Steem: Learn The Lesson From Reddit
As I write these words, Steem has a market cap of about $83M placing it #50 on the list of cryptocurrencies. I realize that this is not an exact science, especially since I feel that Steem is worth a lot more especially in comparison to other blockchains that are all hype with very little development.
That aside, the market is what it is so we will go with that valuation.
Yesterday, some interesting news came out about Reddit. The "front page of the Internet" is raising money. This will be the Series D round of funding and is led by Chinese giant Tencent. All told, there is going to be between $150M to $300M pumped into this company.
That puts the valuation of Reddit around $3B.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/05/raiseit/
Wouldn't we all like to see Steem have a valuation like that?
Why does Reddit have such a value? In my opinion, the answer is simple. Reddit is a RESOURCE. The content on there is something that people like. I personally go there each day to read the headlines in a couple different categories I follow. I do not post nor comment on there but I am a user of that site daily.
According to that article, I am not alone since there are an estimated 330M people a month on there.
That is some traffic. Would anyone on here like to see those numbers for Steem?
They why do we not learn from the success of others? Why are we trying to be a small fish instead of going after the really big one? We opt for the little blogging pond while overlooking the one that houses the Internet.
Did you realize that?
Look at the picture above from the article. Notice the upvotes on it. What do you think would happen on here if this same person posted that here? Obviously a couple thousand people found it helpful.
Here is another example. Tell me honestly if you think this is going to foster growth among new people..
I will state I have no idea who this person is and never crossed paths with him. I use him to illustrate the fact we are not learning from what is valuable.
Check this guy out. Scroll down to about a week ago. Look at what he was posting and where it was being done.
He seems like a young guy and is a photographer which is stated in his profile. He is into posting pics of himself and his friends. This is not uncommon for the young people today.
I did a bit of digging and this guy is a dedicated Steemian. He had a couple posts that caught my attention.
https://steemit.com/deletfacebook/@moniristi/delete-facebook-and-join-steemit
Wow. What a guy. He not only is posting for people to quit Facebook but he is also urging the digibyte community to join Steem(it).
But not so fast. There is this tidbit.
Do you see that? He "spams" Dlike with personal photos. Our wonderful Steemian is a spammer. Or is he?
Here is the problem. @dlike is an application for people to share photos. That is what is was designed for. Dlike is an application that is meant to blend Reddit and Pinterest (a company going public at an estimated $12B).
Obviously, this did not sit well with @steemcleaners since the pic is from their Discord group. But wait it gets even better.
Wow. Isn't this wonderful?
A guy posts pictures that he took on an application on this blockchain and now he is permanently on Steemcleaners blacklist which other applications could use.
Why? Because he uses the application too much? Do we not want people using the applications on here? Or is it we do, but only in moderation?
Perhaps all those people who have been questioning retention rate ought to look at this. It might have a part to do with it.
What is also interesting is this guy is now posting his pictures on Busy, forgoing Dlike because he thought that was the reason he was flagged.
So now we have this Logic of Steemcleaners having an impact on which applications are used. Is this what this blockchain stands for? For those who delegated to Steemcleaners, do you believe this valid?
That is not to say that Steemcleaners does not do some good stuff. However, when people are being harassed for posting their own stuff on the blockchain, then something is really wrong. It shows the smallness of thinking that exists.
Many will point to the fact that Reddit has communities and that is a viable point. Hopefully @shredz7 has the integration with @steempeak done soon so we will see what it looks like on this blockchain. However, that is just putting a bandaid on a much bigger hole.
People often talk about marketing on here. If you want to be one of the biggest, you do not fish in a small pond. It is really that simple.
Reddit is a resource site with some commentary on it. There is almost no blogging, more like some questions posted for discussion. It is a very simple model and worth billions.
https://www.dreamgrow.com/top-15-most-popular-social-networking-sites/
Look at the list. Those are the most active social media sites (and also the most valuable ones). Do you notice something common for most of them? They appeal to the masses. Why? They are simply ways for people easily to share stuff that interests them. Most are not going to write a 500 or 1000 word post. Instead, they will put up 5 pictures of their cat.
That is where the market is. Everyone is looking for the killer application that is going to moon blockchain. While that might come down the road, why not focus upon what is already out there? The lessons are clear. For now, this is what the masses are into.
This is a bit dated but it does show the point.
https://blogging.org/blog/state-of-the-blogging-world-2016/
Even if those numbers are off, triple them for argument sake, they do not make the top 10 while being far behind Pinterest and Reddit, two of the easiest concepts to copy.
Value comes, in part, from the numbers of users. Traffic is a vital component to mooning in this world. That traffic does not come by ignoring what 90% of the masses want.
Reddit figured this out and is being richly rewarded for it.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and resteem.
It’s very concerning if active new users are being flagged for posting their own content. The RC system imposes a cost to post that is sufficient such that “spam” should not be automatically flagged, only plagiarism.
@steamcleaners needs to reconsider their role with RCs now in place.
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Very true. If someone wants to spend his or her RC on posting original pictures, that is their right.
Very very very true.
Pretty soon we'll have a reddit type interface and I certainly hope people will post and comment a ton!
wooohoo! I like the sound of that @jarvie!
It kind of looks like you're right @alshamilton, especially given the way that @taskmaster4450 presented it.
It kind of looks like your right, especially the way that @taskmaster4450 presented it.
