September 28, 2019 – Two years ago, when I got the call, my uncle sounded desperate. After graduating from UCLA with a marketing degree, I had gone to work for a consulting firm in Los Angeles. But I couldn’t save the Daily Ledger of Spokane, Washington, could I? It was one of the last family-owned newspapers and news websites in the United States. Like many others, it was dying.
Subscriptions were down for both the print and online editions, ad revenue on the website was falling, and there wasn’t a viable business model in sight. It seemed that our 80-year old family business was nearing its end. Like so many other independent news organizations, the Daily Ledger was finding it hard to survive in the 21st century.
Going to work for my uncle’s newspaper should have been a career-killing move. Family loyalty alone would not have taken me back to Spokane. And yet, I shocked myself by accepting his job offer and moving back home in a desperate effort to save a dying business.
Why did I do it? Because he mentioned “bitcoin” and opened the door to a grand experiment.
“You’re our last hope, Jeremy. We need your marketing magic for the Spokane Daily Ledger. Even use that Bitcoin if it helps.”
Two years earlier at Christmas dinner, I had bored my whole family with my passion for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. My advice to them was about as welcome as Grandma’s fruitcake (which is to say, family members were polite enough to pretend interest, but no one really wanted any). Apparently, my uncle had not forgotten my statement that day that “Cryptocurrencies could save newspapers”.
Fast forward a few months: I moved back to Spokane and was hired by my uncle as the Daily Ledger’s Director of Strategic Planning with instructions to do anything necessary to save the business. And I did stop the downward spiral in advertising, but only because we implemented a Smart Media Token (SMT).
We ruled out Bitcoin. It was too slow, too expensive, and bore all the hallmarks of a prototype that had not been improved upon as much as its successors. We also looked at Dash and other cryptocurrencies. We even considered doing an Ethereum-based ICO – way too expensive.
And then I learned about Steem’s Smart Media Tokens (SMTs). This proved to be the ideal solution, providing the best technology at a low cost, and with transactions that are instant and free. The Daily Ledger of Spokane became one of the first news organizations to integrate an SMT for our subscription-based news site.
The Steem SMT Saved Our Family Business. Here is How We Did It.
Month 1
With help from the team at Steemit, we launched the DAILY token about 18 months ago. Setting it up was “plug and play” simple and we found the process very user-friendly. Distribution, inflation, and an internal market: they let us tailor every option to suit our needs. But we wisely took our time to understand the implications of each choice before selecting the ones that work best for the DAILY token.
Month 2
After launch, we decided to focus first on our subscribers and advertisers. Each user who subscribed to the Daily Ledger’s online edition, ordered the print edition, or purchased an ad on either, received DAILY tokens as a loyalty reward. We had fun with it, holding some local events where we also gave DAILY tokens away on a radio show and increased the buzz.
Month 3
Once the internal market was set up, we announced that DAILY tokens would be accepted for subscriptions or ad placements. We also offered to buy back tokens through our internal market, but we valued them at a higher rate for the subscriptions and ad buys than for the market buybacks.
Most DAILY holders chose to use them for subscriptions or ad buys. Others held their tokens. Soon, a handful of DAILY holders (and investors from outside our region) realized they could use the internal market to bridge the gap between the low buybacks and the higher use value. An active market developed and they forced the price up to the rate we had set for the subscriptions and ads.
Month 4
The local buzz really grew. National news media covered our experiment. For the first time in 15 years, subscriptions and advertising stopped declining and began to increase.
We made a decision to implement Steemit-style voting for articles on our website, giving the rewards to article authors as a bonus, and taking only a modest percentage for the newspaper’s own administrative costs. We delegated DAILY tokens to each subscriber and advertiser, letting them choose the content that best deserved to be rewarded, and allowing each to earn also from curation rewards based upon their voting.
User engagement on the site increased tenfold. Each article had comments on it, which author was earning rewards as well. 30 days later, our top journalists had effectively doubled their salaries and everyone was earning more. Because we had set a non-author employee pool as the beneficiary for a small % on each article, employees from the ad department to the print room got into the fun and earned from the game as well.
Month 5
We received 176 job applications from journalists around the world. Never had so many people expressed a desire to work for our small newspaper and website in Spokane, Washington.
Month 6
We experimented with allowing non-subscriber accounts and eliminating subscriber paywalls for two large sections of article content. When the results were analyzed, it was clear that the journalists writing in these free areas earned more than those whose articles were protected by paywalls.
