This is a very nice plan! I like it a lot.
But I still think there's a gap: What gives people a reason to buy Steem?
Like, really buy Steem, to the point that outside investors are clamoring to get it?
A reason beyond just "it makes your vote more powerful."
I feel there must be one more thing, one important aspect, before Steem buying becomes a good idea for a normal, sane investor.
Steem is transferable to anyone with an account, in three seconds. It's trustless. It doesn't clog up with 3 transactions per second. It has almost all the advantages of Bitcoin save that it's disinflationary vs. deflationary, and a whole bunch of advantages over it. Dilution is already below many major altcoins, at only 1 year in existance.
On top of that you can turn it into Steem Power to have influence in the network decision making and the reward allocation process, as well as a reduced dilution. There is also an element of social status to holding Steem Power, and social status is a greater motivator than basically anything else.
Your marketing is nice, and nothing there is untrue.
Yet the price of Steem continues to fall.
You can convince yourself, but can you convince investors?
Investors do prefer to look at the results. And this plan is a great start and it's nice to see some people devote their time into this. Now let's work to achieve the results that will attract investors.
Big investors will come if we get the users. If there are a lot of eyes on this platform, buying steem and powering it up will ensure their voice gets heard better.
We'll see. Every crypto has its lows. Bitcoin fell 96% in less than a month back in 2011. It came around.
I agree. You don't necessarily need speculating investors to make Steem valuable; it's a currency. If it were used in the real world for transactions more, it would become valuable because of the simple fact you can Buy Stuff With It, and easier than you can with, say, Bitcoin.
This is why I think marketing the currency, with the arguments you mention, for use in the real world needs to happen as well. Just being the better currency is no guarantee for success. There may be a slight hole in the marketing plan there.
If that currency is distuibuted around the world to millions of people, adoption as a currency is inevitable.
A very one-sided view on marketing. Millions of people may not want to have it if it isn't adopted as a currency. I think we need to both push and pull here, especially because other and increasingly similar currencies are being marketed as exactly that: convenient currencies.
Steemit.com is a distribution system for a currency. If it is successful at that, other apps like marketplaces will do the job of giving people something to do with it. Steemit.com doesn't have to do everything.
I refer to my previous comment. I could do this for hours.
I agree wholeheartedly. More users doesn't inevitably create value, although new users might buy STEEM->SP to increase their visibility. But for that kind of growth to be sustainable, continual growth is necessary, aka a bubble, it seems to me. Real increase in value depends on the desirability of holding STEEM, and the main road to that goal is STEEM becoming a widely used currency.
It's a huge hole!
The people who have been on the platform for a while know what steem can do. The problem is the new people are clueless because there is nothing to get them up to speed quickly. I know alot more about Dash because of Amanda Johnson and how she explains it. This is one of the first things I would address.
Without advertisers burning Steem to get their content in front of Steemians there's little to no value proposition for investors. There is only value being sucked out from content creators. Many don't invest and just constantly power down. Steem needs to focus on getting advertisers in ASAP! I am only talking about no invasive ads like at www.coinmarketcap.com Just giving a cool place for bloggers to come write stories does not bring value into the system. Yet again, Steem INC. does not get it.
Mmmm.. coinmarketcap should definitely have Steemit stickers sticking all around!
yeah for sure. crypto users first. Steemit INC needs to be advertising there.
yes, great marketing idea, advertise steemit on http://coinmarketcap.com/
While I don't fully agree with all of this... there is a bit of truth to this. Most content creators will just see this as a new place to earn a pay check. In order for the price of steem to actually rise and benefit all of the early adopters that are here we may need something a little more than just bringing in influencers. Something that gives people an incentive to buy steem, power up steem, and hold steem. Or even something that decreases the supply.
