Personally I have a hard time seeing any of these blockchain based sites being a real break through success until you have one that really focuses on the passive curators. Most people on a platform like this shouldn't expect to or be asked to be a creator, or at least not a serious one. It's not sustainable.
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I'm not sure I agree. There are plenty of content creators on the web at various levels of expertise. Steemit isn't reaching them. I think it has a lot to do with UI. The design isn't appealing to the Facebook crowd. I invited someone to join who is a brilliant writer. But he doesn't know Markup and doesn't have the time to teach himself. So his posts don't look good. He's quit Steemit because he just doesn't have the time to learn how to use Markup to design a beautiful post. The learning curve is too steep. And I think there are a lot of people in that boat.
Right now the pitch to get people to steemit is come here and get paid for your posts.
That will only pull in people who want to write. Maybe they will want to read once they get here, but that's just a bonus.
The vast majority of people who join Facebook or reddit don't join to write, just to read. Until we pitch to that crowd, steemit's appeal will be limited.
To be clear though, I agree with your UI concerns.
There's nothing wrong with limiting the appeal. Lots of sites succeed by limiting their audiences. Quora is a Q&A website. You show up and ask a question, somebody else answers. But unlike other Q&A websites, they have a baked in system for quality control. The best answers rise to the top. Their UI is awesome. Their site is attractive. But it's not for everybody.
Quora's global rank is 94. In the U.S., it's 47. Most people who have questions just Google it. Quora is a very specialized website with a very active core group of visitors. That core group keeps it going, not the majority who might show up once in a blue moon to ask a question. The core group of Quorans who use the site answer multiple questions per day, and many of them provide long high quality answers to the questions that are asked.
A few days ago, someone responded to this post with an invitation to join musings.io, Steemit's Q&A alternative. I checked it out. I responded to a comment on a question. The person I responded to responded back. So I went up to respond to that response and the site locked up. I spent 10 minutes crafting an answer only to have the site lock up. So I closed that tab and went back the next day to find that post. More problems. I couldn't find the post. These kinds of issues keep people away.
Most people are busy. I'm busy. I run a business. I have a family. I've active in my community. I have a limited amount of time to play around or try something new. If I try it once and it doesn't work, it frustrates me. If I try it twice and it doesn't work, I'm gone. You lost me. I assume most people have a similar patience level.
Steemit has a learning curve. It took me almost a month to really figure it out, and I've been posting content online since the mid-1990s. Most end users will assume they're not smart enough to figure it out when, in reality, the developers just haven't figured out how to make it simple enough for the average content producer. Writers aren't coders, and most coders aren't good writers. Steemit has a coder mindset. If they turned Steemit into a place where writers and other creatives like to hang out, like Wattpad or deviantART, I think it would be a different picture.
And, by the way, it could be an awesome place for any type of creator. There are photographers using it in powerful ways. Video creators could use it in powerful ways. I love reading the tutorials some people produce on using photo editing tools. But whatever you do, you have to learn Markup or use a third-party tool with a WYSIWYG interface. That's another hurdle for people who are already reticent to give something new a try. I think before they start looking at ways to expand the audience they should figure out solutions to the UI problem.
"Most people are busy. I'm busy. I run a business. I have a family. I've active in my community. I have a limited amount of time to play around or try something new. If I try it once and it doesn't work, it frustrates me. If I try it twice and it doesn't work, I'm gone. You lost me. I assume most people have a similar patience level."
Yeah, I totally agree with your UI concerns.
BUT that quote above is also why we can't just cater to creators.
I work a full time job and am raising a kid. I have very limited time to even produce posts, much less read a lot of others'.
If Steemit was a place for people to come by and browse and just read and comment on stuff they are interested in, and maybe post occasionally if they wanted to, that is when we would see big numbers.
To be clear, this is not just a messaging problem. Honestly the PRIMARY thing stopping this is UI difficulties, so I absolutely agree they need addressed.
Yeah, I think the UI is the biggest issue. People can just be readers and commenters now, but the rewards are small if that's all you do. Plus, I don't know that the average Facebook user would understand how they're earned.
A lot of prescient points here, Block.
This is a gargantuan problem. 99% of existing/potential users don't give a crap about any of the things that the Coder Crowd cares about. There is a MASSIVE disconnect between those running the show and the audience.
The crypto-coder crowd have to start ceding a lot of the decisions to parties closer to the consumer. They're trapped in their own little bubbles and their priorities simply don't correspond to what the market is demanding. They've gotten away with this for 3 years because there was no viable alternative. That WILL change in the near future.
And ... Reality Bites.
Quill