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RE: Steemit Update
I've been waiting for ads for more than 2 years now. I remember you @ned hinting the possibility of ads back then which got me excited. But hopefully this could be a reality now.
I've been waiting for ads for more than 2 years now. I remember you @ned hinting the possibility of ads back then which got me excited. But hopefully this could be a reality now.
When did he hint at ads? Last I spoke with him on the topic (spring 2017), he had zero interest in it.
Pretty sure it was around the end of 2016 when he spoke at a conference and talked about the possibility of including ads on Steemit and possibly setting up a non-profit for this. I think this was before the ‘Promote’ function on Steemit, so probably Q3 2016. I remember several people writing about it too.
I remember him hinting at adding adds back in 2016. He suggested having it be optional for each user and keeping it small at the bottom of your post, like a footer link. He even mentioned sharing the revenue with the user.
You sure that wasn’t me?
https://steemit.com/steemit/@ats-david/advertising-revenue-and-distributions-on-the-steem-blockchain
At that time, in private chat discussions, Ned made it very clear that he had no intentions of working on anything to do with advertising at either the blockchain or interface level. And he certainly was not in favor of sharing any ad revenue with users.
I'm pretty sure I heard him talking about it during a podcast or video somewhere. I'll see if I can find it and shoot you a link.
Here's one video where he's talking about adding advertising that I have cued for you where he touches on it. There's also another video interview somewhere where he goes into it in more detail.
Keep in mind though, that he never said he or Steemit Inc. was going to work on this specifically, but only alludes to the possibility of it being a revenue generating business model for some unspecified application. At least that's how I understood it.
Regardless of what he said publicly, in his private conversations with me, he explicitly stated that relying on speculation was the much better bet rather than attempting to create revenue streams via his interface or attempting anything at the blockchain protocol level.
Three main points taken away from that conversation were:
Steem was in a unique position to truly innovate in both the blockchain and social media space. Our “leadership” - the people who assumed control of blockchain development and its messaging - not only failed to acknowledge their assumption of leadership, but also failed to produce anything attractive for users and investors while assuming that role.
Advertising was always an obvious option for any social media business (which is what Steemit was supposed to be) that wanted to be healthy. Other blockchains have developed these capabilities at the protocol level. But it was mercilessly shot down for a variety of piss-poor reasons and other nonsensical ideas were focused on instead...most of which will never be delivered.
Meanwhile, Ned is claiming that speculative profits have failed for his company (I told him that it was not a good strategy) and now he is claiming that advertising is on the table. It may be a little too late for his failed company, but there may still be hope for the blockchain if anyone is willing to actually work on these kind of worthwhile concepts, as opposed to SMTs, which will either never be delivered or will just end up creating a bigger infrastructural and legal mess.
I can share the conversation with you, if you’d like to read it yourself.
I do remember and have read many of the debates you had and posts you have made about your thoughts on SMT's and remained silent on the subject mainly because I don't have enough knowlege about them to voice an opinion.
Plus, I recall your points about monetizing with ads which I thought were good points. In any case, just wanted to send you this link as promised. I'm not doing it to piss you off or spark a debate.
I think if you were to ask any of the social people that are on steemit here for the social atmosphere, you would find that they left youtube, facebook, reddit because of intrusive advertisement. Advertisements are already on steemit. What do you think all those steemhunt, dlike, actifit, dlike post are all about? It is people advertising products to people. I myself do not upvote or even look at any of those tags. I do not like advertising that much. I have no problem with people wanting to become non-paid sales men for products but at least I can easily ignore 90+% of them all on steemit. Ads would drive people like myself away.
Think adds for visitors only that reward authors would be very a mega boost to the platform. It could attract top content providers to the platform while allowing us to spent our adds budget right here on this platform.
Today, if you link your blog post on Twitter or FB and it ends up getting massive amounts of visits from non-users, chances are you make $0.10 or less on a massively successfully post. Not the way to attract top content providers. Now consider the, what?, $0.30 or so per click you pay for an add campaign on Amazon. Wouldn't it be cool if you could run that campaign on Steemit for a fraction of that? You could make the platform add free for authenticated users, make adds opt in for authors, draw in establihed top content providers with add revenues and allow people to spent their advertising budget with the blockchain as one and only middle man. I think adds, if done right and front end independent, could be a massive win for everyone.