Month 7
The paywalls came down and subscriptions were eliminated. Under pressure from our employees, we opened up all areas of the news website for free access. When the local union chapter came to us with the employees’ demand to eliminate paywalls, we were ready with a counter-request to reduce the salaries paid in U.S. dollars for all journalists.
Amazingly, the union agreed to cut salaries in exchange for its employees having access to greater financial opportunities via upvotes on their content. We already had decided to bring down the paywalls, enabling free access and rewards potential for all content. Yet we still let the union “convince” us to eliminate paywalls in exchange for the salary cut.
Month 8
My uncle retired and they made me CEO of the family news business. A deli down the street and the barbershop on the ground floor of our building announced they will accept DAILY tokens for all transactions.
Month 9
We implemented a new “subscription” model in which subscribers would receive delegations of DAILY tokens in their accounts. Delegations became the new subscriptions. Until this point, previous subscribers and advertisers had been grandfathered in with accounts that contained some delegated DAILY tokens (and thus an opportunity to have more influence in voting and earn more curation rewards).
Now, everyone would have to pay for these subscriptions/delegations. And they did, because we priced them below the opportunity cost of the curation rewards these subscribers could earn by voting regularly or leasing their voting power to others. We still made good money, selling plenty of them at a low price.
Month 10
I was invited to be a keynote speaker at a huge cryptocurrency convention in Tokyo. Steemit was the main sponsor, which may have been a coincidence.
Month 11
All advertisers were moved to a subscription-based model also. Ad areas on the site were turned over to the marketplace where merchants could bid on each spot. They could use their accounts’ DAILY stake (delegated via subscriptions or filled by amounts they had purchased themselves) to make bids.
A few longtime local merchants grumbled and were not interested in participating, but they were more than balanced out by the interest from new advertisers from outside our region who wanted to reach our growing base of users.
Month 11
For the first time in decades, our company’s headquarters building had a 100% occupancy rate. A leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm leased the last vacant offices for the new Spokane-based location of its cryptocurrency accelerator hub.
Month 12
We convinced three other independent newspapers in other parts of the country to join our DAILY network. We essentially bought them out by giving them DAILY tokens or renting them large delegations of DAILY tokens with which to monetize their sites.
It wasn’t long before they asked us to host their content as well. They sold us any remaining assets and became subsidiaries of our company.
Month 13
Our news organization was named as one of Inc Magazine’s fastest growing companies in America. My mother cried when she saw me on the cover.
I was contacted by a large ring of porn websites, which wanted to monetize its content using DAILY tokens. Their deal would have added a ton of volume, easily doubling or tripling the value of the DAILY. But I turned them down, knowing my mother wouldn’t approve.
Month 14
A leading New York-based financial institution tried to pitch me on taking our family business public with an IPO/ICO. Why would we do that? I turned them down.
Month 15
We had to hire more journalists. Several of our longtime employees retired early and moved to warm tropical islands. The new journalists do not get salaries. They are thrilled to work for the chance of getting DAILY token-powered upvotes. In that sense, they aren’t employees anymore, but content creators we have invited to join our team brand.
The local union does not object to this. We already purchased them a new office on a warm tropical island. Electricity is a bit spotty there, but we haven’t heard from them in months.
Month 16
We bought the Washington Post, one of the world’s largest news organizations, from Jeff Bezos. He needed to raise money for his upcoming trip to Mars. We paid him in DAILY tokens. In my first online meeting with the Post’s employees, I told them that they might have experienced some changes under Jeff, but they hadn’t seen real innovation yet. Welcome to the blockchain, where money talks and good content creators get the rewards they deserve.
Month 17
UCLA invited me to give the commencement address this year for its Steem-Anderson School of Business. I accepted on the condition that they stop calling to ask me for donations. Don’t they have something I can upvote instead?
Month 18
I put my intern in charge and moved to a warm tropical island. The blockchain runs the majority of the business now, so there isn’t that much to do most days.
I saw a guy down here who had his laptop on the beach and was upclicking something, so I asked him about it. It turns out he was an early adopter of Steem even before they launched the Smart Media Tokens (SMTs). He had some strange screen name, like a farm animal, but I’ve forgotten what it was. Apparently, he still logs in every day to vote on new content he finds.
Today
My uncle called and thanked me for saving our family business. He says I made him proud. I told him to thank the folks at Steem also. It was their Smart Media Token (SMT) that enabled us to kill the paywalls and monetize the content for our family business, turning it into the next big thing.