Overall, I think you guys are off to a good start. I have been glad to see this level of communication with the community, just think we might need to focus on other areas as well besides just bringing in influencers. Maybe those plans are already being thought about and best left for a second stage after this is already well underway?! I am not sure. I just wanted to put my 2 cents out there. :)
Look, I been here almost a year in since May. These guys talk talk talk but no action. Investors want results and the whole Steem eco-system is based upon the price of Steem. I would love to sit down in front of Ned and tell him exactly how he could get the Steem engine going again. You have to MUST MUST get major crypto advertisers to burn Steem. I have been around the block for years running my own business and investing into Crypto. I even have CFA. Let me tell you that Steem has got to start burning to increase the value. Iconomi recently did this because they have real fees and earnings and the value went 8X from ICO. Ned you need to make a deal with the advertisers or this is going down in flames.
perhaps the idea of 'Crypto' should be discarded. Consider Crypto to be the tool that things can be done with. Promote 'what can be done' rather that the underlaying tool.
If you think you can make such contributions, then message me on Steemit.chat and let's talk. I'm @mitchell
That probably means a discussion on the incentive model and token structure, but that's something I'm interested in.
That's actually not very accurate reporting.. I watch that market quite closely.
Anyway, if you look around FB, you'd know that ned has been going all around in blockchain conventions with his STEEM hoodie :). Sure, Inc can communicate more holistically about what they're doing.
Yes, thanks for putting in your 2 cents! This is part of what we mean by crowdsourcing. Hearing your thoughts and opinions and gauging what information you want to get from us in the future.
I reluctantly agree about needing advertising. I've heard it said that 'google is not a search engine...it's an advertising agency that provides a free search engine. People use google for the search feature and are exposed to the ads. (Something about an 'attention economy?) "attention" (eyes on ads) is worth money to business.
Yes, good point.
Devs always missed that question "What gives people a reason to buy Steem?"
Most of these Authors do not buy or hold SP they just sell it.
The more popular is Steemit the more Authors selling their SP.
i see this thrown around a lot. That 'most' just sell their SP. Do you have any actual stats on this beyond seeing a bit of information and extrapolating it to apply to the whole of the platform? I don't just sell mine and many of the accounts I've looked at are accumulating rather than selling.
How many of the larger stakeholders power down regularly vs how many of the smaller ones. Those numbers would be of interest in actually evaluating who holds and who sells.
Check out the Withdrawal to Deposit Ratio by User Count over Time in the weekly Exchange Transfer reports I've been doing. That ratio has to go a completely different direction for the price to really change around here (IMO). I don't think that will happen until everyone who wants to sell their STEEM and SBD on the market does so and we reach some kind of market equilibrium.
thank you for drawing my attention to your reports @lukestokes. Does seem to be some shaking out going on. As you suggest, we wont really see where that leaves things until it reaches some sort of equilibrium.
You're welcome. I'm actually quite surprised how relatively stable the price has been given how many people are cashing out compared to how many people are depositing. If that number were ever to reverse... I think the price could go way up and quickly.
Let's hope that it heads to the reverse as soon as possible ... but in the meantime, I'll be good with relatively stable.
We know this is happening when we look at the price of Steem.
It goes down over time. It sometimes spikes, but the trend is always downward.
It needs either stability, or an upwards trend.
Because it goes down, it means more Steem is produced and sold than is bought.
I find that it moves both up and down. Lately it has been pretty stable which is not a bad thing considering some of the other drops we've seen. Guess I'm more glass half full than empty. I grow weary of the negativity instead of people pulling to build.
Yup check out @lukestokes' reports! Not definitive, but it's something :)
thanks @kevinwong I just did ... most interesting.
Maybe if we could promise pump of STEEM in the future and then postpone it indefinitely. People would buy STEEM and then it would happen anyway but never quite completely. Catch 22.
And the "it makes your vote more powerful" can absolutely not be abandoned. I hear lots of small holders complaining about how those who hold more SP have too much influence and that something should be done (and various ideas have been proposed and even tried) to make voting power more equitable. I believe that would be a mistake. Investors do need to be rewarded, and @heretickitten is right in that there needs to be even more reason to buy in than the upvote value. However in the mean time, it is absolutely vital that the upvote value not be curtailed in any way. If you own lots of Steem Power you should be free to upvote whatever you want at whatever strength you want.
