Hello Steemians,
Mitchell here. Andrew and I are proud to share our strategy for sharing Steem with the world in this document. It’s a bit long, so if you prefer something shorter there's TLDR below. The future of Steem starts here.
“Big things have small beginnings.”
- Lawrence of Arabia
TL;DR
Success of Steem depends on the size of the network measured in users. Marketing Steem IS marketing for Steemit. Every part of the ecosystem benefits from the growth of another part.
The Steemit Team is focusing on 3 growth-related priorities:
- Communities
- Effortless onboarding
- Mobile application
The Team’s approach will be to ship these features when minimally viable. We’re not trying to make them perfect, we’re trying to make them “just good enough” social products, so that the incredible value of Steem as an incentive and comment reward mechanism for the internet becomes apparent.
That’s why the dev team is focused on solving these problems as soon as possible.
Marketing
Steem is about bringing just and fair rewards to the internet.
- As we stated in our last announcement, crowdsourcing is the only way to scale marketing, so our marketing efforts will be in partnership with the community
- For example, we’ll be working with the community to do influencer outreach and eventually a referral system
Finally, we’re going to nurture a Steem ecosystem of apps: that means supporting new social and content platforms on the Steem blockchain.
End of TL;DR
Intro: Steem as the Future Attention Economy
The Steem blockchain turns the attention economy around, sending the rewards for creating great content to participants instead of infrastructure mediators like Facebook and Reddit. Taking Steem to the world will be no easy task; It's success depends directly on the number of network participants and its feedback loop. This plan shows how we could do that, and what we'll need to get there.
Success Means Growth, Growth Means Users
Success for Steem means growth. Growth means more users spending more time using Steem apps, contributing value to the network. If we truly believe that Steem can change the world, then our priority must be to dramatically increase the Steem userbase. If more people are using the Steem blockchain, then the positive feedback loop of rewards and incentives kicks in.
But Steem is not Steemit.com. Steemit.com is the flagship app, the proof of concept. It's goal is to maximize the number of users contributing to the Steemit.com app. That does not mean it should be the only app generating value on the Steem blockchain. Because any activity on the Steem blockchain increases the value of the network, any app generating Steem activity boosts value for the entire ecosystem. And with the Steem blockchain being among the fastest (and with free transactions) there is no excuse for us to limit the Steem ecosystem to Steemit.com alone.
This is a pathway worth exploring, and it will be in the future section called 'Hedging Bets: A Steem Ecosystem of Apps'.
But the focus of this document will be on the dominant Steem app, Steemit.com (from now on abbreviated strictly to Steemit). At first glance, Steemit is a content discovery and curation site comparable to reddit, but that's not the key benefit Steemit provides users. The true benefit of Steemit is its connection to the Steem blockchain, which is to say that the true product of Steemit is as a content curation and REWARDS platform.
This is Steemit's advantage. As is, the value of the Steem blockchain has already been proven. It solves the problem of micropayment cost and micropayment anxiety, as well as content incentivization. While imperfect, the Steem blockchain is SUFFICIENT as is... but what's not sufficient is the forward facing product.
Growth Pre-Requisites: Communities, Effortless Onboarding, and a Mobile App
Steemit has one main challenge right now: The Steemit UX is not competitive. And without a competitive forward facing product, Steemit cannot grow to scale. The challenge here is not the incentive mechanism; that part is sufficient. The challenge is making a stronger social platform. Steemit will not have the polish of Reddit; the same competitive advantages of the blockchain model (efficiency, distribution of rewards) mean that less resources are available for this purpose. But Steemit doesn't have to beat reddit as a social platform, or in UX... it only has to be "good enough" so that the combination of social features and the incentive mechanism outcompete the UX of Reddit alone. That’s something we can do.
This is the challenge for Steemit, and the major barrier to growth. Fortunately these problems can be solved with the following 3 features, in order of importance:
- Communities
- Effortless Onboarding
- A Mobile App
At Steemit Inc, these product components are our highest priorities. We'll dive into each in turn.
Communities
Communities are the only reason why Steemit would be worth using at scale. Communities offer an environment to create and incentivize streams of focused, specific content that solves focused, specific problems of community members.
As it is right now Steemit is a single, giant stream. While suitable for a cursory glance, this kills engagement and does not solve fundamental content discovery problems. As content consumers, we have neither the time nor interest to pursue everything. We want focused, specific content that adds value to our lives and solves specific problems. We want to reward this kind of content, but this type of material needs a protected space to grow. It needs interaction from a dedicated group of Steemians with the same interests, the same problems, seeking the same solutions.
Creating these community spaces was the only problem Reddit ever solved, and it made it a multi-billion dollar business. It brought the right people together in the right place to add value to our collective lives, measured in upvotes and comments. Steemit performs precisely the same social function, but the addition of Steem content rewards means the emotional power and significance of social interaction online are magnified many times by a proper incentive mechanism. This will make all the difference to the growth of Steemit.
So Communities are our highest priority. Completing communities will mark the beginning of a new Steemit. Steemit will become a place where anyone can gather their tribe around a specific interest and reward creators for solving community problems by sharing great content. By giving communities these spaces, it will open Steemit to a whole new category of users. While communities will make Steemit a great product, they will not let us scale. For that, Effortless Onboarding must be ready.
Effortless Onboarding
Even if Steemit becomes the great product it was meant to be, the current 9-step onboarding process is a major limitation. It presents a serious barrier to adoption. The current onboarding process is designed to prevent fraud, as every account costs a considerable amount of Steem.
While this is an understandable precaution, Steemit cannot scale with this limitation in place, and neither will any other app in the Steem ecosystem. Onboarding and becoming a Steemian MUST become a 1-click, natural process so that users can enjoy the benefits of Steem without cost.
We are working to overcome this challenge as fast as possible. Our goal is to make onboarding not just effortless, but low cost as well. This is a requirement for future apps in the Steem ecosystem that may not have the same financial support Steemit Inc has. So the creation of Effortless onboarding, made cheap, will do more than dramatically boost the percent of successfully registered users... it will open easy onboarding to every other app in the coming Steem ecosystem.
