Steemit Can't Grow Right Now - Here's Why
So, here we are, after a year of work, writing, reaching out. Steemit has grown...but not that much. The growth has been stunted by a mysterious force. Is it because of the curation rewards curve? Is it because of "bad whales"? Is it because of nested comment limits?
The Short Answer: No
After all, we've got awesome tech here! We've got instant and free transfer. We've got people getting paid to do things they usually do for free!!! What the heck is going on?!
Here's WHY: "Engineers were in charge of building something social without marketers telling them how mass psychology works".
Don't get me wrong. I am in awe of what engineers and programmers can do. They are as close as it gets to magicians in my book. But they are mostly left brain people who don't have the best senses of how people think and act based on deeply innate mechanisms within the human psyche.
What's missing?
PEOPLE ARE TRIBAL. Each of us are interested in different things and are looking for like minded people to have meaningful conversations about the things we care about.
Right now, (Steemit.com) can't grow because all of us are stuck in a single stream/bucket. All the crabs are trying to get to the top but only a few can do it. Needless to say, this can't scale. I don't care about gardening or latte art but some people do, they should have a place where they can enjoy each other's content. But if that's all I see in my feed...I'm out.
As that ever happened to you? Getting on steemit, started scrolling and then said to yourself: "wow, today it's boring stuff!"?
That's because a single stream with no single topic can't make everyone happy.
The Solution
Communities of interest
When I saw that "communities" were schedule for Q3...I was sad. This function is what needs to be in place for Steemit to scale.
A user shouldn't be force to join a party of 2000 people who are all interested in different things. What a user needs is to find their tribe. Each user experience should cater to HIS/HER interests. Their feed should reflect WHO THEY ARE back at them so that they are constantly interested.
(Those tribe could be under invitation only or completely open. This should be user generated of course. )
We don't need to re-invent the wheel here.
Reddit has sub-reddit & Facebook has groups & pages. Why? For all the reasons above.
Imagine if you could go to a community where the only thing you can read about is Steemit related News? Or your favorite crypto such as DASH or Bitshares? How about Gardening?
What to do with Tags?
In my opinion those tags should be used the same way pinterest uses them: for it's search engine.
Conclusion
I want to see Steemit.com putting this feature as a TOP PRIORITY. We can't grow without it. All marketing is useless if people can't identify with the things they care about. An ETA for this feature would be awesome too.
If there is demand for some change it will happen, or result is in a devastating failure
Yes that is right
I believe this was already mentioned in the past, to make trending page full of different topics not just one. A top post from different categories should be place on the trending page, giving others to shine and be notice, making the page diverse.
I'd like to see this tried out at least.
on point! ;-)
I agree one thousand percent. Nobody here really wants to see my awesome cigar reviews, and I get it..., it's not their thing.. but why aren't my cigar people here? No community ( group) yet. On Facebook, probably 50k-100k unique folks in the many cigar groups, most who buy/trade regularly and use PayPal. All on the fringe of what's allowed on FB and PP..,I see a mass exodus from both, due to recent threats/scares.
I want to see your cigar reviews. I'd appreciate that, followed!
Thank you! Sorry I somehow missed this comment. Cheers!👍
Why?
What makes you think they aren't a priority? We've been working on them for weeks already now. :)
Q3 is about 90 days from today.
One day, I hope to see constructive criticism posts that don't start from the premise of "steemit has no idea what they're doing". :D
Communities are definitely one of our main projects right now, but this "must be a TOP PRIORITY" thing is silly. Our top technical priority is a polished mobile app, without which we will be left in the dust. Communities will be a centerpiece feature of that, to be sure.
You have it already: Q3. Your stereotyping of us as clueless engineers conflated the delivery date as the starting date. ;)
So, just to give you a little background: I joined steam today and this is my first comment on a thread/post. I am a developer myself and I've been in situations like these a lot of times.
I think both @cryptoctopus and you are right in your own place.