For making money that is fine. For people that want to see ads that is fine. For people like myself, who quit TV because of ads, who rarely looks at you tube videos because of ads, who will click news stories off I am interested in because they want to put a cookie tracker on me, or have excessive ads, not fine. There is no opt out for advertisements. People on steemit are advertising for free all the time as I mentioned above, they get a payout from the people they work for, I do not vote on nor even open any page that has the first tag as one mentioned above.
Advertising banners and plugins get added I will do like I have in the past, find something else. I know people want to monetize all their content, I even vote on their content to help the monetization of their content.
I have yet to go out in a serious search for how to convert my steem into spendable monies. I have found a way to semi sort of buy steem, and that is to buy stemm monster cards. But I am enjoying the game. If I had to wade through a bunch of advertisements to play, I would just go back to other games I like that are add free.
Advertising money is not the end all be all of everything internet wise. If the internet needs advertisers to subsidise the internet then the internet is in big trouble and will die of natural causes, or it will be bailed out by well meaning idiots, like the american automobile industry. The american banking industry, and the american this and that industry that has been bailed out by the American tax payers ever since FDR.
If advertising is the only solution to steemit's problems then steemit will have a problem, as they currently do, retaining users. If Steemit still dreams of being something new in the world of social media then they must not repeat the problems of the current social media.
For myself, like I said, if they bring advertisements on board then odds are very likely I will leave and go elsewhere.
I think the value of the platform, first and foremost is determined by its content, and as such a huge problem standing in the way of growth for steemit lies in the fact that there is negative incitement for established top content providers to switch to the platform.
The reality is: established content providers make money from advertising and their established followers that they will lose the moment they move to steemit. Basically they start from scratch on the platform, hoping they can build a new following to make up for the old one no longer generating profits. The old following is used to adds, the potential new following, as you so rightfully point out is unlikely to even tolerate them. But I think this doesn't need to be a problem. What I think would be the solution to make these two wolds connect is actually pretty straight forward.
By doing it this way, none of the regular steemit users should even notice there are adds. Someone however who is an established content provider on an other platform however will draw visitors who aren't steemit users (yet), visitors that, coming in from FB/Twitter/etc links will get presented with advertising that would provide the content provider with hopefully a competitive revenue stream.
Note, I'm not in any way suggesting any of the revenues from advertising should go to Steemit Inc. I am suggesting the feature of allowing established top content providers to migrate without loss of advertising revenues will end up improving the monetary value of STEEM, what in turn will fix things for Steemit Inc.
Without Steemit INC or any other third party getting in between the person running the add campaign and the established top content providers, in theory steemit should have a competitive edge from the perspective of both the content provider and the person buying click throughs.
Hope I'm makeing sense here.
Good riddance! Apart from ads or paid promotion the only solution is pay-to-play. Reality is setting in and speculative money is dwindling. It's time for Steem to start earning!
There are billions of social media users out there who don't mind ads at all. Have you ever read the Steem white paper? The value proposition of Steem is to get as many of those people to come on board or to consume the content as possible.
If the Steem community rejects paid promotion, then the platform is certain to die.
Sorry to disappoint you but it was stated in the Steem whitepaper that the value proposition of Steem was the attention of the crowds. The way to monetize that is through ads and paid promotion.
Did you seriously think a game of Greater Fool was going to pay the bills forever?
Like I said I have no problem if people, steem, or steemit, want to monetize, as I said if the only way forward for the internet is through advertisements and subsidies, at some point people are not going to continue to subsidize it. Then the internet will get to be back where it started out as a tool for researchers in Military Industrial Complex. How many industries must be subsidized before it all becomes owned by the state. We have seen how well that has worked out in other countries.
When flashing ads start to appear on steemit in every available pixel of white space, then I will be leaving steemit, as I have left a lot of other media that relies on advertisements.
If that was the original intent, then waiting two and a half years to explore and find a ways and means of that paid advertisement has been a complete and utter failure and with that then steemit will go the way of Compuserve, AOL, genie, netscape, and a lot of other early internet companies and die an ignoble death due to the inability of its leaders to look ahead and see where they and their company are headed.
I, and the other users of steemit are not the ones that caused the failure. Attracting Advertising, and advertisers is not the answer to everything that is wrong with steemit.
It keeps getting pointed out the immutability of the blockchain, and the security of it. There are a lot of of tax preparers in the United States, that have records they must maintain for 7 years or more. Same with accounting companies, and tax laws have been changed to where digital copies are valid for use.
The failure of steem.io company is it's inability to reach out to the people that would benefit from their technology. They seem to be to focused in one direction, and not paying attention to what is going on in and around their blockchain.
