused on the "hit piece" and the reward now, rather than building a following and thinking long-term.

Interesting to follow his discussion!

Brilliant Newby Comment :)

You are right, but you can write a novel worth of tutorials, not even breakthrough the startup SP, and people will gain value for years.

Knowing that the rewards of efforts for any efforts end at 7 days, it's better to write a singular article as multiple small parts spread out daily than to make a solid full length essay.

Yes, you'll make more attractive posts, over time you will build a larger following, but over those months and years, you still get to see garbage posts making hundreds or even thousands, daily.

The system is designed in such a way where there's a built in motivation to post click bait, to look into strategies like timing, what bots to use, what is the best time to click like... It makes it into a game.

Actually, even posts like this where there is a discussion following are few and far between.

"Content only holds value for 1 week. Many forms of content is VERY limited by this constraint."
Nothing to add to that.
Very good point.

We are truly guilty of writing only for this community... I have just realised that. This is such an awesome and great project. I may have gotten the whole idea wrong but I am thinking you want to set something like Upwork which is amazing!

Following ✊

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Hey @tezmel thank you for the kind words!

I truly and fully believe in your vision @futurethinker. No wonder you have such an appropriate username and a huge goal to change the whole dynamics of Steem Ecosystem. Would do everything in my power to help you reach there! Mega Cheers. :-)

To other folks reading this post and comments, the party is just getting started. Hop on the ride and help us spread the knowledge to the Steemverse and beyond!

Thank you for the support brother! :)

I am glad you have joined the team!

This is an incredible idea. I agree with @meno that

true and pure altruism is not long lasting.

So it's imperative that you focus on practical ways to reward the teachers. Otherwise, they won't stick around, and without them, you won't have students. A donations system will only go so far. I thin and SMT would be a workable solution to both rewarding teachers and keeping tutorials affordable for students.

I'd also say don't too much in a hurry. I understand the desire to be expedient and jump on the solution quickly, but going too fast can be detrimental. It's best to think it through thoroughly and implement it strongly.

A donations system will only go so far. I thin and SMT would be a workable solution to both rewarding teachers and keeping tutorials affordable for students.

What we want to achieve could be seen as a sort of donation system, but from peer to peer like Twitch. I hope that students/learners want to voluntarily pay for the tutorials that are actually useful to them, and not have to purchase tutorials first and then find out, it was a waste of money.

That's not a bad idea i guess from a student's perspective. I haven't used Twitch so I dont know how it works on a practical level.

We would like to know what you think of the current posting culture

Hi @futurethinker: I really have no business piping in here, but on the theory that personal experience gives insight into user satisfaction, I'd like to add a thought:

It's easy to feel adrift on Steemit, to have the sense of being anonymous and inconsequential. I've been here now a little over six months and I'm having a grand time. But it's taken me this long to realize that Steemit isn't really the vast ocean it appears at first to be. It's comprised of communities, groups of people who share interests. In those groups you're more likely to find content you like and to find readers who will enjoy your content. That's obvious, but not to someone who is new.

I don't think tags do it, not for a newbie. I think there must be a way for clever people (like you) to design a system where maybe all "introduce yourself" posts are filtered and some kind of expansive orientation message is delivered. Something that will give new account holders a heads up about informally aligning themselves with compatible communities where they can form connections. And, the importance of reading other posts, and commenting on these--the importance of two-way, meaningful engagement.

Personally, I surf the site for interesting material in different languages. I read and comment widely. But I'm beginning to understand that, though I may continue to surf, the audience for my blogs will likely be in those areas in which I have a particular interest.

As for:

a platform where educators and learners can communicate

I think that's great. As you know, I'm not technically savvy so, though I love to teach I'm not sure I could navigate your site nimbly. However, I do think many bloggers here would benefit from mentoring. As for the financial incentive, that wouldn't move me as much as the desire to help.

Anyway, I'm just a little bit of plankton who will be around as long as Steemit is around. I like to write and I love the variety of information available on Steemit. But a lot of people are less attached to the platform than I am. I'd like them to stay also.

I don't think tags do it, not for a newbie. I think there must be a way for clever people (like you) to design a system where maybe all "introduce yourself" posts are filtered and some kind of expansive orientation message is delivered.

