RE: The gloves are off… EOS and Steem are in competition and it’s great news for us
It's a valid point there will be much more competition to Steem in the future, and if Steem doesn't change for the better to somehow give more credit to valid high-quality content, it won't survive a competitive attack. What do you think would be the most effective change to make to get Steem to a better place, in terms of having higher quality content? The severe amount of gaming, occuring, has an adverse effect on content and new PASSIVE (people who want to consume good content, not attempt to make money) users wanting to participate.
For example, we've noticed outsiders have VERY little incentive to sign up for Steem, unless they want to make a comment. But to make a comment, one has to do the cumbersome sign-up process, which is always a hurdle and prevents us from engaging in PLENTY of websites.
When you want to Flag them but see their Steem power lol
You should compare EOS and steem, not EOS and steemit.
Right! I was looking for something like that! EOS is the underlying network and there would still have to be a social media platform to come later. It is the network effect and steemit does have an advantage there. But I say diversify! Nothing wrong adding 1 or 2 other channels! :-)
the signup process is a complete joke. Don't worry, I'm abt to launch a Steem project called @SteemSmarter which will help out with the retention rate for new users.
Really like to see what you produce. Hope the casual reader can make comments and possibly become a more serious 100% sign-up at a later time. We always favor content sites where we can make Anonymous comments without a cumbersome sign-up process. But we also dig the ranking-system of making comments come in higher as people value them. This has been sorely missing in many many content sites, thus one has to "mine" laboriously for good content in the comments section. We say this bc we LOVE comment sections, and mostly find them to be more useful than articles. But on Steem, it's filled with lackeys and sychophants, and thus even with the ranking system it sorta fails.
Also, we shamelessly use self-voting, simply to get higher in comments sometimes, or get noticed, but kinda hate ourselves for doing it, and wouldn't mind it going away.
thanks for the feedback @olinmcgill and @harpooninvestor. We'll be rolling out @SteemSmarter very soon. A few days for a soft launch then an official announcement in Introduceme. I hope ppl find it helpful and if they don't, at least give us some feedback. We have a lot of plans for out we can generate various reports to help ppl make more sense of Steem. The difference b/t us and the current reports is that we're going to make the easy to understand and beautiful to read. Our creative director @crypthoe will make sure of this.
looking fwd to it, certainly send us a message w a heads up on its release, if possible. already following you from before, but that doesn't mean we'll catch it in our growing feed.
will do. Gonna make a big announcement early next week.
I volunteer to be a beta tester for @SteemSmarter. My observation as a regulatory mechanic is that the initial investment required to master Steemit's complexity doesn't produce a corresponding initial reward. Your idea below about using communities of interest to help new users find content equivalents for their old platforms is a way to increase initial rewards until familiarity opens the doors to other types of payoffs.
thank you @olinmcgill. Next week we will launch!
@harpooninvestor I share this thought with a friend. Although i started last month but registered in December i have been a cryto enthusiast and investor and i have observed steemit's growth from afar. The question is can steemit really survive a competitive attack from a platform whose style is blunt on having top-notch contents? I sometimes get discouraged when i see people post mere useless banners saying thrash on this platform and cart home 100SBD plus and yet great contents managing to churn out 2SBD.
The way it is built it seems that steemit isnt a place you can go to if you just want to consume good content and have no drive to make some dollars. You'll look strange and out of place and by the way wait for almost a week to sign up.
This reminds me of fiverr. Many clones came up immediately fiverr proved a success as one of the leading microjob site in the world. Gigbux, Gigbucks, Zerk, etc also came up but faded out in few months. Why? Fiverr worked on the lapses they see that other thought they could capitalize on.
I wish steemit can be as proactive as possible.
I rest my case for now. Great post @nanzo-scoop
We've heard about fiverr, but is it a crypto site? Might actually prove our point that de-centralized algo-run entities like crypto-ICOs and crypto-companies might have a disadvantage bc they are hard to change (see bitcoin, Lightning Network, Segwit, etc...).
If Fiverr is traditionally run, it's able to adapt more quickly to competitive threats. Dan Larimer himself may have left bc he realized how hard it was going to be to get change done once he saw how his latest experiment (steemit) had flaws he wanted to correct. why else start a whole new platform?