Look at what Steem Monsters has done. Look at the shear amount of information they must save and process for their silly little game to work. 90% of what they have done can be so easily translated into other fields and industries, yet where is the Vision?
Yes I cave to all the masses drinking kool-aid, the answer to everything on the internet is ADVERTISEMENTS
What you're describing is pay-to-play. And that's a perfectly fine way to bring in revenue. That can exist alongside with advertising revenue as a source of income.
You have stated your personal distaste for ads but the vast majority of Internet users do not share it. Social media is still a growing business and it's funded to an overwhelming degree by advertisers. All the Internet giants, including Google, get the vast majority of their revenue from ads. Gargantuan value is supported by ad revenue. It is nothing to scoff at. (And, no, it doesn't have to be 1990's style blinking banner ads on a white background. And there is much more to paid promotion than banner ads.)
All options need to be on the table and tried. We should also consider a referral program. It's time.
Take your blog and go home then. Those of us who intend to stay and build an ecosystem will have to be economically sustainable. Bloggers have been feeling the pain for months and it's time to actually solve the monetiztion problem. Ads need to exist also because currently people are paying bots to upvote when they could just buy promotion the right way.
And ads aren't bad if done right. Make it op-in, and do things right.
That would solve so so many problems would it not if everyone just went home!
If you read back a few comments in this trail you will see that I am NOT your kind of blogger. I did not come to steemit to monetize myself. If you did look back you will see that I am a user of steemit.
After one and almost a half years I have still not bothered to look into how to buy, sell trade steem and make it into "REAL" money. It was only through playing steemmonsters that I was able to buy some steem. But the truth is I was not buying steem, I was buying digital cards to play a game.
So ads are going to do away with the vote bots, as a user I do not see that happening.
All options, as long as those options and opinions of the non-blog user, (such as myself), are not on the table. There are several types of people on steemit. There are those that are strictly investors, they do not blog, they may on occasion make a Post. There are the people that are using the blockchain as a means to develop programs and software, they are not bloggers, they may on occasion make a post about what they are doing and developing. There are the business owners, those that run bots for profit, steem style banks for profit, and games for profit. They do advertise to their customers via Post. Then there are the people like me, the social poster, the reader of your Blog content. The people YOU just said to Take your blog and go home then. I am not a blogger as I have, I thought, made it clear in my comments. I am the type of person that YOU as a blogger are trying to get to follow you and give you money, and you want me to "GO HOME"
So all options as long as they do not involve the targeted audience. I hope you understand now that I am not a Blogger, that I am a user. The price of steem has one effect for me right now, it governs how much content I can give a valuable vote to. One day I may learn and jump through all the hoops and loops to convert steem into fiat money so that I can go buy things from the local store down the street. Until that happens I will continue to be a poster, reader and voter of content that I find to be of value to me, and hopefully the value will return to steem so that my vote can give be of value to people.
There are very few people that are concerned about the value of their vote toward other people. I am. So the price of steem does effect me.
You are a part of the ecosystem but Steem Monsters is very new and also very niche. It's contributing to the growth of Steem so I support it but I do not know enough to know how it works.
As a blogger the demand for upvote bots is due to the fact that we cannot promote our content in any more legitimate means. So if we want our content on the trending page then we have to pay the bots. It's a broken system because the bots are essentially a cartel. I would rather just pay the Steem blockchain itself.
All options should be on the table and all opinions of participants in the ecosystem should be considered. I'm in favor of ads but I am also in favor of it being opt in. I'm in favor of ads specifically here for Steemit because Steemit is based around blogging while Steem Monsters is something else.
I guess we will have to see what will happen. Perhaps one of the other front ends will monetize and run ads in their system, such as busy.org. They can auto add "Posted by Busy.org" to the tail of all the post from their site (as many other front ends do also), so it should not be hard for them to add advertisement banners to the top or bottom of a poster's post.
It does not all need to be on the top of steemit's front end. An ad placed in this manner would still be visible on all front ends. Look at the footers of some of the posters, some of them have a lot of "banner's" at the foot of their post advertising this or that service or page or program.
posted with partico
posted with esteem
posted with Busy
Posted with steeve
These are all micro ads.
I would be very sad to see adverts on Steem. The trending page is already one big advert. But I can just avoid that. I don't think I could deal with it disturbing my enjoyment of post. The lack of ads was one of the first things that intrigued me about seem.
Posted using Partiko Android
We will just have to wait and see what happens. One of the nice things in this flow of comments was reading that @ned is not in favor of ads.