Thank you! I wish I was clever enough to design a system like that haha! Luckily we have great minds from the Steemit inc team who are working on SMTs and Hivemind. If you are interested in how it works out I would suggest you search up those terms! ;)

I think that's great. As you know, I'm not technically savvy so, though I love to teach I'm not sure I could navigate your site nimbly.

We will try to design it as userfriendly as possible! My grandmother always had problems with technology, and I always had to explain it to her. We will try to make it so that non tech savvy grannies and grandpas can go through it, if not, that they only need to ring their grand children once for an explanation so to say ;)

I enjoyed that response, especially the second part :)

You address two things here that are worth talking about separately.

  1. Education on how to be a good Steemian
  2. An education platform built on Steem

Good steemian education already has a few efforts. I'm not sure of the status of them, but it'd be worth linking up with them to find out. Minnow University comes to mind. I myself think that one of the core things that communities offer to members is education, which is a good reason to back communities.

The second is the building of an online education platform on Steem. I would try to decouple 1. from 2. so that you don't hold up 1. until you have 2. in place. Building an online learning platform is a major exercise - but a worthy one who's time has probably come. There are really good supporting services (dTube, dSound, dLive), fairly mature coding tool chains and the infrastructure is improving. This would still be a major undertaking though. But, the models have interesting incentive possibilities; the course could reward progress with upvotes or crypto.

To finish up my blathering, I think that steem as a generic-text platform is very limited. While that is steem's current core function, the platform is in place for us to build upon. That's why I see a big part of steem's future in communities accessing steem via third-party interfaces specifically tuned for the needs of those communities - and not all those communities will be content-creation based.

The second is the building of an online education platform on Steem. I would try to decouple 1. from 2. so that you don't hold up 1. until you have 2.

Very much agree, we will therefore divide it into two phases. Whatever happens in phase one we will work on this minnow university which we use discord for and phase 2 is about building the platform. So what ever happens we will work on building up educational materials and inviting other educators.

There are really good supporting services (dTube, dSound, dLive), fairly mature coding tool chains and the infrastructure is improving.

I agree I think we will use one of the platforms you mentioned, @dlive for online tutorials.

That's why I see a big part of steem's future in communities accessing steem via third-party interfaces specifically tuned for the needs of those communities - and not all those communities will be content-creation based.

It seems like it will move in that direction with SMTs and hivemind. I hope our education platform will be one of them.

Thank you for giving your thoughts @eturnerx! I hope your bot will also find its place by helping communities to connect with their members :)

Yes indeed my friend @futurethinker - so many good points:
I love:

  1. Recognition of the fact that we are collectively a little introspective and that sharing content to a wider audience is not just desirable but necessary.
  2. A Decentralised Education Platform - it's a beautiful concept and I can see this working really well with promo-mentors being the incubator to create a neat blue print and scalable model. I know you have built a strong and sound community.

I can see the post will go far and wide and so it should; upvoted and resteemed.

Really great future-thoughtleadership- future thinker man.

Please remind me if I have not delegated to your project within 30 days.

Thanks a ton man! Appreciate every support! The mentors need it :)

Sounds like a good plan @futurethinker, so you are basically trying to create something a bit similar to "wikihow.com" but using the steem-blockchain as a foundation or Smart Media Tokens?

I was thinking along these lines when I first came to steemit, where is the INDEX, and why is some random-travel blogger making hundreds of dollars on a post with some photos in trending etc, etc...

But then I just got used to the chaos and the "flexibility" of the platform and went with the flow, but I try to write for people who don't use steemit now days, because I know it ends up on search-engines and the articles will probably be around forever maybe...

Also I belong to the "consciously avoid certain social media platforms" type, so I am not going to do any "cross-promotion", but I think that people who are comfortable with "old socialmedia" should do so, why not, it will help steemit grow, or at least bring in more new users... And I love the idea of mentorship... It is always needed...

Not too keen on discord, sorry I know everyone here jumps on the discord bandwagon instantly, so I liked this "we will look beyond Discord and create our own platform where educators and learners can communicate." To build an encrypted peer-to-peer based messaging system should be crucial for any online-community (also here on the steemit-platform! With a decent privacy policy?! Maybe it is to much to ask...?) But it would be crucial for any community that wants to gain more traction from users who are feed-up with the "non-privacy" of "old socialmedia" and there are a lot of us...