A Mobile App
The third addition to the success of Steemit will be a mobile app. While the previous 2 components are necessary and let Steemit expand by an order of magnitude, they do not let Steemit scale worldwide. To scale worldwide, Steemit must become a primarily mobile application. There are 2 sets of reasons for this, both of which I'll demonstrate:
Set #1: The future is on your phone
- Most future social media interaction will be on your phone, rather than your desktop (until the rise of Augmented Reality technologies).
- People spend far more leisure and social time on their phone than desktops already.
- Most of the world's population is skipping desktop computers in favor of smartphones and tablets.
- Smartphones provide more impactful, tactile engagement than desktops.
Set #2: Non-West countries are optimal for growth
- The West, especially the USA, is the most competitive attention economy on the planet.
- Most of the world's attention economy is far less competitive, meaning they have more time and attention to spare to try new apps.
- The less wealthy you are, the greater the relative reward and significance of a Steem reward.
- Many nations with under-tapped attention economies have so much less wealth that even small Steem rewards will have a dramatic impact on their lives.
- Steemians who are significantly impacted by these rewards are far more likely to spread Steemit via word of mouth, which is the ideal referral process.
- Therefore Steemians in poorer countries derive more value, refer more users, and are likely to contribute to the network for less costs than those who are from comparatively wealthier countries.
Given Set #1, it's clear that a mobile app is a must-have, and we need one as soon as possible. This is something we've been actively working on for months. That being said, it's also critical that we get it right, so we can't commit to a specific timeline on its release.
This also leads us toward non-Western markets. A key to the growth of Steemit will be growing beyond the West, for the reasons set out in Set #2. Which takes us into our next section:
Crowdsourcing Growth: Scaling Steem without Steemit Inc
Blockchain projects have their own challenges. The Steemit model distributes ownership of the network, and the benefits thereof, but at the cost of limiting our resources. Because these benefits are distributed rather than hoarded a blockchain project will never be able to bring the amount of wealth to bear that a centralized business model, consuming most of the value, would be able too. One consequence of this is at a certain point centralized marketing will not scale with rapid growth.
The solution is to decentralize and distribute the marketing of Steem and Steemit itself. To do this we at Steemit Inc will be focusing on crowdsourcing growth processes for Steem. It's not appropriate for me to dictate how Steem is marketed; that won't scale and, to be quite frank, the crowd is far wiser than I am. All of us are brighter than one of us. Not to mention that we DON’T WANT growth to be dependent on Steemit Inc. But it's one thing to say we'll 'crowdsource and distribute growth, and another thing to do it... so what does that mean?
That means distributing implementation, idea curation, and decision-making power to the community. That means we want Steemit Inc to become a partner, alongside you, in taking Steemit to the world. Here's what that looks like:
- Crowdsourcing strategies and tactics together.
- Deciding on those tactics via a voting process.
- Backing those tactics with the force of the Steemit community and the wallet of Steemit Inc.
Naturally, many people can and will market and promote Steem however they want (and in fact, they already are). That's a good thing, not a bad one. We reserve that right too of course, and we'll set our own terms of engagement in this effort, as it needs to be handled carefully.
To scale the marketing we must work and coordinate together. So why wait till marketing and growth teams become large, unwieldy and lacking in resources? It's better to set the tone and direction for sharing Steem right now, and begin crowdsourcing at this early stage.
The role of the Steemit Inc marketing team will be to act as marketing experts, leaders, and coordinators of efforts. This process has already begun, and was the reason Andrew Levine (andrarchy) was such a perfect fit for community liaison. Andrew's roll will be to act as the primary representative of Steemit Inc to the community and help judge which crowdsourced ideas are worth the backing of Steemit Inc.
Crowdsourcing also makes expansion into non-Western, non-English speaking countries feasible. While we are handicapped by our Western-focus there are many talented users who need only a little support and expertise to make a big difference in their non-English speaking communities. The Steemit Inc marketing team will provide the support necessary to make that happen.
Crowdsourcing is a risky strategy; the crowd can be disorganized and self-defeating. But it can also be a source of great wisdom and direct, coordinated action when guided by clear protocols. To make crowdsourcing actually work, we must first design those protocols. By the time we, as a community, have evolved with the early protocols and crowdsourcing institutions, we hope that the product features mentioned previously will be ready. That will allow us to begin expanding at full speed.
The Steem Narrative & The Steemit Story: Just Rewards for the Future of Internet Culture
To take Steem and Steemit to the world, we have to clarify our narrative, our big vision. I don't claim a monopoly on that, but here is my vision for the Steem blockchain: The Steem blockchain is the new infrastructure for rewarding content on the internet. We’re dedicated to making a fairer, more equally distributed internet by giving everyone an ownership stake in the new attention economy.
The story of Steemit is one I know better, and it fits nicely into the Steem narrative: Steemit is here to be a new hub of internet culture and community, where the users decide and receive the benefits of content. With this clarified story will come a transformation of the Steemit branding as well.
These narratives are a place to start. The primary transformation Steem brings to the world is the power to let us, the crowd and true creators of content, be fairly rewarded for our work. It's not about now... we're here to transform the world for years to come. To set new standards for fairly distributing rewards, stake, and value. We're here to transform how the internet works. And that starts with us deciding that these messages, these narratives, are worth fighting for.
Hedging Bets: A Steem Ecosystem of Apps
At Steemit Inc, we're dedicated to the success of Steemit and the Steem blockchain... but that success can't be guaranteed. While we're doing everything possible to make Steemit a success, we understand that there are countless applications of the Steem blockchain, any of which could be as valuable if not more valuable than Steemit is. The future is unknowable. But we can make this uncertainty work in our favor. By opening up access to the Steem blockchain and encouraging others to build the next great Steem app, there's a real chance that they could succeed, or that multiple projects (alongside Steemit) could succeed together. Every successful projects creates benefits for all Steem holders, and stimulates all parts of the Steem community.
So we want to push forward with the creation of a Steem ecosystem of apps. We want to help the best applications of Steem come to the fore and go to market. Not only does this collectively reduce our risk and add value to all Steemians, it also increases the chance that we, as a community, will create demand for Steem that much faster.