The story above is fictional (as the date of the article also suggests), but let's make it happen. All images from Pixabay or public domain sources.
What a spectacular post!
I think this goes a long way to put into perspective the amazing possibilities that the SMTs offer, and you described it in a wonderful manner.
Thank you for this!
Next step...figure out how it works.
Cool
Awesome indeed!
id have to agree wish my content writing was so good!
Amazing post that makes a LOT of sense AFTER reading the new whitepaper at https://smt.steem.io/
It may be Fictional @jerrybanfield but it sure sounds DAMN GOOD to me.
Is there already any SMT implementation for a standalone forum like Elkarte.net or Simplemachines.org ?
I really need such a SMT plugin for my forums...
Please let me know.
Many thanks.
Regards, Stefan.
I like this idea ..will be great for bloggers
Yes it will. My question though is will Steemit.com become redundant though if there is a mass adoption of SMT?
Hi @donkeypong
A very forward-looking article. Three months later I come over here and think it will not take until 2019.
I think we are experiencing such scenarios earlier. Time passes quickly, but developments in this area are faster.
Best wishes from Paraguay.
The evolution if crypto is fast, but the good development seems to take slightly longer. We will see. :)
@donkeypong
Sure - and i think we will see good times for cryptos and specialy STEEM and SDB.
Wow - thx so much for this incredible #upvote
I made this comment in my first days here on steemit and was at the beginning a little bit confused, whats going on here. Today i got the reward and was wondering about this high payment and jumped over here, to check out whats going on.
THANK YOU
Wow, @donkeypong! I like your 2 year forecast into the future for the good SMT tokens would do for businesses, narrating in the past. I wrote an introductory post about it yesterday, to alert the Nigeria and Africa communities, while planning to find time, this weekend, to read the 50-paged SMT whitepaper. Thank you very much for the enlightenment.
Kind regards,
@maryfavour
Was so confused reading through all of this. How could I of missed all this?!?!?
Got to the last line, ahhhhhhhh
Don't worry. The public release of tokens didn't come out until very recently. I'm thinking he was a trial run. But that's just me talking.
read the last line of his post
Or the first one when he writes the date (September 28, 2019)
Great read btw!
Lol missed that
I completely missed that 2019 date at the beginning and was totally confused. haha That last line cleared it though.
I just hope this actually becomes the future. It would be a meaningful one :)
This is really helpful on top of the info @ned has given - Really helps paint the picture of what this can be. I am sold, just need to work out how I can utilize SMT's!
I love this - especially from month 15 on!
This farm animal guy sounds like he knew what he was doing. I hope to meet him some day and shake his hand ;)
Thanks for this post. I think it puts it into a perspective I can wrap my head around.
Resteemed!
Okay, I understand all of this perfectly, and I really didn't plan to reply at all.
However...
That made me crack up. Thanks for the smile!
This is all well and good, and it is revolutionary. That's the key word behind all of this too. It's a digital revolution. We are creating alternatives and walking away from current systems to improve the world.
How cool is that?
It's pretty damn cool. Thanks to you all. Thinking about what this all means brings a tear to my eye.
It's a true group effort to improve the world. Thanks.
Us Liberty Professionals are fighting the good fight. haha
Amazing!
You obviously have a business brain on your head @donkeypong - Im not sure if I followed how it worked completely so I will have to read it a few times.
I got the jist of it but I got lost a couple of times. I am an artist not a businessman but I have an interest is how crypto-currencly and blockchain technology can play a part in changing how businesses are run in the future. The story sounds like a great script for a film I might add.
Only the other day I was thinking how in fact the crypto world is only just beginning. Even though Bitcoin is rising and millions are flocking to it, I think a great deal of these new investors are just trying to make a quick buck.
IMO they are treating Bitcoin and other coins like stocks and shares without actually understanding what blockchain tech is really about. But in a sense that doest matter at this stage
I see your meaning here, what we need to happen is for something similar to your story to show the sceptics and the ordinary Joe or Jane in the street just how powerful the world will change, and for the benefit of everyone, once crypto currency becomes part of daily life.
My grandmother used to say; Be careful what yo wish for because it stands a good chance of coming true". Meaning if someone has a will they ill surely find a way.
Really enjoyed it.
That's all true, except for the part about me having a business brain.
