IS STEEMIT THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET OR JUST THE NEW FACEBOOK?
I HAVE QUIT FACEBOOK
When I quit using Facebook on the 1st of July 2016, I had several reasons for doing so. Luckily I just logged out rather than shutting down my FB account, because I ended up needing it to join Steemit
I had bugger all Facebook friends, and most of them were “lurkers” (they never posted anything or even “liked” anything, let alone made any comments. So meaningful interactions were few and far between.
About half of what few friends I had left on FB disagreed with much of what I really wanted to post about, so if I got into subjects like conspiracies such as false flag shootings or “climate change”, or health subjects like low carb diets or the vaccination con, its safe to say I rapidly had less FB friends.
FACEBOOK CENSORSHIP
Another big reason for wanting to avoid Facebook is that it practices full blown censorship – just like Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia, Facebook is censoring and controlling what is seen.
For example, a huge slice of Facebook’s income comes from pharmaceutical companies, so it bans dietary supplements from its shopping system. No supplements are allowed whatsoever – not even vitamin C (yes, I sell supplements and Vitamin C).
FACEBOOK IS A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME
Starting this year with my “less use of FB” resolution, I was going to limit it to one visit per day for a maximum of 15 minutes. What I actually ended up doing (including the time I spent looking at links and videos that came up on my timeline) was two visits most days, for about 20 minutes each. (280 minutes per week)
That’s more than 4 1/2 hours a week, which adds up to over 234 hours a year, or 29 eight hour days over a year. Holy crap. That is not really how I want to be using my time, and seeing it added up like that blew my mind.
STEEMIT VS. FACEBOOK - HOW DO THE NUMBERS COMPARE?
Back in June 2016 when I decided to quit using Facebook, I’d never heard of Sreemit. Now it seems like every man and his dog has been on Steemit for almost a week. It’s growing so fast it defies belief, but it’s till tiny compared to Facebook.
Although Facebook looks like a creative wasteland, while Steemit looks like the new renascence, Facebook has over 1.7 billion users, while Steemit has less than 100 000, so at this point Steemit would still need to get 1700 times more members to be as big as FB.
The sheer volume of users mean than even if only 1% of Facebook users ever really posted anything new on it, that is still theoretically 17 times the activity on Steemit.
THE CONTENT ON FACEBOOK IS UTTER CRAP
That giant pool of Facebook users don’t post much worth seeing, so to me FB was like a giant sponge that soaked up every creative urge in my mind and replaced it with a giant sea of shallow distracting crap.
The biggest reason I quit FB was that I wanted to see new ideas and be inspired by intelligent discussion. That wasn’t exactly coming thick and fast on FB
STEEMIT HAS SO FAR BEEN AN INSPIRATION
Steemit has already amazed me with the quality of the content. I’ve only been aware of Steemit for 48 hours, but I’m already inspired by what I’ve seen here, and I’ve learned more in two days surfing Steemit than I did in the past two years feeding my FB addiction.
A BIT ABOUT MYSELF
OK this is shameless self promotion, but I’m also adding this bit to verify I’m just as real as anyone really is online. My name is Ian Gregson, (AKA SIFT666), I live in Wellington New Zealand, and like to take photos.
I also have a bunch of websites that can all be accessed through this portal:
http://www.frot.co.nz
In 2011 I posted a page about using Facebook, and it’s been consistently popular since. I’ve reused several lines from that page here, so I hope the cute cheetahbot cuts me some slack!
http://www.frot.co.nz/design/computing/facebook/
Thanks for reading, and thanks for all the inspiration.
Nice post. I agree, the quality of content on Steemit is incredible. Silly little memes go viral on Facebook, but they don't really count for much here. The other angle is that, Steemit solves the "clickbait problem", where content producers just create a title and image which is enough to get you to click, make their money from ads, and then who really cares if there is any substance to the post. Here, people have to make content which is truly engaging, so Steemit has killed quite a few birds with one stone.
Welcome to Steemit and have a great day!
Is it the quality of intellectualism and prose, or predominantly the quality that the content matches your interests?
Engaging as in much discussion and spawning communities of like interests? Or appealing to the site-wide most prevalent desires the voter has to upvote if the post games some emotional need the voters have, such as the desire to get others to promote certain causes, the male desire to see girls show their boobs, the "Steem will change the world" meme, etc..