In alignment with our crowdsourcing strategy, we will be supporting select Steem app developers wherever we can. It may be that the next great Steem application is a wordpress plugin, a medium-style publication app, or a photosharing tool... we don't know. But we're willing to give you our support and find out.
Influencer Outreach and Word of Mouth Referrals
Ultimately the most potent referral mechanism is word-of-mouth. The question then becomes... from whom? The answer: From those who are trusted and admired. When communities and onboarding are ready, we will invest the bulk of our outbound growth resources into bringing influencers to Steemit.
Influencers, especially up-and-coming ones, are at the center of cultures and communities. They are trusted, and produce content to give value to their communities. They appreciate and understand the value of rewards. Community efforts to invite influencers have already begun, and we are excited to see how they progress and to help where appropriate. From our perspective, reaching out to influencers is the tactic with the greatest likelihood of success.
We don’t intend to start or do this alone. It’s a certainty that the community has direct access to many influencers who would be happy to participate if asked. So we see our future role in influencer outreach as a coordinating one, as opposed to a controlling one. We’ll be designing strategies in partnership with the community, but further discussion of influencer outreach deserves its own post.
There are many other methods, such as direct referrals, that have been suggested by the community. We're overjoyed to see the creativity here, and would love to see more of it. They have intense value, and to get there we must focus our efforts on completing the required components as fast as possible. As soon as the technical components are complete, we’d be happy to look into strategies like referral marketing that could skyrocket growth. Which leads us to the final part of the Steem 2017 Growth Plan.
Conclusion and What We're Doing Now
We covered a lot in this document. You're probably curious about what we're doing right now. The truth is almost all our efforts are focused on improving the product. We're working as fast as we possibly can to get the components we need up and running so we can focus on growth. After a year of labor, the Steem blockchain is ready... and 2017 is about making sure that Steemit.com is too. That is our primary focus.
Our secondary focus is preparing the Crowdsourced Marketing strategy. There's protocols to set up, voting mechanisms, institutions and cultures of cooperation. It's not easy to coordinate dozens or hundreds of people... but if we can do it, we'll achieve more than we ever thought possible, and share in the rewards. Designing these protocols is what the marketing team spends most of our time on, while Andrew will be a key figure bringing this to life.
I understand that you might think this is unorthodox, and that's a good thing. So let's blaze some trails, set new standards. Because at the end of the day, bringing Steem's vision to life depends on all of us.
Yours truly,
Mitchell Loureiro (@zurvanic) and Andrew Levine (@andrarchy)
NOTE: This growth plan is to share with the entire Steem community. You may share it far and wide.
Thank you @zurvanic and @andrarchy
Firstly I'd just like to say that this post is far superior to the previous two marketing updates as there is a lot of valuable information here. I feel this has clearly outlined the direction in which Steemit is taking and how it plans to get there. I am honestly excited about what the future of Steemit will hold for all of us.
I'm glad that Steem Inc recognizes that our strongest selling point is that we're a rewards based platform that actually works and we should promote around this strength of ours to drive home this message. I share the belief that we don't have to be outright better than our competition, just comparable, and the added monetary rewards should be appealing enough as they are definitely substantial to high quality content creators.
Not being from a Reddit background, I'm perhaps underestimating the value of Communities, and am happy to defer to the expert judgement of others here. I absolutely agree that making the account creation process more accessible would be a big advantage, but must be done so without compromising security. And a high quality mobile app definitely couldn't come soon enough.
Hedging bets is definitely how we should play this, making it easier for developers to make other steem based platforms is a must. My only concern is whether this is enough? Should some of the core Steemit Inc devs be working on alternative platforms as well so the odds of quality platforms getting created aren't completely left to the interests of third parties?
Yes, as a blockchain platform we don't have resources comparable to centralized platforms, but I feel that a good team of central devs is indispensable to the success of our platform, and due to the limited resources, this may be be a bottle neck in the growth of Steem. Can we entertain the idea of raising extra money for development and marketing by allocating a % of the inflation funds to this cause as well? This would require witness consensus of course, but it would allow the Steemit account funds to be used more liberally without fear of running out. Overall, this can speed up development considerably.
Now that I understand that crowdsourcing growth means you wish for the community to vote on the best ideas which will be rewarded and implemented through a protocol that will be released, I entirely support this. This point was very vague in the previous two updates.
Definitely agree on the idea of poaching influencers, would be worthwhile deliberating over this strategy when the community marketing protocols are released.
Can we perhaps also examine additional ways that advertising could work both on Steemit and other supported platforms? I feel that this revenue stream would add greater utility and legitimacy to our currency and deserves further investigation.
Great insight on how Steem is more attractive to lower income areas of the world and we should keep that in mind when planning our strategy.
Excellent work guys, I look forward to hearing from you again in future updates
Great feedback and encouragement on this post @trafalgar!
Thanks a lot papa pepper =)
You're welcome!
What we need here is a concept of 'ongoing funds'. You can support an Ongoing Fund by sacrificing some of your voting power, and your votes would be continually applied to it. This could be done in a hacky way now, without changing the protocol, but would probably be much more straightforward to simply make part of the protocol.
We could then have a development fund as an ongoing fund, a marketing fund as an ongoing fund, etc. etc.
ya exaclty what I meant, instead of the 10% witnesses, 65% author, 25% curator split or whatever, we can cram in there another 5-10% for development and take a little bit out from the rest
For now they have the Steemit account, but knowing that the community would be supportive of a development fund, they could use it more liberally
I think that's a really great idea :)
Yes, it is also my opinion that part of the steem block rewards should be set aside for development!
I actually think this is a crucial step if we want to ensure funds for development and improvements will not dry out one day.
Burn SBD ?
Finally, a real place to burn it to?
SBD burned into BTC / Steem to help fund dev.
This sounds similar to the DASH treasury fund concept. Funding dev is important!!!
the community might be supportive of an ongoing fund when there is a demonstrated need and some actual demonstrated action with results. Right now, as much as I like what is being talked about, the is no tangible proof of result through any of this being implemented or funds being spent from the existing Steemit account. Actions always speak way louder than words.
