Money Talks
Money may talk in fact it often talks but will the average person listen to it? While many people may dream of one-day making trending page let’s face it. A growing majority ignores it since most of the time it’s bought and paid for or there is a lack of diversity the past. So a lot of people don’t bother.
Another day I left a comment and it was a top comment on a blog. The author then spent a boatload of money to get it into trending. My top comment stayed top comment on a trending high payout blog for a while and it had only 2 cents in upvotes. Someone eventually passed up my comment of 2 cents because they upvote their own comment. They don’t do it for a few bucks either it was a substantiation amount.
The blog itself got a lot of spam because the spammers hit up the high paying blogs. It got a couple of people who put some effort into a comment but that was it. Maybe things changed I stop checking in after it fell off trending. I personally prefer to stay out of blogs that tend to go over a couple hundred as the kind of people it attracts I’m not a fan of.
Money in my personal life has always done a lot of talking and I just tend to ignore it. I don’t like what it does to people who have too much. I hate seeing what it does to people who don’t have enough. It’s this ugly thing we are stuck with. Do I like it is the site's slogan –no. I hate it and I assume people who are looking for freedom will be turned off for it. They are just sick and tired of money telling them “this is how your life is going be.”
How important is diversity to me?
My own personal feed is somewhat diverse in the type of content in it and even by region. I get to interact with people all around the world and I get to see and try and understand different perspectives that bring. There are a lot many different types of content so I get to enjoy a wide range of topics.
Due to high turnover rate, most of the people I follow already have somewhat of a proven track record and gained at least a fair amount of reputation. In the past, I invested a lot of time in new arrivals when I was new. I gave up because of the high turnover rate. I expected the high turnover rate but it was burned out from it after a while and time-consuming finding inactive users or people who gave up and turned into spammers/spam resteem.
The community I joined and I am very active in is not very diverse because it is a closed community that people have to apply and be approved to get in. Because of the requirements, it stays that way. I’ve been in other more diverse communities and I just did not enjoy them. Between the people who live in cultures where it’s acceptable to spam/push their content in your face all the time to them hating my guts because of where I live. I just prefer a more closed community of people when it comes to factors that are out of my control. I can choose who I want to follow on Steemit but I don’t have much impact on who can join a community so I pick the safer option for myself.
Overcoming the lack of diversity in SP is going have to be a community driven thing. You have to invest on this site in either money or time. Money is the shortcut but like anything in life if you are not very good at what you do you will pay the higher price in to maintain the same level. It will be interesting to see in 3-5 years who remanded and kept the power they wield and benefits from building a community.
With how overpriced SBD has been as of late some very wealthy accounts seem awfully concerned with how it’s not supposed to be this way. I’ll never have much SP on this site but thanks to that I just have to invest my time and I’ll get a nice little bit before this site falls under mass adoption and making even a couple of steem a week is no longer going be a normal thing.
Thanks for your valuable thoughts, @enjar!
I don't like the new claim either :-) The gap between user expectations and reality is already big enough. Aggressively pushing the financial aspect won't help to control that at all. It might get even worse. Also - as you realized pretty well - it will keep away people who're looking for a free market that's not governed by money.
If you don't invest you need a pretty good strategy to be seen as you perfectly described. Not jumping on every trending post is surely a good tactic. The highly desired community feature might help us all to find our niches and capitalize them successfully.
I am looking forward to communities feature as well if it is done right. I know a few places I really enjoy leaving comments in and being engaging. They have a great desire to create a better place on Steemit for their kind of engagement such as comments and having a discussion.
It will be interesting to see how that feature shapes the community. I just hope it makes finding certain types of content easier to find. Current system I might as well use an outside search engine to find things most of the time.