In the end Steem is backend system that enables shareholders to reward content via clicks from shared rewards pool. This in itself can be utilized in many ways but to give more power to growth of smaller communities around Steem, we are soon getting smart media tokens(SMT). These SMT's will then work as another layer on top of Steem, like inception these smart media tokens work just like Steem and Steem Power but the issuer has more control on how to issue these new tokens out. For example, let's say you would be to create a new website that encourages positive news only and objective journalism. You could then issue a new token revolving around this new website, where contributors get rewards in this token of yours. These new tokens could then be traded back to Steem, or later, to btc if it gains big user rates. This way, your new token would be hold by those who contribute a lot to your particular website and they have more say, where new tokens will go by upvoting.
At least that is my current knowledge of the SMT's. It will help smaller ecosystems grow within Steem. Every website could have their own, if they choose so.
That's really good to know. I've been wondering about how much flexibility there is for engineers to build alternative incentive structures with Steem, but circumventing the Steemit platform to make on-boarding new and less tech savvy users as easy as possible.
But that's even besides the point, these smart media tokens sound like something I should get more familiar with.