Ha ha ha ha
donkeypong - Like arthuradamson, I too am an artist/writer, and I flowed right through the phenomenal success of the family business, stroking and swimming past every cryptocurrency concept that I don't yet understand. The story line was completely real in my own head, like watching Michael Douglas devour vulnerable companies in hostile takeovers on "Wall Street." Didn't have a clue how the concept worked but instinctively understood the heartbeat of the drama. You're really good, and you certainly have enough of a business brain to scam an artist!
Maybe I missed a calling as a scam artist. :) My intent was to open up possibilities so people start thinking about what they can achieve with these SMTs.
Well, you certainly caught this fish in your dragnet, and that is slightly miraculous because not only am I clueless about cryptocurrency, but I am also dragging myself out of Technophobia. Literally. Heart palpitations every time the computer acts in a bizarre manner and does some strange thing of its own volition. Your post about a revolutionary concept in the family business model is so convincing that I am finally beginning to focus on learning what I need to know. That means that your influence is powerful enough to change behavior. So be careful. The Deep State will now begin to study you. (Don't know how to make that little smiley thing)
Wow, that is very probable, realistic and inspiring story. It went from few millions to billions in 5 years, if this trajectory holds (no sign of holding back), in coming decades DAILY holders will buy Times, WP etc. :)
Steem it is a truly changing life opportunity. :)
Extremely well written hypothethical situation. Also makes the whole SMT thing much more understandable due to the clear practical application you display here. Thanks @donkeypong :)!
Amazing post, I'm actually pissed I didn't think of writing this post.
Although it wouldn't have been better. Great writing, and great vision...
You probably won't be far from the truth... if it isn't SMT, it sure as hell will something very alike!
Good story! It was a fun read. But I wonder if results of this kind could actually be achieved in this context.
Steem tokens derive value from increases to influence (which increase curation rewerds) and from their use as a cryptocurrency (payments and store of value).
Influence is generally more valuable the larger the network. True that influence on a local publication might actually be extra valuable to locals, but that pool of people is small so overall, demand for influence would be much lower than for influence on Steem.
Value of use of DAILY as a cryptocurrency, unless features are incorporated which differentiate it from others on a functional level, will quickly drop to zero. I don't think a plain vanilla SMT would accomplish this goal.
Increasing curation rewards only has value to the extent that other uses of the token have value, so it would help but not too much in this case.
Use of DAILY token as a means of loyalty rewards (discounted subscription) and as a means of allocating influence is interesting and fun. I do believe that it could add value to a publication like this by increasing reader engagement and offering perhaps more efficient payment models that make it more attractive for advertisers. I just have a strong suspicion that total value achieved for a small newspaper like this will be somewhere between what you describe for month 3 and 4 (especially if you consider that other similar platforms out there will be implementing SMTs or other loyalty tokens, too).
To take it to the next level, the DAILY should have additional uses for holders that make it more valuable. What if DAILY holders could use the tokens to set bounties for articles by authors, giving them a more direct voice in news coverage? That would certainly have value to some readers, and that value would drive up demand for DAILY tokens. The increased demand, and therefore price, of DAILY would benefit the entire platform. Sort of like what I've written about here: https://steemit.com/blockchain/@futureprecedent/london-says-goodbye-to-uber-can-we-say-hello-to-giving-free-rides-instead
What do other Steemians think?
It could be done a little differently than OP suggested and it would work well. Look at this as an example of what a local currency can do: www.tetla.org
Something like that could easily include a news organization whose smart tokens could be exchangeable with the local community currency.
Any currency and economy derives much of its value from belief and perception. As long as there are demand drivers and people who are willing to put short term interests aside to help build something by stimulating more utility and demand, then anything is possible.
There have been somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency ICOs this year, most of them with half baked ideas and business plans that were less developed than this one, using platforms like Ethereum which have much higher costs than Steem's SMTs will have. Are you going to tell all of them that they have no future because there will be no demand for their smart contracts? Investors seem to see quite a bit of value.
The DAILY example is only different in that it is distributed to real people for practical uses rather than hyped to greedy investors. Yet given a choice between most of the stuff I've seen ICO'd on Ethereum this year and the chance to buy some DAILY, I'd choose the DAILY and hope they can make something of it. Get some smart, enthusiastic people involved and those additional uses will come also.
@techwriter, @donkeypong -- Thanks for your feedback!
@donkeypong -- I agree with you on some ICOs having poor value propositions, that's for sure... And I agree DAILY would have some value. However, we should critically examine what these value drivers are.