Fans of Lawrence of Arabia will get this reference.
I'm skeptical of crowdsourcing - as you correctly point out, the crowd can be disorganized and self-defeating. Nay, judging by history, that's the default result and there's a very high chance that's how it'll turn out. However, with the possibility of focused direction and coordination from your end, and the incentive of financial support and rewards, I'm not going to arrive at any judgments just yet. Eager to find out what your protocols look like.
Agreed about Communities, easier onboarding and mobile apps. I'd also prefer the platform to be simpler and more elegant in general. Simple stuff like being able to buy Steem with a credit card or PayPal etc, but I understand why that may be challenging. There's some obvious stuff like marketing materials that are currently missing - marketing and infomercial videos, a website, PR and communications etc.
Attracting influencers is obviously a good idea. So far there has been very little action - there is simply no incentive for the community to put in the effort. It's going to need appropriate financial incentive for people to get out and attract people. Could be weighted referral fees adjusted by the network of the influencer. A Twitter user with 1 million followers could easily increase the network's userbase by an order of magnitude overnight, for example.
People have forgotten about Steem's benefits as a currency. Very few crypto people are even aware that transactions are free, they are confirmed in 3 seconds, the wallets are online and easily accessible, only need a username to transfer funds etc. Anonymity is missing, but otherwise it's a strong platform for currency. So, an important step would be clarify all the FUD in the crypto community - many have already assumed it has failed. Let them know about its benefits etc. Needs to be promoted as a socio-economic platform, so to speak.
Buying steem directly with paypal or credit card. i forgot to mention that. Amazing feature!
Lots of great points in here. Thanks for the feedback!
So tell us about the possible growth of steem in 2018
Great post! I'm excited to see where this goes.
I've been trying to finalize my own thoughts about this stuff, but haven't put anything down yet. I do think clarifying who we are and what our unique business proposition is matters. Network effect and platform loyalty are really important hurdles for us to overcome in the attention economy. Many people use Facebook, for example, to stay connected with friends and family. Until those friends and family are on Steemit, they will continue to use Facebook because it currently enjoys a natural monopoly on that attention due to their massive network effect and the quality of the service they offer.
How can Steemit compete with that? Many who I've introduced to Steemit still post on Facebook for those reasons. The rewards aren't enough for them to post here instead because they don't post things for rewards, they post to stay connected. I came here and built new relationships and new connections. Many are unwilling to do invest more time and attention to do that because they are already spread thin. If Steemit isn't comparing itself to Facebook, then is it more like Reddit? Or maybe Medium? Understanding ourselves is the first step towards a clear vision to what we will become and how we will get there.
I think your exact point is addressed by the focus on developing countries. If you've ever read Innovator's Dilemma or Blue Ocean Strategy, you will recognize that the existing mostly Western attention market is a red ocean, one which is well served already. And disruptive innovations focus on the undeserved market, ones which are more trouble than they're worth for the incumbents. I would certainly recommend both books if you haven't read them.
I don't think I've read Blue Ocean Strategy, but it's really familiar, so maybe I read a larger summary of it. I'm familiar with the concept, anyway. You make a great point, but I think the incumbents understand this also and what used to be too much trouble for them will quickly become their primary focus. That's why companies like Google are investing in things like Loon to get internet to areas which don't have it. I've read about Facebook doing similar things. They are thinking long term and have huge reserves for marketing to push their platform into those areas. Can we beat them to it? Maybe. I think it will involve highlighting aspects of our identity which can create a natural monopoly for us (rewards for attention, decentralized control, no censorship, etc).
Interesting point, Luke. However, I think steemit doesn´t need to address the "classic" FB user profile at the moment. These users may come when influencers start conquering the platform as an additional channel to monetize their content. But at the moment I don´t think we should try to compete with services that are rather focussing on quantity than quality. The level of interaction is considerably higher on steemit. People that can´t stand the "I like it" superficiality anymore, will find their way to steemit or similar platforms that provide deeper messages.
Maybe I'm just sad about all those on Facebook I've brought over who did create Steemit accounts, posted a few times, and then didn't come back. I'd love to just have conversations with them here. :) Many of them were anarcho-capitalist bitcoin fans as well so they weren't really the classic profile. I've been planning on doing a video for a while to analyze that and figure out why the staying power just wasn't there for them. When I see them in person, they often say things like, "Oh, I'll be back to post soon" or worse, they lost their private keys (!!!) which is just really sad. Thankfully @gandalf (@gtg) was able to help me get one of them reconnected recently. :)
Oh that´s really frustrating :-/ Now I understand...
It would be really interesting to know why the left. I´ve just touched the very same issue in another comment down here. Retaining people is key!
Before thinking about onboarding we might have a retention strategy.
Why would anybody ever stay more than one month on the platform?
Maybe it´s about entertainment, special curation programs, trainings (how-to blog),... Maybe we have to comprehend steemit more as a "place to spend time" instead of a pure content platform. Like building a city, a shopping mall, a theme park or whatever place that is fascinating and engaging. --> SteemWorld :)
There might be infinite ideas how to make steemit even more attractive for new users. It can´t be rewards only since it takes time to build up a brand and really monetize it. We wouldn´t be able to meet strictly economical expectations here.
I do think they will come if there is a way to 'allocate' , say rewards, to non-users of the platform ( those who haven't signed up yet ) . So grandma has a reason to post on steemit if she knows her rewards are being allocated to Johnny her grandson who hasn't signed up yet. Johnny signs up to say hi to Grandma and Grandma knows she is support Johnny's college fund by giving him updates. It doesn't have to show anything about payments at that point as that is between Grandma and Johnny only thus giving the platform a look of just 'connecting' all the time and not 'rewards' all the time.
There are numerous ways this can be used. A sort of 'path' re-direction use cases for SteemIt.
Upvoting your own comments is SO tacky.