With that said, there then also needs to be plenty of marketing to attract new big investors so that there are more of them, and in this way reward distribution will organically get spread out to a wider variety of authors and content.
Steem Power has to be valuable to both small and large stakeholders alike if it's going to take off. The system won't work if power is forever held by a small few, and there's no value in buying small amounts of Steem Power when someone who owns 100 times as much Steem Power than you, gets 10,000 times as much voting influence. In the end the larger stakeholders will be better off with higher valued Steem than more a larger vote in a smaller pool.
I could go with a more linear incentive plan, if that is the problem. In fact, it would be much more fun for me to acquire more SP if I could see a corresponding linear increase in the monetary value of my upvote, so I'm not protesting that. What I don't like is for the whales (or more accurately, those authors they choose to upvote) to be punished or curtailed for using full or nearly full voting power. Eventually I'd like to be a whale. And I want to be able to vote full strength whenever I want.
Yes, I agree with you there.
Besides asking for reasons to buy steem we might also ask for reasons to stay on the platform in general. Thanks for inspiring me to a new thought here, @heretickitten ;)
Lower barriers to entry (onboarding) is huge. But why do we think these new users would stay? In the past we have had a considerably high fluctuation. Why did so many people leave the platform after a short period of time? One of the first steps might be analyzing their motivation. If we knew why people didn´t stay we might find solutions to retain new ones that join the platform in the future.
We would have to find an answer on the question: What are we able to promise and how can we keep it? In the end retention depends on needs and their fulfillment.
"Besides asking for reasons to buy steem we might also ask for reasons to stay on the platform in general"
I found a GREAT community with hard to find motivational THINKERS who I can INTERACT with and HELP one another. @surfermarly you are one of them BTW!
Hang loose...
Frank
P.S. I would still stay on the platform as long as the steem blockchain continues regardless, it's PRICELESS!!!
Thank you @cassidyandfranks, I feel honored to be mentioned :)
The community is surely a big plus. However, I believe that won´t motivate people to come over since it is not an unique argument. Supportive communities are a nice plus, but that´s not what influencers, successful bloggers, content creators actually look for. They search the one and only way to gain attention, promote their brands and monetize their content. That requires a perfectly shaped environment where information / content is easily found, well organized/structured and where surfing through this content is a true and exciting experience. steemit´s frontend doesn´t provide that experience yet. It´s a standard blogging interface with a more or less old school design. Content is not offered, it must be actively searched to be found. But well, design updates were announced, so crossing my fingers for that one :)
We have some interesting ideas around the discoverability of content which we are going to experiment with after communities ship. Right now, there is pretty much one moderation/curation pool on all of steemit, and it's pretty much large stakeholders doing most of the primary moderation.
With communities, the individual admins of communities can decide who can post or what gets posted in those communities, and by featuring specific, well-managed communities there are good ways of bringing carefully curated content (curated based on the preferences of those communities versus purely on stake) into view.
I fully agree, @sneak. Only remembering the reactions on the Roadmap 2017, the community feature is surely the most demanded one of all (not willing to mention the rewards curve again ;)).
This will open new doors both for the established bloggers and new content discoverers and creators! Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.
I totally hear you Marly in TIME and with the HELP of the Community including ME as a successful investor and communicator ( PLEASE see my comment below ) and with the HELP of the Community including YOU as a successful blogger and content creator.
WE ALL simultaneously learn to work and grow together, in sync.
"View the full context"
P.S. Crossing my fingers as well :)
You need to see my comment on this issue.
You mean this one?
https://steemit.com/marketing/@steemitblog/the-2017-steem-growth-plan#@surpassinggoogle/re-steemitblog-the-2017-steem-growth-plan-20170412t043827360z
" What gives people a reason to buy Steem?
I buy STEEM as an investment for the FUTURE securing it in the SAFEST online/blockchain wallet ==>> steemit.com
Frank III
P.S. I wonder which steemit.com wallet has the most STEEM/SP/SBD ???
P.S.S I wonder which exchange has the most STEEM/SBD???
hahaha, you have fun non-stop!