Cheers and thanks for your post!

/FF

so you are basically trying to create something a bit similar to "wikihow.com" but using the steem-blockchain as a foundation or Smart Media Tokens?

Yes, but with an added feature that people can contact the author and follows lessons.

I was thinking along these lines when I first came to steemit, where is the INDEX

Hivemind should make this INDEX easier. It is indeed a messy bunch. I value indexing and the ease of finding information a lot. So having users easily to navigate to their desired tutorials and courses will be one of our priorities.

(I hate it to spend an half our to look up sources for one subject)

With a decent privacy policy?! Maybe it is to much to ask...?) But it would be crucial for any community that wants to gain more traction from users who are feed-up with the "non-privacy" of "old socialmedia" and there are a lot of us...

A very valid point! There I have seen many projects working on this privacy. We value privacy a lot and it is something we certainly will have to look in to.

Thank you for the great feedback @friendly-fenix!

Thank you for taking charge and doing something!

/FF

These are all good ideas. A tutorial site would be great. Some of my best-earning posts have been when I write about how I've been able to make the platform work for me. The thing is that while this type of content would be considered evergreen content the rewards are not. One would have to continually post tutorials to keep earning so authors would be incentivized to post create tutorials off of Steemit on a site they could keep earning from.

as content creators we should acknowledge that the other social media platforms have a much larger reach and that we should use this to get people to join.

As much as I love DTube, it doesn't bring new people to the platform like YouTube does, it doesn't even allow embedding videos nor does it rank for keywords on search engines. It is very Steem-centric like you said.

Posting articles that are not all about Steemit is what we need to do to get new users here.

As far as the drop in users and Alexa rankings, I do think the price has a lot to do with it. You my know I host Open Mic. Back in November as the price spiked so did the entries (up to 770 a week) and as the price falls so do entries. The number of entries almost in direct relation to the price of Steem. @prc who created DSound recently said he saw the exact same correlation of submissions to DSounds as I did on Open Mic.

There are many people here only for the rewards. It's just a fact or appears that way. Then there are those of us who keep posting regardless of the price of Steem but we seem to be the minority.

The number of entries almost in direct relation to the price of Steem. @prc who created DSound recently said he saw the exact same correlation of submissions to DSounds as I did on Open Mic.

We have also noticed this in our community in workshop participations. I think it's fine as it leaves out the people with whom we can work to create a better Steem ecosystem.

I have always liked your idea of open mic, in fact open mic has inspired one of our promotional side projects!

there is much fucked with steemit. but over and over i come back to is that it is ours. we own it.
sure there are some whales with disproportionate power. Initiatives like this is what it is all about for me.
We can complain and get nitpicky on all the steamy steemit bullshit... but it is a waste of breath and mental energy in my view... better to spend time creating something that is what you want to see.
Im behind this idea and project 100%. Resteemed and full power support.

We can complain and get nitpicky on all the steamy steemit bullshit... but it is a waste of breath and mental energy in my view... better to spend time creating something that is what you want to see.

I'm in the same mode as you mate. Let's create!

What a great piece of content and what a promising approach! There is so much wisdom and great ideas in here.

First of all, I'm incredibly thankful for your first chapter: of course we can only get rewarded by people who are already part of the Steem blockchain. Yet, if we spread the word and try bringing as much fresh traffic as possible from the outside to this platform, then this will long term contribute to the growth of Steem in an essential way.

There lies the true community-spirit that is terribly needed on Steem.

The Steem dev team is working on providing us solutions such as Hivemind and SMTs (...). While these are very promising, I don't like to sit around and wait for them to arrive.

Well many people still haven't arrived in the new world where we don't have a centralized institution that is going to solve all our problems. The actual change in culture is a whole parading shift that provides more freedom on one hand and more responsibilities on the other.

You want a decentralized world where you're the architect of your own fortune? Well then go and live it up.

Everything starts with education, and that is why I love your concept that much.

education.jpg

I've joined your discord channel in order to support you in the best way possible.

THANK YOU.

PS: Sorry for being late, I upvoted and resteemed this right away but wanted to take the time in order to leave a meaningful comment, as you and the article deserve it :-)

You want a decentralized world where you're the architect of your own fortune? Well then go and live it up.