I'm sorry you feel that way. In conversations like this, I do upvote my own posts because that's my justification for owning Steem Power. I get to influence the default order of the conversation and promote my ideas over others due to my investment of time and money. I'm not a whale, so my own vote is only a couple pennies. I'm not draining the reward pool, I'm using my Steem Power influence to highlight ideas I believe are valuable (in this case, my own).
What I find tacky is you continuing to be involved in a community which is regularly frustrated by your actions. Time and time again you interact with people in a negative manner both here and in chat which has caused numerous people to leave who were previously providing content others valued (even if you did not). You use your Steem Power however you like and justify it with "I can use it however I like" but then criticize others for how they use their own Steem Power. It seems to me you don't even recognize your own hypocrisy. True to form, you bring your negativity to this conversation as well. I hope someday you get bored with Steem and power down completely. Until then, I'll continue to highlight your inconsistent behavior and try to help new users understand why you act as you do.
I won't repeat the names you've called me and others. If you don't like me personally or my actions and want to flag my posts, that's your option. Thankfully, there are no dictators here, and we can each act as we please and let the community decide what is and is not valuable.
You should repeat the names I've called you, daily, while you stand in front of a mirror. Maybe you'll then realize just how pretentious you really are.
Dang man, go get some sunshine or something.
My god, do you ever listen to yourself? You're like a 9 year old. And I'm being generous.
Agree influence great but what is bring value into this system. Come and go bloggers just powering down and decreasing our SP over and over again. The reason I think Steem will most likely fail is one simple fact. Every social media company (even adwords) makes there entire earnings off of ad revenue. Where Steem is going wrong here is the fact no one is getting a return on there investment longterm. What they need to do is get advertisers to start buying Steem and burning it to run ads. That's one way how we end the vicious cycle of Steem leakage.
Steem is a blockchain platform. Steemit.com is a social media app on the platform. I'd call it the flagship app. Implementing ads right now would be a waste of time. It's too early. Need to be able to retain users before you start putting ads up (shudders).
Excellent comment @drunk.
What you see as a "vicious cycle of Steem leakage" I see as redistribution from the hands of few to the hands of many and the market deciding on a base price, given the current value offered. That said, as I've been reporting every week in my Exchange Transfer report, the number of people caching out has always exceeded the number of people depositing. Until that changes (IMO), the price will continue to fall until an equilibrium is reached. I'm surprised the price has stayed as stable as it has. My hunch is coin speculators are keeping it up.
I agree, advertisers promoting posts here could be great for Steemit. I could even imagine seeing highly promoted posts showing up in our feeds some day (just Twitter does). Better yet, maybe even let people opt in to that and gain a portion of the promotional costs. That would be a neat idea. Ultimately though it depends on mass adoption before those ads have any value. The fact that steemit does not have ads is valuable to the users and may become even more so as privacy goes down and ad sales on other networks become more and more intrusive and personal.
I agree with you this has a lot potential and that's why I invested but right now we wanted to see developments and new releases, not just vague rambling. If, when, later, however........ There's no excuse. They had plenty of time to get this out a beta by now. People are losing big money here with their science project.
I empathize with that, I really do. I've talked about it weekly in my reports.
That said, they should not invest what they are not willing to lose, especially in an early stage, highly speculative platform like this. That's my opinion after bootstrapping my own software as a service for the last ten years. This stuff is hard. It's easy to throw stones and judge what they should have done and what priorities they should have focused on, but I remember when the site was crashing hard constantly because the technology could not handle the load and that was the primary complaint. That took time to fix. Now we're on to the next thing. It seems logical to me, but again, that's just my opinion.
Flagging should be eliminated. It provides no benefit and does a LOT of harm.
I can see some benefits of it, specifically for preventing abuse and hiding content many consider abusive or offensive. Without them people spam the system with junk and that has a negative impact on user growth. Prior to @anyx's bots, things were pretty nasty around here (you may remember some women were getting abused pretty badly).
Many argue it's just a downvote, no different than an upvote. A way to express preference about payout. If it was just a downvote, I wouldn't mind so much, but the steemit web interface treats it like an abuse flag and hides comments/posts which can be frustrating (as well impacts reputation if the person flagging has a higher reputation). It bothers a lot of people, but I try not to lose sleep over it. What annoys me more is when it's personally vindictive and the "justifications" for it are inconsistent. The neat thing for me is to see community members show their support for posts and comments which get unfairly flagged. There can always be a counter balance.
If you bring on influencers make sure they aren't all westerners. Think global.
And if it's people in the west make sure it's not all the same demographic of people. Approach many cultures, subcultures, etc.
Agreed 100%, which is great because as a long-time follower of yours I have tremendous respect for your opinion and intellect. Thanks for the feedback!
Hey @andrarchy. We have a Romanian blog, and created 2 posts explaining the benefits of posting on Steemit, and how Steemit works.
We promoted them to our 15K email list and got over 2000 views, a lot of great feedback, and I suspect many new accounts. Some support would be much apreciated.
https://steemit.com/monetizare-blog/@startupacademy/cum-face-acest-blog-usd1000-pe-zi
https://steemit.com/monetizez-blogul/@startupacademy/cum-functioneaza-steemit
We'll keep on marketing because we ❤️ Steemit.
What does SP holders get for influencing? Besides small curation rewards? IMO the value is being leaked out by come and go bloggers immediately powering down and selling Steem. How about tapping into blockchain companies advertising and have them burn Steem for no invasive ads? The communities are great but we something now to get the price up before it tanks again.
We're aware of this option, but we won't be commenting on plans beyond the scope of this document. Thank you for your feedback.
The Social (D)Apps built in like Ethereum is doing it is the key like you are saying. You incentivize the developers to build this out the users will flood in. Maybe you will laugh and maybe not but a private decentralized live porn would be a major killer app. The porn industry is massive. I am not saying only this but just one aspect if was hit right would bring a massive amount of users since they would be upvoting and curating all day long with the actresses getting some pretty good payouts. I could imagine the live stream with things like a cooking show and such would be huge too. With Facebook people get 0 so once this gets set up in a user friendly way it would be huge! Thanks for your hard work by the way!
Did someone say Subcultures?
how do you intend to 'make sure'?
Very good points.