Currencies derives their value as technology which facilitates trade. Belief is required to make this work, but it is not itself what creates value. Belief may also influence price, but price is not value. Most believe that price must eventually converge to value (and not the other way around).
Examining Steem's existing tokens as a proxy for SMT, these tokens derive their value primarily from 2 internal (i.e., within the native platform) and 1 external use:
My point about value as cryptocurrency dropping to zero is that, especially as we have new and better crypto coming out, unless Steem and other SMTs build in features that make them a better payment mechanism (at least in certain circumstances) than fiat and other crypto out there, no one is going to want to buy Steem/SMT/DAILY to make payments to people outside the native platform. E.g., you're not going to buy stuff from Amazon with SMT. You'll convent to a fiat or perhaps another crypto.
As for internal uses, influence does have value, but influence over local news will have less value overall than same level influence on global news. Hence, I think DAILY can achieve some of the milestones in your story, but not all. My guess is that the value would cap somewhere around what you describe in months 3-4.
Earning more curation rewards is only valuable to the extent that the token has other valuable uses.
You could try to create additional value for SMTs like DAILY by restricting aspects of platform usage to token-holders, like subscription services or buying add space. But if the same platform features could, from a technology perspective, just as well be accessed with fiat or some other crypto, than forcing subscribers/advertisers to convert to DAILY to access these features results in deadweight loss in the economy overall, although it may serve to increase the value of the token. I call this phenomenon value diversion, and it is ubiquitous across token-based projects. In some cases they are is a great enough economic benefit to offset the cost of value diversion, but in others there is not. We should all be very careful when examining the merits of tokens whose value derives from value diversion...
Giving discounts on subscriptions/ad-space purchases to people who pay in DAILY is essentially just a loyalty rewards program. These types of programs have been valuable to many corporates. However, we should also examine in each case whether the SMT is the best available way to track loyalty (on a cost-benefit basis). If not, we should consider other methods of achieving the same result (e.g., just giving discounts to repeat customers).
tl;dr—I think SMT are a really cool idea that can have big benefits for some platforms, although my suspicion is that the most benefits will be reaped by the largest platforms, where influence is the most valuable.
P.S.: If you are interested, I've recently written a paper exploring the topics we've discussed in this thread. In case you are interested, you can read about it in this post, or read the full paper here. The paper contains a case study on Steemit which might be of particular interest. Very grateful for your feedback if you get a chance to read! Trying to crowdsource some peer review :)
The larger scale programs will have the most value for SMTs. But at the opposite end of the spectrum, they also have value for loyalty rewards, and there's nothing wrong with that. The ones in between and the potential for upward mobility as some of them combine or add demand drivers will be very interesting to watch.
Agreed!
This is a spectacular story about the power of blockchain and crypto - thanks for sharing it. I'm re-steeming it.
What expertise do I need to turn my personal blog (a regular WordPress blog) to an SMT incentivized blog?
Good question. I assume someone will create a Wordpress plugin at some point, if they haven't already. Keep looking for it and asking around. It will come.
It would be amazing to reignite the blogging journey I have left for now to give time to Steemit. Thank you very much for being generous and supportive!
Great story! For a while there I thought it was a true! As you say it can happen!
This is what I want to do with my web application. You can pay with bitcoin now but what to incorpreate steem and maybe SMT.
Hello @donkeypong
That's what innovation technology can do. And ability of one to damn the consequences and take a risk even when others are not doubt is essential strides in the direction of success.
But for cryptocurrency invention, your family business would have closed down. And I trust the rest of members of your family would be seeing you as a hero today, just like your uncle did. I would, if you don't mind, love to know how you came to know about cryptocurrency world, sir?
Your article is an inspiring one. Thanks for sharing.
@eurogee
It's a fictional story, set in the future. But very possible now...
I knew it was a friction when I saw the date, It is exactly two years into the future. Thanks for this great insight Tom.
Lols
Let's hope that something like this can become a reality in a few years, man!
Also, I find it a bit funny that so many people had to check if this was real or not. Unless you're a time traveler, I'm pretty sure the 2019 date at the start is a big tip off :P
Some of us aren't good with numbers. If I hadn't written it, I might have missed that part myself (hence, the note at the bottom of the article also).