Spoken like a true Steem Ambassador! Well said!

Thank you for sharing @surfermarly :)

Hehe, thanks for your kind words @futurethinker :-)
Hope you're enjoying a great weekend!

I absolutely love this project, and can't wait to witness it mature! It's such a great idea and I hope to be able to help somehow!

Thank you Eve! You have been supporting the team a lot!

Awesome awesome project! im watching closely!

Thanks a lot! It feels good to have one of the #promo-steem giant watching!

How is everything doing with @oracle-d @starkerz ?

Regards, @gold84

He's a busy man!

Busy busy busy!! it would be great to see you on the oracle-d discord @gold84!

Here, i am new. Doing photography. Some days ago i understand steem price is very low. Did i took wrong decision ? Have any future ? Can anyone give me good advice ? Want to improve by using my skill. Me very worried. Thanks

As Steem is still very small and there are very active users, it is essential to promote content off the platform. I use Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Linkedin, and sometimes Minds.

Steem also needs much better promotion features. The current 'Promotion' Tag does not attract an audience. Other platforms promote through user feeds. Surely an algorithm can be created that could get promoted content on relevant feeds.

I also hope the view counter will be returned soon. It is very important to know the number of people that view a post.

Brother, first of all thanks for taking your time to write this article. Steemit is surely not having its best moment. People seem unmotivated and shitposting abounds. We need to make steemit great again and fucking forget about the damn money for a second and just do what we gotta do which is as simple as creating good origial content. I'll talk to you on discord and see in what way I could help. cheers bro!

Cheers man! :)

I wish best of luck with the project and it looks very latent demand of many learner and mentors.

I hope the platform will successfully promote mentors, connect educators with learners. This is a really great idea.

Thank you for your thoughts :)

I hope you can come teach on our discord channel sometime! :)

I'm an aspiring Fiction writer. I started writing on Steemit in order to share my stories. In the beginning, when @curie upvoted me being that I was a new user, it made sense.

Fiction stories take a long time to write. Each chapter might take somewhere between 1 hour and 5 hours. That is a great deal longer than your typical Steemit post.

I also write blog pieces such as this one: https://steemit.com/life/@jeezzle/are-we-really-what-we-seem

Those get much more attention than the fiction stories.

Therefore, I have a great tendency to ignore my natural abilities and instead simply write about what's going on around me. You know, the kind of thing that people with higher SP want to read about.

I have lately been sponsoring a writing contest, which I will continue to do, in order to bring more attention to the fiction side of our Steemit world.

I think you've got a good idea here. I definitely have some talent as a blogger, and I certainly can write a good story.

I'll be paying attention to your progress. I'm interested.

Those get much more attention than the fiction stories.

Therefore, I have a great tendency to ignore my natural abilities and instead simply write about what's going on around me. You know, the kind of thing that people with higher SP want to read about.

I can imagine, as I curated for @curie I noticed that fiction tags are very competitive.

I think you've got a good idea here. I definitely have some talent as a blogger, and I certainly can write a good story.

I'll be paying attention to your progress. I'm interested.

If you mean by this that you want to grow your audience outside Steemit, then you should definitely keep an eye on the updates on our main blog (@promo-mentors) and our discord channel: https://discord.gg/uZXqHnm

My team is setting up a course now, and we have a few with over 10 years of marketing, SEO experience.

Thank you for giving your thoughts @jeezzle.

A blockchain version of quora where you get paid to give people right answers would do well in my opinion. I have seen plans to build something like that but still in progress.

Hey @niel96 yes basically it will be a quora for which people need a tutorial. In addition people will be able to contact the tutors.

Actually there is already a quora steemit dapp. It's called @musing! You should check it out ;)

Thanks for letting me know, i was already looking for something like that. Right now i'm a contributor to quora but there is no financial incentive to put >1hour per day time into it.

No problem! On Steemit there are already many cool creations you might've yet need to discover. On @promo-mentors blog often write about them!

Keep up the great work!!

“Generally, content creators on Steemit tend to only write for people ON Steemit”.

True. Several great writers that I know, finally got tired of not seeing rewards for their efforts here on Steemit. They just stopped writing, or left altogether. Someone mentioned in another article that maybe Steemit is really more of a networking site, than a blogging site. Could be. I just did a video about some of these things ...it looks like many others here are talking about this as well.

