I love the concept of Steemit.

Since joining , I've spent many hours crafting content for peoples enjoyment. Being able to jump onto a blogging platform and start earning cash almost immediately was groundbreaking for me. Knowing people saw value in my content broke me out of a years-long, no-writing slump. I have finally found my joy again: sharing my information with you. Being heard and hearing. It's all any of us really want.

But that doesn't mean Steem is without problems.

As someone who isn't all that technically inclined, posting to Steemit is cumbersome. If you want posts to look nice, you need to have a working knowledge of html. And while there are plenty of code-snippets out there to work from, the process of posting is time-consuming. If I spend a few hours writing something, I can usually expect to spend another hour formatting the post till it meets my approval.
Until these usability issues are fixed, it's going to be hard to get the masses to adopt the platform. Many great content creators find the system to new and confusing.

Thankfully, these issues should be addressed in the coming months/years.

The recent roadmap did a lot to build my faith and trust in the platform, and I get the feeling that those behind Steem are working diligently to get the platform where it needs to be. After some research I can comfortably say there isn't another company that has me more excited for the future of content creation.

But there are a few other companies who have benefited from Steem's vision, who have seen where the platform falls short. They are trying to use that knowledge to create their own systems. However, none of them are true replacements. They all differ from Steem in one fundamental way or another. But they're defiantly worth keeping an eye on. Not just for what they could do for us, but for what Steem can learn from their innovations.

Without further ado, here's some foresight into those four sites:

1. Akasha

Like Steem, Akasha user's content is rewarded on a by-vote basis. When you post something to their platform it gets organized by the tag you give it, and users upvote if they like it.

Unlike Steem, Akasha won't be backed by its own crypto-currency to start. Instead the company has decided to use Ethereum.

"We chose to focus first on building a working decentralized application and learning from the actual use what sorts of problems we should be solving with a custom token," says the website.

Although it's still in it's infancy, you can download their alpha software and give it a shot.

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2. LBRY

LBRY is another platform with its own currency (LBC). However it differs from Steem in a major way: all LBC that is used on the platform must be purchased or mined. Like with Akasha, the only way for content creators to get some is if someone gives it to them by supporting their post.

It also looks like the company is focusing on video content. From what I can tell, any incentives they offer go towards video-creators. And most of what they've published uses video creators as example users.

Still this could make for an interesting platform, especially for indy artists who want to cut out the middleman. But it's more of a content marketplace than a blogging/aggregation site.

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3. Synereo

From what I gather on Synereo's website, it looks like their decentralized app is meant as a complement to existing social networks. What I mean is that instead of being a place where people actually create content, it's a place where people share it.

"Synereo’s first set of tools will allow content creators to monetize original works on existing networks, without having to turn their channels into advertisment[sic] real estate, while granting their followers the opportunity to become paid affiliate publishers. "

It differs from the rest of these in a more major way however. Instead of creators and curators being paid for votes, they are paid for the amount of eyeballs they can get. Synereo call this the "Attention Economy" but gives sparse data on how this will actually work.

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