From @cryptoctopus's perspective: He is a user and looks like he has been on Steemit since July 2016, so his advice is valuable for making the platform better. Also, think from a user feedback perspective, all the comments on this post give you a perfect requirement and user story to include in the platform. In some sense or not, it is constructive criticism with a catchy headline ( which worked as well because it caught your and other users attention ). It also validates the fact that @cryptoctopus is a good Marketing strategist. :P
From your perspective: A lot of time, only engineers know what it takes to roll out bug-free features in a short amount of time with a small team ( I am not aware of the size developer community for steemit ).
So both of you are right just in different context.
Lastly: How can developers start contributing to steemit, is it completely open-source ?
There is github page for steemit.
Yes! We maintain a bunch of different software packages. We have a product roadmap, so please coordinate with us in https://steemit.chat before spending a ton of time on PR to make sure it fits in with those plans.
https://github.com/steemit/condenser (this web app, js)
https://github.com/steemit/steem (the p2p consensus daemon, c++)
https://github.com/steemit/sbds (the blockchain data layer, python)
...and more. :)
Edit: I corrected a typo, but turned out I was the not reading correctly, so carry on.
Communities is a top feature and the only reason Reddit is valuable. The other is thresholding for exclusive communities. Steem Power should be required beyond a certain threshold for certain exclusive communities and then I think it can work great.
Under our model, the people who create a community will be responsible for assigning moderators or approved posters for that community, and can institute any sort of standards or thresholds that they wish, based on Steem Power or anything else. :)
I read this post before the mass of comments but have seen it again. I am really glad to read that the top technical priority is a polished mobile app. It's so true. I have seen in chat and in comments people nashing their teeth at the idea of a steemit in mobile app even being needed but then those people are often the first to lament the price of steem and the lack of mass adoption. A mobile app would certainly deal with the latter!
devs here care only of math and hardforks, froentend, social stuff and marketing is totally missed here.
I fully agree. The secret of marketing is segmenting products. Here we need to segment users and make it easy for them to find other people and topics of interest. No black magic needed...just copy Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Then, this place could become THE place where you find a crypto job, a soulmate, an investor, etc. But only if that´s easy and seamless!
You're right. We need these communities as soon as possible so we're not all climbing over each other to share one feed.
"Engineers were in charge of building something social without marketers telling them how mass psychology works".
Strongly agreed. But rooms, groups or tribes are not the solution. They are needed, of course, we need even more user-friendly communication managed by people who has the skill to plan it - that means sociological skill about social media.
I am a newbie and I had to reassure people myself today about what was happening after the hardfork. No one in Steemit is in charge for communication to users and PR, apparently.
This is so true. A news button or an announcement button is needed!
And no marketing is worse.
I agree with your statement about them not understanding the social aspect of social media. I think it all began with the creation of a blogging site. Very few people actually blog. Even fewer can do it well. There would have been a much better reception and probably a lot more interest if a blogging site wasn't created and they opted for something closer to Instagram instead.
I'm not sure that communities will solve much until there's a way to search and actually find the content you're looking for. This also happens to be why a 7-day payout doesn't make much sense. You really can't find much here after it's posted unless you know exactly where to look...which is basically on the user's profile page.
In short, there are still plenty of reasons why Steemit has problems attracting and retaining users. With the UI/design being what it is, it's not even visually pleasing and fun to use. If it weren't for the payouts, I doubt anyone would actually use this site. That's a huge problem. People should want to use Steemit because it's a great site for social media...and also because you have a chance to earn rewards. Some serious work needs to be put into the former.
Agreed, UI/design is godawful. Even https://voat.co/ looks better.
Touche!
I post frequently on other blogs and thought I could use some of them here, but every time I use one I get this robotic message from "cheetah" stating my posts sound familiar.... At the end of every post, I always state where it was posted before. I'm not enjoying Steemit, nor the posting, editor, and the site itself is not enjoyable to read. I've only been here a short while and still don't understand how the payout works, or if you upvote early you receive more $$?. Why make a site so complicated for a first-time user? Think I'll quit posting on this site.
Cheetah is a robot that messages the author if he finds the same content on other sites. You just need to message him that it is your content, not just something you have copied from other sites.
The site is still new, lot of work to be done but it's heading toward the right direction, a bit slowly though. But it will get better. I believe there is steemit faq that you could read on that could answer many of your questions. Here it is: https://steemit.com/faq.html