I particularly like the focus on communities - that is something I think will have one of the biggest impacts on making Steemit more useful to the average user.
I also the thing the points about non-western and developing countries are really important. There is much greater growth potential in these places and as also mentioned they make for great PR and word of mouth spread.
Social media is a very tough market and one way to gain an entry is to start with appealing to those places that are currently being neglected by the established offerings. The developing world is that place.
Great also to see that the onboarding is being given a high priority. The less friction there can be in people joining and using the site the better.
If anyone wants to retweet this:
Done retweeting - will also add to LinkedIn ,FB, G+, Minds.com, 8, dash burst, copromote and more lol -thanks @thecryptofiend
Nice! Thanks Uwe!
No worries - I just read all, will do again now @andrarchy -the first two points make totally sense - mobile app is sure important but what about esteem app as it is now? I have to confess being a desktop writing fan but I do see also the value of a mobile app - use both usually but for writing desktop is still important unless we go into into instagram direction. Count on me in points 1 and 2 - i work in marketing, sales, influencer relations and PR - let me know if I cam help ASAP (well after my vacation)
Cool thank you!
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
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!
Getting some top influencers on board should be a key goal. You need them in multiple areas by topic and geographically. The Tsu site gained thousands of users in Pakistan when a media personality from there signed up. Some people didn't like that as they felt too many of those users were spamming the system to try and make a few cents, so expectations need to be managed and good behaviour encouraged. We don't want to be flagging new users.
I'm excited for the future. I hope Steemit will use its resources to encourage growth and development.
i would like to see some dates in this plan.
plan without deadlines doesnt mean much.
I would like to see an actual plan in this "plan." Repeating development goals/desires doesn't constitute a marketing campaign.
Oh thats for sure, but if there was dates next to this slogans we could ask "hey its 8.8.2017 why this slogan is not live? Now we have slogans and no dates
Very clear and organised post, thank you for this. I am most excited about communities and agree that once we have those in place it will be a game changer.
Thank you @zurvanic and @andrarchy for the update... I'll echo what a few others have pointed to... it's nice to see an announcement with a little meat on its bones!
Marketing-- not entirely sure about the viability of crowdsourced marketing, but I'd submit that we already HAVE a "crowd" of pretty dedicated users (quite a few of whom are also considerable influencers in their niches) who are just waiting for a good reason to start telling the world about Steemit.
What's that good reason? Well, there has to be "something here" that's worth telling the world about-- and that means some better "social tools" if we are truly to present Steemit as a viable player in the social space. Communities are a great start there. I am also very hopeful that you mention a referral program... I just wrote a "suggestion box" post about this, a couple of days ago.
The TL;DR version: Let's work on the "gamification" of onboarding new members to the community; using not a monetary (Steem) reward so much as a "status" reward of being a top referrer; second, let's reward referrers to bring ACTIVE users, not just "new accounts." End TL;DR
Marketing II: Let us not be too afraid of "organic" growth. Doing a big splashy campaign can backfire in very unfortunate ways... I've seen far too many user generate content sites crash and burn by trying to grow too fast. Above all, step with EXTREME CARE when using the "blogging for rewards" idea... the "clicking buttons for cash" crowd can descend like a swarm of locusts and turn a venue into a cesspool of garbage in a matter of 60 days... from which there is NO COMING BACK. Better to build a quality base, more slowly. Also, in bringing people onboard, emphasize Steem as a a path to becoming a stake holder (long term engagement) rather than a cash reward for tomorrow's pizza (short term engagement).
The Steem Ecosystem of Apps: This sounds promising... the one thing I would STRONGLY stress is the importance of everything launching/running inside the "flagship app," namely Steemit. It's nice that we're all decentralized and open source... but in order to gain broad-based support and acceptance, there needs to be a "central" Steemit interface from where everything runs.
Think about it: Just like people are "on Facebook," they need to be able to parse this user experience as being "on Steemit," and NOT "being on 47 individual apps." That kind of fragmentation will just ot fly with anything beyond a hardcore niche of developers and blockchainiacs.
Building Communities: I know this has been said 1000 times, but I'll say it again: Communities are NOT built by code, they are built by PEOPLE. Significance? As you go forth, keep the major content creators in the development loop, not just the developers. The people who "do social" for a living, but might not know code from an elephant's butt.
I sincerely hope "Communities" will be incorporated as "channels" of sorts... remember, lots of people have multiple interests.
As for the Reddit reference, I guess Reddit is testament to the fact that you can build a large follower base with an outdated Web 2.0 interface that never gets updated. That said-- and Reddit's high rank with Alexa notwithstanding-- Steemit is SO much more than a Reddit can ever hope to be. Above all (and someone else brought this up in comments) let us remember that Reddit is rather USA-centric and white-male-under-30-centric, and we have the potential to reach a truly GLOBAL market with Steemit. Just look at the explosive number Aceh posts, happening more or less spontaneously. Point? International Communities, as a subset of "Communities."
Let's not copy Reddit too much... Reddit is FAR better at "being Reddit" than we can EVER hope to be, so let's focus on being Steemit!
Anyway, very happy to see this "in the works" document come out! Feels like something is actually happening, after what feels like a long slumber!
Great points, thanks for sharing this detailed analysis! Agree with most of your comments. Steem on!
Great job guys! I'm especially excited about the influencer acquisition.
There is just one thing I don't completely agree with regarding your proposal. You said two times that it doesn't need to be perfect "... it only has to be good enough." Management rule no. 1: "100% or don't do it at all." I wouldn't ask for less if I were you :)
Let's rock it!
"perfect is the enemy of good enough" is a primary rule of survivors. Also "if it's stupid and it works it's not stupid".
You nailed it. It's a rule of survivors, but not of winners. Your funny phrases might work for the jungle but not in serious business.
I love that second spin on it. Not stupid indeed. :)
I don't think they are suggesting anything less than 100% effort should be given. I took it to mean perfection is often the worst enemy to good enough. When it comes to technology, it's quite easy (especially for developers) to get bogged down in details which don't really impact the bottom line. Excellence can exist alongside pragmatism but perfection is an illusion. We have to crawl before we can run.
