Yesterday, on the Steem Witness Forum HF21, I was asking @elipowell about the Steem.com website and its future. Her answer was acceptable, but not completely fulfiling for me.
One of the reasons stamped probably out of the fact, that my question wasn't formulated clearly enough, which is why I thought I'd write this blog posts, going into the subject more deeply, because I believe it's of utmost importance.
What is Steem.com?
As you might know, Steem.com is a WordPress-powered website, developed by Steemit Inc, which was released (re-done from previous design) 7 months ago. It showcases important features of our blockchain and other info. However, some of the info is outdated and critical parts are missing.
For accurateness, I do want to mention that @andrachy reached out to me a few months ago, if I'd be interested in working on Steem.com. I had to turn down the offer, out of time constraints, but it does show that they're seeing the urgency. Overall, I believe it's much better to have Steem.com as an open project, instead of one or a few individuals working on it via closed source. (More on that later)
Why is Steem.com important?
Let's make an experiment, shall we?
Go to google, enter steem and hit enter. What do you get?
Probably something like this.
Out of over 68 million search results, Steem.com is the first. And if you know anything about Google SEO, you know that being N°1 is a big fcking deal*!
But even outside of Google, if you go to the page of Steem on CoinMarketCap. What's the main website-link referring to there?
You guessed it. It's Steem.com!
Alright, alright. But what does this mean?
What this essentially means is that when people (aka. potential investors) want to learn more about Steem, they're being greeted by an outdated website. I'm not referring to the design, which looks great, but towards the data.
Let me show you some examples:
[INFO] The cursive text is what other people (those not familiar with Steem yet) might think and the bold text is what the actual reality is.
What about 2018 and 2019?
Oh, so Steem is dead? Did nothing happen in 2018 and 2019?
2018 and 2019 was filled with many innovations by the Steem community (SCOT, Steem Monsters, dTube, etc etc)
Small Team? Where's the community?
Wow, that's a very small team. But okay, seems that Ned Scott is behind Steem. Let me google him.
If this were the team for Steemit Inc. even then it would be outdated. But saying that Steem is only consisting out of 1 person, who is clearly quite inactive, is an extreme understatement. We've got @aggroed, @yabapmatt, @theycallmedan, @nathanmars, @heimindanger, ... and hundreds more. I could go on and on, but you get the point.
Alright. Got him. Click
Oh damn. He sold all his STEEM holdings. That must be a dead project if the only team member doesn't have any STEEM
It's his money, so he can do however he pleases. But playing devils-advocate here; it clearly doesn't look great for outside people (not even for people inside), when the main guy (on the website) doesn't have any stake.
Okay got it. But what's the alternative?
I could go on and on, but that would waste my and everybody else's time.
Instead, it would be much better to just make changes to the website directly.
I do know that there are plans to make the website open-source. (which is great!)
However, I've got no clue when this will be. And the more I think about it, the more I realise how crucial it is that this happens ASAP.
For 7 months, we gave people an inaccurate image of what Steem is. It might not be perfect yet, but it's far away from a failed project. It provides more value than 95% of other projects.
Steem.com should be decentralised
The hosting of Steem.com, as well as the content it includes, should be as decentralised as possible.
Steem.com is a crucial part of Steem's image and how people see the project.
We need this:
To be changed to this:
Steemit Inc. is an important building block for Steem, but our community is much bigger!
I think visually the website looks quite good. I would not change a lot about that but ,like you said, the data is not up to date anymore.
The info about the team is indeed something to be ashamed about. Needs to change ASAP. The info about the transactions made with Steem compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum is also not right anymore. Steem is dropping.
https://www.google.com/search?&q=%22steem%22 this is the correct search term for
steem, still 21m searches, which is quite impressive.gtk! But even then, Steem.com is n°1.
exactly, but expected with all those juicy backlinks :) question is: who searches for steem?
need to target more broad keywords suchs as "blogging" etc
If I'd hear about Steem via a tweet, youtube video, etc. and I wouldn't know what Steem is, I would simply google it. And I would expect, if a .com were to exist, that it would be an official & updated resource.
without a doubt. I was just thinking out loud in terms of visibility on google
Eli did seem responsive to the necessity of updating things at least.