Posted using Partiko iOS

To me Steemit has done a better job than other social media in connecting people. Steemit delivers on the "social" in social media.

Yes, it sure does. In fact I think that is a strength - more so than the writing blogs aspect.

Cryptocurrency prices in general have been going down these past few weeks. Too much turmoil in the cryptocurrency world right now, with many countries planning regulations, whether the USA approves Bitcoin ETF or not, gurus announcing price drops and more. I guess we have to wait it out.

Another possible option is that people have been dumping Steem with the idea of buying Bitcoin thinking that maybe there will be a serious pump coming soon.

Its been long I got captivated to this extent on steemit, this is a huge project and I hope that you will receive necessary support to stay motivated all through.

I only have problem with tutorial promotion service. Exceptional tutorials should enjoy decent exposure.

Yes we need a culture shift. I think the Steem blockchain users need to shift away from being anti-investor.

I think the Steem blockchain users need to shift away from being anti-investor.

What do you mean by anti-investor?

There are a lot of attacks on whales. Why invest in Steem if you get attacked? There are reasons why most whales don't use the platform.

I am in complete agreement with all the points you have mentioned. Happy to be a part of an awesome team. 😎

awesome team and awesome man. 🤪 😵 🤪 😵

Thank god. There is no flashing here. I always get scared. 😟

🤣 steemit not support them on profile.

Hi @futurethinker

As you say Steem is still a young platform, which also utilises a young technology (blockchain). I think there is a lot more growing to be done. Building a large user base and audience will take time, but I think the more mainstream crypto, blockchain, bitcoin, steem become people will see the benefit.

Over at @critday it is one of my missions to share the benefits of Steem with architecture students, to further increase our user base.

I look forward to following you and @promo-mentors further.

Wishing you good luck.
Dan @critday

Hello @critday, very interesting project. I hope we will be in contact in the future to help students! ;)

This is a great new. I thought that those were the way how it works. I think a lot in producing good content, but i´ve been watching that so many people just write about nothing in fact, and they recive so much pay for that. I´m a new written here and all the things that you say sounds so good to me. I really need help to be good in this page, I have not idea about how so many things work. Thank you for sharing your ideas and i hope that the good content will be appreciated.

You can join @promo-mentors. This is what we are for!

Here is the Discord link: https://discord.gg/49z469d

(You need to register for an account)

Multiple reasons, ---bear market most coins are down 90%. Specific to steem ...its just too complicated for an average user!!!!. The moment you, we need users to write better article ,quality control and so on, it points the fact that there is an onboarding issue...

Can you give us a good model of your idea from other online platforms who are synced to BTC, ETH blockchains that we can visit, etc., @futurethinker?

To my knowledge there are no education platforms that work on a blockchain to what I proposed. But I guess if I were to choose one, I would say Twitch, which has a digital coin (not a cryptocurrency).

Well, I do not know a lot about Steem and Steemit, but I like the idea of the platform and I enjoy the community here ;-) So besides all of these economic things, let's have some fun here!

Best wishes,
atlanticmatt


Follow me on my great adventure. It's risky, it's life threttening, it's the biggest journey of my life. Check it out here.
Follow me on my trip on Instagram

Agree even though there is money involved we should have fun! Cheers on that!

Excellent article. It is something I did not know, but once I read I realize the problem that is occurring and as many, due to ignorance, we do not collaborate so that the platform grows. Undoubtedly, this topic is something that everyone should read when they start in this world. Steemit is quite dynamic but there is still a long way to go. Thank you for your information and for the excellent solution you propose.

Excellent article. It is something I did not know, but once I read I realize the problem that is occurring and as many, due to ignorance, we do not collaborate so that the platform grows.

I'm glad the article made you think. Thanks for reading it! :)

Good luck on the project thinker 🙏👏 lel

Excellent initiative, I hope to see the good wind of phase 1 soon. Good luck in the project.

Nice article. Ill just be natural and see what grows organically.

I have been here over 2 years? I've been through so many ups and downs on here but this down seems to be hanging around far to long.

Nice post about education i like it and East and West you are the best

Thank you! Catchy phrase you got there!

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Hmm steem for steem power

Do you mean powerup? ;)

Yes please

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