You are right, Luke! 🙂👍 I wasn't challenging their efforts at all. It's obvious that they are giving at all and more than that.
Perfection is subjective thus relative. I'd rather strive for excellence (becoming no. 1 of my business).
Just saying that they should be 100% happy and committed with it before promoting anything. It's like opening doors and letting in your guests before the party is completely set up 😉
Ah, I see what you mean. I wonder if it's the same with regards to software though. It's never really done it's just deployed. The early versions of FoxyCart ten years ago were not that great, but they did meet some needs better than others. If we had waited for perfection, we never would have launched. I see excellence as properly balancing various goals which sometimes means sacrificing something in order to launch and meet real needs instead of not launching and being passed up by the competition. It's complicated stuff.
It´s definitely complicated, yeah. Nice side-kick, thanks for the insight! :)
I worked for Condé Nast a few years ago and I don´t remember that we launched any project / application being in their final shape. However, we were always 100% convinced that it would take off to the moon :)
This is exactly right Luke, thanks for clarifying that.
Hey andrarchy, one of the biggest problems aside from the marketing is the whale flagging issue which is our single biggest community problem here on Steemit - and I say that as a senior poster here. It's getting embarrassing having to explain this to all the new minnows.
I share the frustrations of @baah, and we need solutions to this quickly before we truly scale up. The latest @baah post highlighting the problem can be found here below. I hope the Steemdevs can nip this one in the bud soon! Thanks @andrarchy!
https://steemit.com/community/@baah/htooms-the-benevolent-whale
Thanks for the feedback @mindhunter, I hear you loud and clear. It's a tough problem to solve, but we are committed to improving the system.
Aside from the marketing it's the #1 community problem on Steemit - the minnows are confused, the dolphins are constantly screeching in my earhole and the whales do their own thing - some good, some bad - like every class of person in life. Thanks for listening @andrarchy. I trust your judgement on this one and leave it in your capable hands. I hope your feet are getting nice and warm under your new desk now :)
Do pass by this post when you get a spare moment at your desk :) Thanks @andrarchy!
https://steemit.com/steemit/@mindhunter/to-solve-the-whale-downvote-crisis-why-not-have-a-curation-system-tied-to-reputation-instead
Time to Crowdsource Social Signals: ~~~ embed:851835243929718785 Share this article far and wide! twitter metadata:Y3J5cHRvY3RvcHVzNzc3fHxodHRwczovL3R3aXR0ZXIuY29tL2NyeXB0b2N0b3B1czc3Ny9zdGF0dXMvODUxODM1MjQzOTI5NzE4Nzg1IFNoYXJlIHRoaXMgYXJ0aWNsZSBmYXIgYW5kIHdpZGUhfA== ~~~
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
Great post and thank you for writing it all out. As I mentioned in another subcomment I would say my main concern in terms of rewards is that large investors continue to be rewarded handsomely for keeping large amounts of Steem off the market (in the form of Steem Power). Increased influence is a wonderful reward and regardless of how much small holders may complain about it, should be maintained. At the same time, it is definitely good to find ways to encourage small holders by perhaps giving them temporary times of larger influence (or whatever other rewards whales get) through contests such as @htooms takemyvotes initiative. I personally believe that the ongoing whale experiment where posts get downvoted just because some previous whale voted with too much strength is detrimental and I hope it stops soon. I believe whales should be conscientious about spreading out their voting rewards, but it all has to be completely voluntary. I'm all for ways to further incentivize the more equitable distribution of rewards as long as it doesn't punish nonparticipants.
Why are less ressources available to have the polish of reddit? Sorry but your sentence doesn't make sense to me.
Why aim for good enough when you can aim for the best? Thinking that the reward incentive will make up for the shitty UI is wrong. If it was true steemit would have millions of users right now but because of the crappy UI and lack of social feature the site doesn't retain new users. I am also convinced that the killer app on the steem blockchain will not display rewards on the interface, it will be a back end thing only. If youtubers had earnings displayed publicly on every videos do you think it would attract more people to create videos? It would not, it will just increase the perception that youtuber are just here to make money which is a negative in a social media site where natural interaction is everything.
Hey @zurvanic and @anadrarchy
Can we please fix the voting curve asap so that more people have more power. Almost everyone seemed to agree on it, it really will go a long way if users see their voting matter and it s the one thing that, in my opinion, is still needed before the site is 'good enough'.
And GAMES! games, games, games. We can create ones that use steem as their in-game currency. But as that will take time, maybe we can get games on the site that are already being developed and have leaderboards and tournaments where people can win steem.
@sneak has mentioned in Steemit.chat that a linear curve will be proposed this week for Hardfork 19. It seems like the top priority for the Steem dev team.
Gamification is also part of the Roadmap, but I'd imagine that won't be coming till Q4.
Guys don't give Mitchell a hard time... Only a hero could write these words. Go Mitchell!!!!
Truth is, I’m just an everyday man on a crazy mission. I want to change the world by making you more powerful. I’ve got this strange idea that if I can give you more control over your own life, you'll use it wisely. That's why I do blockchain marketing. Blockchains are going to give you more power over your own life, and I'm going to make sure the world knows about it!
Isn't this his bio? :P
Indeed
I commented to @ned before that I would be willing to make some Steemit propaganda comics for promotional use.
Just tell me what I need to do!!! 😃
Communities as you see it (Github) is not just "good enough" it's too complex / a disaster in the making.
I don't think it's asking for much to add "Top of the" day / week / month / year / all time. This is what Reddit has been doing and that's how people consume niche content.
Your definition of communities should be just that at first "Niche content" before you start handing out moderator access to keywords.
Do the same thing as Busy.org does, Allow people to select a bunch of their favorite tags to the top of the UI
Then either generate some condensate of liked tags or allow for full boolean selection of tags.
Top of "TIME_FRAME", Favorite Tags on top and Splits the posts and the resteemed are mostly UI jobs and should take less than a day of work.