And we do need to move away from Ned's image.
You're right that currently we get a totally misleading impression of what's going here.
@steemonboarding does a better job of explaining things.
A further problem of search returns is Jerry and his Prodigy also rank well - again, not the best marketing IMO!
Maybe have a link from Steem.com to steemonboarding. "Learn more from Steem in Steemonboarding - the community initial to get new people a smooth start for Steem." Or something like that.
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Yes, that would make sense!
How about decentralising steemapps.com and save all information about a dApp on-chain in the account json_metadata of the app account? Steemapps has become quite important since several dApp sites such as stateofthedapps rely on its api. We are not meaning to spam, but we have tried to contact you several times already, without any reply from you.
Our dApp travelfeed.io is not listed correctly on steemapps.com: We have several active users, but they are not tracked on steemapps. We tried editing our app on steemapps to activate "The accounts name is being used for meta-data" several times already, but the change does not persist/has not been approved.
I feel like its kind of a waste of a domain and like you said confusing and offputting. We who are here understand the shitty communication we have so we forgive it but for a normie its hella intimidating and an info overload.
Have you seen the comments on an intro post? A noob doesn't know wtf to do with all that info. Also as results become more diversified people tend to find different domains such as dapps and front ends and have no cooking clue what's going on.
I was saying the other day steem is a shared universe but there is no golden thread that users can follow to help them click ooooh these are all interconnected and where they fit in the system
Great post, this will also help remove some pressure from Steemit, Inc. They have enough to do right now.
Correct.
Something I don't like to see on Steemit website
June was yesterday?! What June?
What about EOS, not very fair comparison
By the way, White/Blue papers are translated to several languages by DaVinci, but those are not available on the website, why?
Leave it to the people then! I know Steem is an up and comer.
Tou are right , it's all should be for the community
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If they don't have someone designated to updating the site, might as well let the community do it! and while we are at that, adding a couple more languages to the site wouldn't be bad either since we have huge non English speaking communities as well :-)
Very good observations and they are all important. Please don't relent in passing this message across to those in position to make the needed changes.
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good thoughts, resteem.
A very good suggestion, but who exactly will maintain it, what group of people?
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Hope someone there read this post and that measures will be taken soon..
resteem
Lol I can't wait for the clusterfuck that will result from a "decentralized steem.com".
Posted using Partiko Android
One step after another. Most important is that the site becomes open-source (which is Steemit Incs. plan already) and then the community can submit PRs.
I agree with you completely on this. Steem.com should be the landing page for the Steem ecosystem and that should belong to the community. Steemit Inc has their own website in Steemit.com.
We need to take that over and let the community developers structure the site as the community sees fit. This could also tie into community marketing.
The ecosystem needs to break away from Steemit Inc on many fronts: this is an ideal place to start.
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I think once we have communities like reddit, we'll be ready to open-source not only steem.com but also steemit.com. Or directly delete steemit.com and let the other dapps compete among them.
I had literally been pushing this yesterday before eli was on air. I had been posting about revamping steemit.com as it was where most people landed onto STEEM as i didn't even know the STEEM.com was a thing. I would love to see it as a portal to the STEEM blockchain, drawing feeds from all the different apps and games showing what is happening here as well as having instant sign ups and community info.
We need somewhere to send people that shows off everything on the blockchain and this could be a great opportunity to do it well. At the moment I can't show my friends the chain as they are non technical and the sign up process is an embarrassment but with a proper landing page and the new invite vouchers we can start bringing i n new people.
https://steempeak.com/palnet/@niallon11/delete-steemit-com-we-can-do-better
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I agree with what you write @therealwolf, is for example when a seller is very good and his power of persuasion is excellent and attracts many people. But if your product looks bad with such simple things, however good the seller looks, your product will fail and will not captivate any buyer