@govspiders:
I'm skeptical for the reasons above.
Both. The assumption in your question seems to be that there is some kind of problem with finding a niche, or having a site that's more popular with certain types of people. There isn't. Actually, that's a good thing, because it helps something become popular faster, and more of those types of people will want to join.
Nevertheless, the range of content on Steemit is also quite wide. People write here talking about art, philosophy, psychology, anarchy, personal secrets, economics. If you really think it's so limited, perhaps you'd like me to link you to a few things which demonstrate the diversity.
Churdtzu your blog posts are an example of that diversity, and your consistent payouts probably reflect that - one of the next things I plan to do is read more of your posts and see what I can learn because you are clearly doing a bunch of stuff right on Steemit!
Thanks @sift666, much appreciated.
It would be a problem if that "Western tinfoil hat, hippie/druggie, nerd backslapping while extracting $ from the collective TO DA MOON" niche is too small to scale the merchant ecosystem that they are relying on to create enough demand for Steem tokens so that we can afford to pay bloggers without imploding the value of the tokens.
I am not interested to read about someone peering at their navel, which is how I characterize most of the content on Steem.
I am reading a lot of it everyday, it is nearly all amateurish crap that I wouldn't read if I wasn't investigating Steem. The great bloggers stand far above, and I read them only when I need to, because they have something important to say. I don't have time to whirl away browsing amateurish blogs daily for entertainment.
I agree with the premise of content quality finding its worth in votes, but I'm concerned with what happens when demand leaves and there is an inability to cash out to all users regardless of an mechanism to lock up their currency.
Yes. When would demand leave though? You mean like, if someone creates something even better than Steemit?
There can't really be an inability to cash out to all users, because the Steem is right there in your wallet. The more likely scenario in that situation would be that the dollar/BTC value of Steem would approach zero.
Because not everyone shares the same interests and they may not find their engaging connections here?
Because the rewards for most users will be less than $5 per month, i.e. meaningless?
Medium reports only 20,000 of its 25 million readers blog weekly. Blogging is not something everyone can do well. So what do the rest of the users do that is engaging?
Which would disincentivize cashing out at some level above zero, because of the cost of cashing out isn't 0.
Not everyone in the world likes Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or McDonalds. Not everyone has to like something for it to be successful.
I'm not sure where you're from in the world, but $5 is a lot of money to a lot of people around the world. And besides, when a platform is consistently allows the publication of high quality content on the Internet, that's valuable regardless of if you're getting paid to read it.
I think you've answered your own question here. Why is Medium so popular, if only such a small percentage like to write on it?
Yes, agreed.
Have a good one
"So what do the rest of the users do that is engaging?"
It's true and is a valid point. On most media platforms, there is a ratio of 90:10 for consumption and creation respectively. But it is also true that Steemit has forced this creativity up, even if it's partially forced and the only way to excel on this platform. I am very against for-profit platforms because they WILL dry out and it this case they may dry out while you still hold tokens.
Another point I make often is that nobody's personal biased truly matter. ALL of these decentralized, liberated platforms of media and technologies MUST come together through time to facilitate something that serves humanity, not our pockets.
Wicked post, thanks and welcome aboard! All for one and one for all! Namaste
STEEMIT IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN FACEBOOK. :)
I use Facebook only for a chat.
I agree with what you are saying. Steemit will have to be careful lest some push towards making Seamit more like Facebook. We do not need another Facebook.
dubloon135
Great post. I hardly ever use facebook now unless someone DMs me. Also why would anyone want to post there anymore anyway? Even if you only get 1 cent for a post here it is more than you will ever get from Facebook and Steemit isn't stealing all your information either.
Thanks😃
The sobering truth is Steem may only have about 10,000 active users and we don't know how many of those are bots.
Which can be a good and bad thing. Depending on hype, which is coming, whether I agree that it's warranted or not, Steem will be creating an economy based on tokens, that is monitored by bots and large whales.
Greetings!
I love steemit 💙
Thanks for posting a real comment - I think all the others here so far are spam!
Why did Cinderella get kicked off the softball team? -Because she ran away from the ball!
If you lead the people with correctness, who will dare not be correct?