While I don't agree with the confusing parts of the above post (multiple currencies, reward pools, etc), I do think that a little division on steemit.com is something you guys should consider if you're attempting to foster the growth of smaller communities within the site.
If the goal with steemit is just to have one huge community, then disregard and keep on with tags only :)
Sub-steems are a definite future!
Just not sure they each need their own token as it's proven they can be be driven by social desires.
Native blockchain assets - and their incentives - and their websites, such as Steemit - are like boardgames. The game can be designed in different ways, but we don't want to have a thousand different rule sets included in one game because that would make the game too complicated. In a recent @steemitblog post, however, we outline a case for two new aspects to the game's rules - 1. That comments must take a piece of the author/curator rewards. 2. That short posts must take a piece of the author/curator rewards and 3. Medium/long posts must take a piece of the author/curator rewards. In the spirit of this thread, these new rules by themselves should open the game up to be even more playable while not making it all that much more complex.
So maybe, substeems could be common, as tier 1, but the separate token and reward pool is only enabled when an entire community forms around a particular substeem, as tier 2.
For example, say we have a substeem called
/s/cnfor China. It gets popular enough in its own community that it'd need its own reward pool (and hence, its own token) because stakeholders outside of/s/cntend to ignore it.This should allow us to avoid forking into new blockchains.