We put our ALL into posts, specifically our content, and would be THRILLED with 2 SBD. So we're not even getting that far. Yet no less than YESTERDAY we saw a steemer named something-geek (can't remember full name, just that geek was in his profile name) who posted a picture of himself on the toilet which made zero sense, but bc he's an old-timer (so mid 2016) on the platform he had a bunch of sychophants upvote him, and he made like $40 USD in about 30 minutes. Think that would fly on regular social media? He'd be crucified and unfollowed by literally everyone on the platform. So we stand by our "danger Will Robinson" stance, Steemit will need to improve a few things to survive a competitive attack by a newer platform who solves some of Steem's problems. Just look at what SNAPchat is doing to Facebook with young users. Zberg grabbed so much money from advertisers, sometimes spamming his own users to gain DAUs, he actually forgot to keep users' best interests in mind and is now losing them.
We're not saying Steemit can't do it, we're simply saying a replacement comes along more often than you think. AltaVista beat the others at search, then came Yahoo, then came Google, and now Twitter and SIRI and Snap and maybe even DuckDuckGo are offering tough competition lately. (check out the difference in the number of ads atop the google search results vs DuckDuckGo-- it's absurd! Google is torching their good brand name right as alternatives are popping up).
Wherever money can be made, there will be an element of gaming the system for personal gain. I think this is somewhat unavoidable.
There are things that can be improved . As you mention the signup. I'd also like to see the 'Communities' feature implemented as a means to enable people to easily navigate to content they like, rather than the current scatter-gun approach to delivering content to users.
Also more focus on other features of Steem beyond the 'making money' element. For example, censorship resistance and it's qualities as a medium of exchange (no fees, three second confirmation).
We understand a little bit of gaming, we followed Google since inception. But keep in mind google engineers were ALWAYS re-writing the algos to eliminate the gaming, thus having better pure search results. Crypto due to it's dispersed leadership has problems doing that. Currencies can be changed very little, but ICOs based on actual businesses (like social networking) require constant adjusting, and thus crypto companies actually have a disadvantage vs companies led by visionary single leaders/ceo/founders.
We'd settle for just some better search, the search is awful on Steemit. We have trouble even finding sports, or worse trying to just find ONE sport only. We don't like English Premiere League, for instance, but you can't get sports in a Steemit feed without it.
Good point about the incentive. It's true that it can be optimized a bit to make it a bit more clear what will be the benefits of being a member. With some better marketing. The sign up process of getting an account and be approved clearly needs to be faster in the future. But sign in to other websites I haven't found to be an issue since you can save your details. And it doesn't take that long to even input your information.
Right now on Steemit clearly to be rewarded it's best to focus on the comment section and produce high-quality content there. Isn't that 75% of the value of a blog post page anyway. Most want to hear other peoples opinions. The comment section is underrated.
Perhaps some recommendation engine on the side would be a good idea. Of articles created in the last 7 days. Like YouTube does with videos. That would surely increase the engagement. How passive new users will be can be interesting to see. Since they are used to that on the other platforms. Will they keep that behaviour on Steemit or will more switch into an engaged mode and produce value?
Isn't the biggest value on this site still that you can build more trustful connections with other people by using trust and reputation as a system? Since that can truly create lifetime connections! To create a competitor site to Steemit you would need more geeks right? Since there is lots of technical things that needs to be done right. Think that is why the market in competition has been so slow to react. It's just too complicated still!
I love your idea of a recommendation engine for Steemit. I hope that is apopted!
Does Robot Have Self-consciousness
This is SO SO SO true - "noticed outsiders have VERY little incentive to sign up for Steem, unless they want to make a comment. But to make a comment, one has to do the cumbersome sign-up process, which is always a hurdle and prevents us from engaging in PLENTY of websites."
You really made good point here and i concur with you. Steemit needs to wake up to a few happenings here. Some people are gstting discouraged somehow especially good content writers that has no whale friends that could help them earn. On part of steem activities on cryptocurrency market via value, i think Ned has to put work into practice towards the functionality of smt's cos time is speedily coming when it going to hit real good competition. @nanzo-scoop you are not sentimental at all and i love it when people bring up opinions very blunt and as plain as it should be. Thanks for this hint
I think technologies and projects that developed decentralized identity solutions will help this scenario. Identity is portable and in a decentralized model it can be validated and asserted easier than what we do today perhaps.