I agree with you 100%. Nobody has any business telling anybody what to post on Steem as long as it is not plagiarized content or illegal stuff like child pornography or anything. Steem is a public blockchain anyone can post pictures of their cat to if they want to. What Steemcleaners is doing is highly detrimental.
I've been saying for a long time that traffic is what drives value. It's not "high quality". Why does @moniristi get harrassed by @steemcleaners because he posts a lot of selfies? There are tons of people here who do exactly the same.
I think it would be more beneficial to change the @steemit interface, so that high quality content rises to the top @markkujantunen @taskmaster4450 then we wouldn't need a @steemcleaners, or at least not nearly as much 👍
@steeveapp is trying to do this, but more development on this front should be made!
The Steemit interface (Steemit is the interface) is not going to be developed. Steemit Inc that owns the interface is not going to develop the interface any further. Steemit Inc is focusing on scaling the blockchain as it should be. There are many other front ends that serve different types of needs perfectly well, including Steeve that you mentioned. I know Steemit is still the most popular front end but I think the use of the other front ends should be encouraged.
@steemcleaners was not created to weed out low quality content but to fight abuse such as plagiarism. Quality is a highly subjective matter and it should be left to the community judge whether or not a particular piece of content is low or high quality. Anyone can upvote or downvote depending on whether they think a post is getting too much or too little in the way of rewards.
Actually, in one of the recent interviews on Discord with @elipowell, she said they changed course, and will develop Steemit.com further.
Steemit Inc. Is now focused on generating revenue from their main asset Steemit.com and will update the UI soon (2019).
That's interesting! And it makes sense. Eli Powell has background in advertising. Thanks for informing me.
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You're welcome 😊
I know a very wealthy and potentially influential person in the crypto space who would re-post his own blog content on Steem, and he started getting flagged / blacklisted by @steemcleaners for plagiarism and as a result he now hates Steem and only has bad things to say about it, which I know for a fact has deterred some potential large investors.
Now that we have the Resource Credit system I think we need to take a really hard look at whether these type of "services" are doing more harm than good for the platform.
That makes me sad. Darn.
After looking into the specific incident I'm referring to more deeply (as a result of this post), the issue was not with the steemcleaners bot/service, it was with the customer service in the discord channel for disputes.
When people are dealing with actual plagiarizers/abusers on a regular basis they tend to assume everyone falls into that category and treat them like such, and also expect that everyone knows how all of this works. What should happen is that everyone, even plagiarizers/abusers, should be treated with respect and clearly explained how these things work and the reasons behind these services and the methods for "verifying" your identity with them.
Unfortunately this level of customer service is very difficult to provide.
Also, I should note that from the snippets of discord conversations in this post, it looks like a similar issue here. Instead of taking the time to explain to a new user what the problem is and how to avoid it, they just say "you spam dlike with personal photos". Even I don't understand why that is a problem, or what level of posting is considered spam.
In my opinion, Steamcleaners isn't principled or is too disorganized to make any sense. They let obvious spamming slide, abuse continually happens all across the platform, bidbot spam nonsense is a constant.
Is it a wonder that nobody gives a flying F about this place and blockchain? Any enforcement mechanism is half way done or disorganized.
Now that resource credits are in I don't think anyone posting their own content warrants any kind of downvote(for the most part)
I also support this vision of increasing usage as we grow, no matter the Dapps we use or how we use. The community shoukd be the determinant of how we view the content and raise it or not but the the freedom to use one’s stake and bandwidth should be allowed no matter how little or much we engage. Let it be up to the users to up or down vote.
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@steemit definitely needs to upgrade the UI, so that high quality content is pushed to the top. Then everyone else can post what they like, without anyone getting irked.
The snobbery is real.
I've seen people make comments like 'it takes 3 hours to write a post' because they have some sort of mindset that posts on STEEM should have journalistic standards.
Which is exactly wrong.
STEEM is a cryptocurrency with a text-in-block feature. It is not a blogging platform. Steemit.com was created as one app to encourage the use of the chain, and with that use, increase the value of the cryptocurrency.
So yes, appealing to masses of users is the key to making the whole STEEM project successful. "Spam" away with your low effort posts! Of course, just like you might get downvotes on reddit for no particular reason, you might get flags here. Such is the freedom of the marketplace.
Self-voted just because
@steemcleaners is constantly over-stepping their mandate!
Yeah I agree, the response rate on reddit is way higher. Like you can ask a question and get a couple of answers and upvotes whereas her you need a network to do so.
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That's mostly due to two things..
3 Most people on here are in it for the money and won't give the time of day to scour the new section knowing it won't get them any richer.
4 We don't have communities. The loose tag system means people might post a selfie where they're smiling. Since they're smiling, they use the funny tag. Then they vote buy their way to the top of every tag (including funny) and all of a sudden your favorite tags are polluted by voyagers.
The reason is simple, we are yet to figure out how to do monetary reward.it is easier said than done. Human emotions and social behavior comes into play here. Steemit is more or less like reddit in layout and presentation atleast, but the difference is block chain backed reward.
You have hit the nail on the head here. !tip
@steemcleaners needs to reform and lead the way for the other law bots to reform, i have been harping on about this for a while. I would personally ban all law bots and ban flagging.
That would be the best path forward for mass adoption.
It doesn't matter how good steemit makes the interface, if asshats are scaring people away.
Sorry, @tipU needs to recover voting power - will be back in 1 hour and 10 minutes. Please try then!