Well I just read the post by @steemitblog and now they are stressing the fact that they are now targeting communities and SMT at 100%. This is great, but wasn't that said nearly two years ago? Well perhaps they mean it this time.
The main idea of the post is that these tools will be used to onboard people, now I really wonder if this will happen. I know that steem-engine has generated a lot of excitement and a lot of posts but has it onboarded people? I really don't have any numbers but I don't think it has, and the only way it will is if people start to make decent money there.
Because you see, the most important reason you can give for onboarding people is if you bait them with the idea that they can make money and you can only keep these people onboard if they actually make money, otherwise they leave. Yes, you will find people who will stay regardless of this, perhaps because they like the place, because they make friends or maybe like me I am an obstinate person and I have this idea I will someday make it big here, even though up to now it has been not so good and I am going to be three years here in August.
Now I think everyone can agree that the huge majority of people signup on Steemit with the idea of making money. But can you really make money on Steemit? And I mean enough money to live on. Unfortunately the answer is no, nobody here on Steemit can make a living by honestly writing a good article and getting a lot of votes because of the quality of their posts. Now I know there are some people who are in circle jerks who upvote each others articles and comments every day and they get a decent return every day, but if you notice most of these guys are from developed countries and they might make $20.00 a day it still is not enough for them to live off of.
The reward pool is finite, every day it rewards a certain amount of money and nothing more, if you onboard one million people and the reward pool is $50,000.00 I really don't think the majority of these users will stay here because they will be making nothing, the only way this would work is if Steem's price went up with every ten thousand new users, and if people stopped circle jerking, using bidbots even curation trails should end have everyone curate manually, but I don't see that happening. In fact I have been thinking about why not eliminate SBD's and just leave Steem, after all it is a very stable coin hardly moving from $0.25.
I am Ok with these ideas , communities and SMT's and even onboarding its just that after three years of the same thing one gets to become kind of pessimistic about things.
I am confused about the idea that people should be able to live off their writing and posting to a social media platform. Most will never accomplish that anywhere, and I haven't heard anyone promise that.
I also fully understand questioning their promises, they have earned that over and over again.
Oh, it was promised, maybe not by Steemit inc. but a lot of people were onboarded that way in fact they still are. But if you don't come for the money, let's be realistic, what will you come for? Maybe after you do belong you can decide to stay but the desire to sign up has to come from somewhere and the most basic thing that can appeal to the masses is money.
I'm here for money, I just don't expect it to be a living.
I've worked my whole career in startups.
You work for almost nothing in the early days and get paid later. That's what I am doing here.
Of course, but you do have financial expectations and you have persevered despite the fact that maybe things didn't go as fast as you expected, but most people don't have that patience or long term planning.
Well then they shouldn't expect to earn a living anytime soon. Are you saying we should cater to people who don't know how to build something, and aren't patient, so they can come here and earn enough money to live on?
See the point of it being a start up is that it isn't finished. As you point out... lot's of things don't work that well.
Some people come and do this anyway, we accept the broken parts and work on solutions. ... We make some small change as we do that, it becomes slowly over time better....
If we don't make it better, nothing new happens. If we do make it better there is finally a pay off for the work, the time and the building phase. That's what start ups are all about.
I think you have to cater to everyone, the ones who ultimately like it will stay, but they can't leave if they don't come and if you don't have a bait they just won't come. Money is the bait but it actually is difficult to make money here, I make at the most $0.30 per post but I can keep on posting because I tend to like it here and I have no expectations of making big bucks here even though these tribe things have me excited perhaps there I can hit it big, who knows. I am against most of the changes that will be implemented and have posted as much as I can just so you can know my positions, I know they make no difference but at least people know where I stand, well the few people who have read these posts.
So in the end I do think it comes down to money, if you don't offer rewards people just won't come or do you think they will come for the communities? I don't, there are thousands of communities online and I don't think that would be a good reason to join, or at least not enough to have masses of people here.
Well we agree on offering money as an incentive. I think we need to also... but I don't think it needs to be worthy of telling anyone they can make a living.
I've been here for 3 years. Took me a year to get any traction at all.
I do here your point, I guess we just disagree on setting expectations.
with all of the tokens being introduced on SE it feels like SMTs are already here 😂
Yes, and maybe there will be a clash if SMT's do eventually make their appearance.