Wake Up Buttercup! :Why You Should Care About Niche Communities.

Currently Steemit moves along all nicely.

The fair majority of posts are written with very little agenda or bias. And a fair few niche communities have really thrived.

If we take a look at the most trending tags on steemit we see a trend. life, steemit, photography, kr, art, bitcoin, introduceyourself, , travel, blog, food, cryptocurrency, spanish, steem, news, funny, nature, story, money.;.

notice how none of these topics are truly controversial in any way?

Why is that?

Is it because controversial stories do not get lots of eyeballs (fake news) .. no.

Is it because Steemit is such a cool and diverse place that nobody needs controversy. . . probably not completely.

In our humble opinion, it is mainly due to the fact that anything controversial is more likely to be down-voted by someone then something non controversial... But the interesting part is, if it is down-voted by a whale, it often gets called out, bringing even more attention to the post then initially anticipated.

notice how even this post is written in such a way as to not cause too much of a stir... but perhaps some of a stir... As the opening paragraph could have instead said "A bias for non-controversial content is slowly eating away at niche steemit communities", but most likely would have been down-voted before anyone read the meat of the article, even though the above sentence would have caught the reader more on traditional media then the one at the top of this page...

Steem is interesting like that. A real world experiment on how we interact. Each Hardfork, bringing us ever so closer to a true decentralized community. The content is certainly written differently and whatever you have been tought about 'web content' is tossed aside for a moment.

Controversy VS Market Size

Now here is where the crux comes in...

The internet is a vast world of communities with opinions. From cattle breeding farmers that love their animals and what they have done for generations to passionate vegans that would like to the see the worlds eating habits change, body builders that want to push their bodies to the limits or coders that want to learn everything about the blockchain. They all are online. Now whether you or any other whale may or may not like it. Everyone is here to stay. And everyone has a right to communicate with other humans (and bots) without prejudice or mass swaying of opinion. Everyone has the right to grow a community at the same rate without some communities being more valuable than others.

How does this happen in a community that has strong opinions to begin with?

Now by this point, as you may be thinking, well why can't everyone just get along? One world religion and World Peace and all of that..

Well wake up buttercup. . . This is the real world, with real people and real opinions.

Yes, it is great to have a platform that you can share almost anything! But there are parts of this world where it feels good to really make a family. A community that shares the same passions completely.

This is how Rome was built. This is why we have technology and growth. Diversity, passion for different causes, national pride. This is inherit in our DNA. We are programmed to create communities with people that share our viewpoints completely and create laws governing those principles. Yes this may occasional lead to a World War, or Trump becoming the president of the United States, but it can also lead to amazing discoveries such as flight, electricity and of course Bitcoin!

The decentralized nature of Steem is fantastic but it still leaves a lot to be desired among users that are truly passionate about one subject. Take a look at sites such as Ebaumsworld, Instructuables, Tinder and Massroots. . All of these communities are narrowed down on a certain niche. . .

This makes the community stronger and more passionate, and allows the sites to dominate their niche completely. . . Becoming a household name to those that share that passion. . Users can be sure that every other user loves the topic and is providing value to that community specifically. This is powerful and can ignite a community to change the worlds opinion!

While some may say Steemit can become that. Sure, it can. It can cover every niche on the planet. But that is rather a large scope. And we are confident it does slowly evolve to take over FB, Twitter and the likes, but that will still leave niche communities looking for somewhere to really call home.

Similar to how all these niche sites listed above use Facebook and the likes, Our second home will always be Steem! Our home is SMOKE.NETWORK and we hope you will join us!

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