I guess that's true, I just scrutinize details on things a lot and forget that not everyone else does that. Not like it really matters, it's entertaining and common sense would lead us to question if it's authentic or not since the coin was just announced a few hours before you made your post :P
deadspace - I saw the date and immediately assumed it to be a typo because there is almost NO proofreading in the online alt media world. In fact, it's quite a challenge to find truth among "truthers."
I mean, I don't understand people not proofreading what they write. I have to read through my own articles 3-4 times before I'll post them to make sure nothing is goofy looking. Maybe I'm just more paranoid about that stuff though than normal people.
Well here's my extremely dumb reason for proofreading. I've only recently grown comfortable with commenting on YouTube. (Trolls never intimidated me but I found them to be so annoying and so unpleasant.) But because I'm a card-carrying technophobe, I rarely if ever understand how to use the tools of the comment space and still don't know how to edit or delete what has already been posted. In technophobe world, once posted, that's it, so try not to look like an idiot (even when you feel like an idiot.)
I like the saying in the first image. I have lost over a year due to accident because of my mind and slow degeneration of my bussiness - couldnt think clearly. But then I realised I need to do sth. So I started new website project. Now 2 years passed and my website is doing well and I dont have to regret I didn't start year ago!!
I love it too! I live my life by asking the question, "Will I always wonder what would have happened if I had given this a try?" If the answer is yes, then I just flat out do it and I forget my fears. This is how I managed to:
littlescribe - We are all so proud of you!
That's an inspiration. Maybe you'll need your own token soon? :)
That's possible but for now, adaptation of crypto is too small, my users will be unable to understand what;s the point of it at all..
Building an economy requires some scale, but a token could be a great way to reward your readers. And from there, if you can combine efforts with some others and distribute the token together to a broader range of people, who knows what could happen? Ethereum's ICOs have been quite popular and many of those have far less value than your blog potentially has.
Well, you give me some hope. My sites are visited by about 7k unique visitors a day. I have in plans to scale this "subject" to other sites in other countries (for now I have 3 countries covered). But real challenge will be to do something to make my tokens desirable. No idea how for now ;)
If you're on Steemit.chat , send me a message and let's discuss it.
This changes EVERYTHING!
I would love to see this happen, except the part about the most talented people retiring to warm tropical islands seems like an undesired side effect of success...
Which news group will be the first to do this? I know I'd be supporting them!!
This was freakin awesome to read .. I can see major possibilities and potential derived from this story ;) I can see that working for sure ! Your an awesome writer , I was really captivated and inspired he whole time. Let's make this happen ! UCLA huh?? I've always wanted to visit LA .. how was your experience there ?
Thanks. The character is fictional. I did not attend UCLA. It is a wonderful place, though.
oh man! you had me going with at least the college part haha.. have you been to LA though?? in general I hear its great and I'm a musician so I really hope to get there!
Yes, I've spent some time in LA. It's a dynamic place, sometimes frustrating, but opportunities abound.
thats awesome I'm sure il get there within the next two years .. hopefully steemit can provide me with great opportunity :)
Let's make this fiction non-fiction. It's inspirational a future - and a much needed one.
This is amazing Tom! Excellent teaching strategy! I always thought all of this stuff was just witchcraft or magic I couldn't possibly understand. But by teaching this via an awesome analogy and interesting story really helped. Thanks to you I now understand that this announcement is world changing. World changing!
That last line cleared up much of my confusion.
"How could you be using SMTs for months when they were just announced a few minutes ago?" I asked myself.
You nearly broke my brain.
Haha. Yes, there's a clue in the date at the top also, but I thought it would be best to clarify that at the end. :)
what a great vision! yes, make it happen :-) - loved the turning down of the bankers' ICO offer very much ... cheers from the seven mountains in Germany
Washington post!!! Wow! That is incredible!
This would prove to be the pivotal point where you were tested by the enemy. You passed my friend. Mom happy=Everyone happy.
If Mom ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
I had to scroll down to the end to make sure it was fictional half way through ;)
What a creative and intelligent way of highlighting the potential of SMTs! Amazing job! .
Hi @donkeypong wow what a fictional story this it,indeed it's incredible to learn how you use your marketing skills to uplift your family's newspaper business though steem smart media token,perhaps you really had to make influential decisions that really impacted your family newspaper business positively and this is what all of us as steemians ought to do in other terms let us make it happened since that is what success is all about as for me i am greatly inspired by your story,lastly thank you so much for your inspiring post @donkeypong.
The character in the post is not real, but could be. Glad you enjoyed it.