My two cents
just good enough
Communities : (See above) Effortless Onboarding : Will never me good enough. A Mobile App : eSteem is more than good enough.One of the things I love most is the development of a mobile app. In a chat once there was an attempt to slaughter me for having the audacity to suggest that desktop wasn't good enough and more focus on mobile was needed. It's nice to be vindicated. :0)
I think a referral system should only exist to keep track of contributions, but as @noelrivas put it, referral fees for getting people onboard wouldn't be such a good idea because that's what all pyramid schemes do. So yup, not sure what's the nature of the referral system, and I think free STEEM for the users that sign up is great enough..
Great post! I want to add one more thing about the community.
Communities should be able to reach out of Steemit. That is, anyone can create steem-based community using any front-end tools (e.g. Wordpress) with their own business model if needed (e.g. Adsense) Customizable community frontend is very important IMO.
Good write-up, Steemitblog team! Thank you both for continuing to provide transparency and strong ideas as we push into 2017. One constructive note - in the conclusion / what-we're-doing-now section it would help to see an approximate timeline-esque graphic. For example, what quarter will the app be completed by? What about the Communities feature? Etc. Even just a broad measurement would help the app-makers and project creators among us have a better sense of when to expect changes and improvements. Timing is everything! Anyway, thanks again! Eagerly awaiting these three big ticket items!
Nice post! STEEM has great future with its amazing community :) One of the best crypto coin :)
Glad you feel that way! I feel the same way! Thanks for the feedback.
I'm a huge supporter of what Steemit is and will become. I wish to offer my thanks and praise for such an abundantly informative and concise post for which you've provided an extraordinary outline on what myself and fellow STEEMIANS have to look forward to.
Gratitude. V
Really glad you feel that way, this was precisely our aim. Of course we will continue to update and inform the community as things continue to develop. This is just the beginning.
Gosh i love to hear this!
Great to hear about the focus area marketing team, glad to see several concrete actions here, will read all that this evening.
I book acts( music) for a nightclub/pub) I talk to the Songwriter in each Band and Photographers , get their mail addresses and then,I have a Standard mail I send those interested on how to start with Steemit.
This is great! Thank you for this comprehensive roadmap for Steemit's future!
This means you want to cultivate network effects like Dash, right?
fantastic. looking forward what's coming !
Glad to see you again my heavenly friend ;)
Needs More Cowbell
This is a terrific update. You have captured the essence of our platform's major issues and explained how we will overcome those barriers to adoption + move forward to share Steem with the world. I'm very much looking forward to working with you guys to bring in a ton of new users.
I'm looking forward to working with you too! As you know I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and value your opinion very much. I know that together we can do great things! :)
Sort of unrelated but something that has been bothering me lately... I've noticed since the HF we can no longer comment on posts that are older than 7 days. No adding a new reply, no replying to existing comments. Was this change intended or is this a bug?
I agree about non-western countries. In Croatia no one would ever decline payout, even a small one, and we are hooked on facebook. Put up some billboards in Zagreb. If you need a Croatian translator, I'm it. How about if those who want to invest could put a part or a percentage of their steem power into advertising campaign. Maybe something like we see in ''Better call Saul''. I like those infomercials.
Great, I'll keep that in mind. This is precisely the type of interaction we're looking for from the community regarding crowdsourcing!
Free STEEM made me turn it into BTC and sell it on the exchanges. I got hooked and now I am slowly but surely putting my life savings into an exchange (I wont advertise but we all know which). Can we utilize this human tendency for freeloading and easy cash somehow for the betterment of STEEM. It would potentialy save me too in the process.
Personally I see Steemit as the easiest way to onboard people to crypto-currency ecosystem. If this improved further more people will join.
Exactly what I feel. Steemit as a gateway to crypto. This should be what Steemit tells you after a week of blogging. No need for users to find their own way to it.
I have only used my phone for steem it and it works fine. Fix the top 2 and fix the reward curve the biggest reason attrition is so high.
Thanks for the feedback! The top 2 are certainly our main priorities. But it's also important to "skate to where the puck is going to be" and mobile is the future.
Andrew. Great to see you in an official roll finally ;) Happy to see it worked out and that pitching you to ned at @steemfest worked out for the good of Steemit
It's about time he filled this roll! :p
Oh man. He's already on a roll.
LOL
LOL
Creepy
MUhahahaa ;)
Good to see you too!
;) I will never forget the moment we came up with that idea ! ;)
Thx for these guidelines. I'll take my time to think about it and about the 3 external features I'm developing on my own.
far too late to come up with this stuff. but good luck
Are there any plans to free Steem and Steemit by changing its licence? Thank you very much!
Many users within the Gridcoin community have found the mandatory requirement of a phone number a barrier to entry, perhaps throw away sign-up bonuses but throw in additional captchas to prevent abuse of new account creation?
I think it would benefit the platform massively to have some sort of primitive, basic private messaging system.
Another cool feature that should be simple to implement would be post signatures.
Maybe get payouts out back to where they were?
Because at the moment unless the person has 1000+ followers their posts are earning next to nothing. Does anyone not see "One 7 Day Pay Period" only with now drastically reduced payouts (That can't even be voted on for the last 12 hours) as not motivating to new people or is it just me that feels this way?
Here Try this great site... It will only take you 6 months to make any money and you only get paid once, unlike other platforms that pay you forever and btw you can't block the haters or anyone that wants to stalk you or harass you.
Hello, I am part of the Spanish speaking community. For me, Steemit has a big deficit in other languages. Why not update the platform, tutorials, etc etc to other languages. Every time I invite someone new to Steemit, everyone tells me the same thing: It's all in English!
I know it's the universal language, but it would attract many more people if access to information was simpler.
For example, with other steemit users we have created Steemit Argentina on Facebook, to make Steemit known in our country. And it always happens the same, people are discouraged by the difficulty that the language represents.
Another idea, I saw that mentioned, why not give the user who invites new users 1, 2 or 10 steem (you decide) when the new user acquires 50 reputation points. This can be done through a reference link that each user owns.
I wish you guys the best, and I hope steemit grows!
Hi @steemitblog, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.
Perhaps this is a good time to think about lead generation and email marketing ;-) Amazon and ebay make over 80% of their sales through email marketing ;-)