RE: Let's Bring Promoted Posts Back - A Great Way To Reduce the SBD Debt!
Asking people to simply throw away their own Steem Dollars on a poorly implemented feature doesn't seem like a very good idea.
That is not what I am saying in this post. I specifically said in the post that I am not requesting that. The only thing I said was to spend time looking at the promoted posts. The request is free to do, and you are welcome to ignore it :)
A better idea would be to expedite some of the requested and needed features and improvements to existing features on the site, and to find better ways to increase transactions with Steem - which will provide some added incentive to buy it. Steemit needs more development and Steem needs to be accepted as payment for more goods and services.
I'm trying to work on all of this as well. Asking people to view promoted posts is not going to prevent anything in this category from happening. (We can do both :) )
Users should not throw away their SD because these things aren't happening quickly enough.
Again, I am not asking users to promote posts. I am just asking users to view them. If users start viewing them and promoted posts start making the promoters more money, then it will encourage more promoting. The encouragement would only come from the fact it is working though. If nobody is benefiting from it, then the demand will not increase.
The problem right now isn't that there are too many Steem Dollars.
This is not the only problem, but it is a big problem. The witness and people in the price channel that I talk to agree with this.
Well, that's not good news. As witnesses, they shouldn't be confusing cause and effect. The problem is not that there are too many Steem Dollars. The problem is that the Steem Dollars - since pegged to the Dollar - are worth too much relative to the price of the rapidly falling Steem currency. The problem is that Steem is becoming too cheap because demand cannot keep up with supply. There is no interest to buy Steem and to power up and hold Steem Power - as evidenced by the power downs, sell-offs, low volume, and lack of buyers.
Theoretically, if the price were to fall far enough, only ten Steem Dollars could be "too many." Would burning those ten Steem Dollars resurrect Steem with a market cap of $50? Burning that 10 SD by sending it to the @null account will essentially do nothing at all - because the problem wouldn't be that there are too many Steem Dollars. The problem would be that Steem is worthless and nobody wants it.
There needs to be more demand for Steem, not new ways to piss away one's Steem Dollars. There needs to be a real market for using the currency - real demand for buying into Steemit, holding Steem Power, and using the Steem transaction services and network. If burning a bunch of Steem Dollars can stop the bleeding and control the debt ratio, then burning large amounts of Steem Dollars from @steemit, @steemit1, and @steemit2 should happen. However, I don't think that's the problem, as I already stated. The huge lack of demand for Steem is the issue here, among other things.
In any case, reading promoted posts won't accomplish much.
Users don't care to view them or they can already view them in the regular feeds. The "promoted" tab seems to be counterproductive, or at least a redundancy, in its current form. It has been largely proven to be ineffective and was too expensive to use for the average person who actually needed the promotion. It was mostly occupied by those who had plenty of SD to spend on promoting because they were already accomplished users. As @pfunk stated in his comment, the feature was flawed from the start and has not been improved. Right now, it's hardly used at all. Last I checked, there were ten posts in the tab and people were still burning 10 and 20 SD to use it. They probably would have been better off powering up and curating with the extra Steem Power, or just cashing it out - as it's likely that their posts would have received those payouts anyway.
It needs work. This entire site does. We need more development. Things should fall into place after that. If they don't and the site fails, then we'll know that this experiment was either a not so good idea, or it was just poorly executed/managed/marketed.
It was an amazing idea ahead of its time that was poorly executed. It always will be an amazing idea, regardless. Just look at the early adoption and excitement. It's the early majority that have taken a second look and said "Wha?"
I think we are mostly in agreement on a lot of things. I see a few things differently, but I don't think there is much need to go back and forth on them. Regarding most of the key items (falling STEEM price is a huge factor, we need more features added to the website, there needs to be a long-term solution to increase demand) - we do agree.
This is absolutely true. It is a problem that needs to be kept from getting out of control, and you can't rely on the price being high at all times to solve it. The reality is that crypto markets are highly vulnerable to price drops including extreme price drops and what needs to happen is: a) not creating too many SBD just because the price is high at the moment (which was done last summer), and b) reducing the supply aggressively or at least slowing the rate of increase as the price starts to fall (which was not done last summer).
I agree with you the promoted tab leaves a lot to be desired. That said, I still visit it to find good posts and I suspect I'm not alone. I find posts that someone is willing to spend money to "promote" as being of generally higher than average quality. Not 100%, but it is a decent indicator.