I have always known there is more specials to Steemit than we are seeing right now and I must confess, the internet will never remain the same again. The revolution is just been Steemed!
Newspapers are obsolete, they should all disapp... wait
You have the perfect screen name for that comment. :)
Month after month STM is growing smartly.
Darn, I worked in a newspaper for years and I have never imagined this could work. Excellent man.
I had previously been a full-time journalist for a couple of mainstream newspapers in Malaysia from the mid-90s onward. Over the past decade or so, as with most other traditional print media, they look to be on a slow "death of a thousand cuts". If not for their importance to the ruling political parties, they would have bled to death a few years ago.
All the while they have been trying to convert traditional advertising into web-based, i.e. having companies buy ads at their online versions. But things have not moved the way they had hoped for. Paywall and subscription don't work either - rather than fork out money, readers would just find their news elsewhere.
I had left the media for a job with an engineering consultancy company six years ago. But I'd often think about these media companies for I have friends still working in this industry. It would be a shame for these companies to close down, and leaving all those talented writers and editors without a job.
I'm extremely encouraged by this post. There is hope yet for some of the media companies. But they will need the right expertise to implement this new income model to be as successful as this post's writer.
It's been a tough time for traditional journalism, even as the Internet has opened up new opportunities. Let's hope we can be part of the solution.
You certainly are. I'm sure many of those in the media business would at least be heartened by your progress.
I'm going to share this link with those in Malaysia especially. In the hope that some of those involved would initiate something. I wish you more successes in the future. Many are now keenly hoping the same for you.
Donky Pong hahaaha, wow
Dude may I know what let you to have a username like this? :D
'Twas a stupid decision and the rationale escapes me, but I've come too far to turn back.
hahaha but now you should take it as your pride coz you have truly come too far :D
Unique names like these sometimes work :D
This post and your company's experience has shed light to individuals who are embarking on the same journey you experienced. Thank you.
Why did you come back. Tell me What other tokens make it big in 2019 how dos IOTA fair in 2019
I just stopped by to share those words of wisdom so you know that now is the best time to start. Aside from that, I can't share an iota of information because all of my time was spent with this token (and not in my own newsroom).
Wow, what a great read. I was convinced you were here in the Spokane area and I was all excited about being neighbors. When I got to your last line, "The story above is fictional, but let's make it happen.", I have to admit, I felt kind of silly.
I'm sure after I get my head around these SMT's, I'll be able to post a more though provoking comment, but for now, I was excited about the thought of being neighbors.
Aha, you had me there, devoured the whole story, except that date right at the start :) Awesome post, knowing very little about the subject, got me wondering how I could use the steemit platform for my guesthouse bookings! The possibilities are endless I believe :)
Well, I'm glad the porn people were turned away. lol But my mind is spinning chaotically... something similar might work for serialized poetry or fiction... thanks very much for giving this real-world example of how SMT could be used.
Theoretically, it could work for nearly any content on the Internet.
But I have to ask- why don't you start the conversation over Thanksgiving, when there's no fruitcake around to subliminally suggest to the rest of the family their appropriate reactions? You could start the arguments that would get the ball rolling that much earlier....
I'll have to remember that this year.
Tom I love your idea to show how all this looks in two years in such a detailed story and ability to have it out right after the release!
Beautiful!
LMAO I loved your analogy about "Grandma's Fruitcake" and how people just pretend to show interest... That's a priceless connection! :D
Great story. I missed the illustrative value (and the date at the beginning) while reading. I just enjoyed the story of a dream come true. I only wondered, is he always this entertaining? Guess I'll have to follow to find out if you are as talented as this post leads me to believe. Gold star for the story.
I was saddened by some of the replies using technical points to show your story could not happen, sucking the joy out of a wonderful story. Remember, the world has never been changed by those claiming it cannot be changed. The world is changed by those who dream of a better way to do things and figure out how to make it happen. Dreams do come true. Dream on.
Thanks. I'm not disheartened by any responses. Some 'realists' forget that there have been $1 billion worth of crypto-based ICOs this year or do not connect that in their minds with the potential for SMTs that are backed by visionary, energetic groups of people. The possibilities here are immense.
Thanks for putting the 'whitepaper' content in a real-life format.
I had to remind myself midways that this was future-dated; not actual; but, a possibility.
I will keep my sights on the future of this interesting design by @ned.
Thanks for sharing!
Peace.