To win in the attention economy, Steemit must make an important change

Image: Creative Commons, Flickr, Tim Patterson

Over the last three weeks, the Steemit community has tried some fun experiments with content. These have included launching or boosting some new tags: # til (Today I Learned) , # news, and # funny. In the last few days, # newslink has joined the party. The main goal of these experiments is not to dilute the quality of content on Steemit.

The goal is to prove that shorter content, and even pure links, can succeed here

And these tags have succeeded, at least for a period of time. The Reddit-style # til became the # 1 tag on Steemit for a brief time and has spent much of the last few weeks in the Top 5 space. Launched on the same day, # funny has taken longer to gain a foothold, but is in the Top 5 at the time of this writing. # newslink also has been climbing into a high position.

Long articles have not been enough to get Steemit off the ground. Long-length content gives us a site like Medium, which is a good quality platform, but it limits us to attracting only the people who like to read or write long content. If we want Steemit to grow, we must recognize that 90% of our target population doesn’t have the time/patience to read or write long articles.

That means we need a place for shorter length content, not to replace the high quality material, but to supplement it. We must accept shorter length posts, perhaps 1-3 paragraphs in length. And we also should accept links.

The Reddit site has tens of millions of users. And it’s basically just a site where people go to paste links with short titles. Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and other social media sites reward people for linking content that “goes viral”. Except that those sites don’t pay people like Steemit does.

What if we could do what they do AND pay people for it?

But there’s a problem. And it’s making the diversification of content very difficult.

Why # til is Falling Quickly

After peaking at the # 1 position, the # til tag is falling. Soon, it will drop out of the Top 10 tags. Why is this happening? Is it because people have become bored with TIL already?

I don’t think so. Reddit’s TIL sub has been very popular for years now.

The short answer is that the content in Steemit’s # til has turned to shit. And the content is # news is even worse. There are still some very good posts in each tag, but the quality and format have become extremely variable.

How did this happen so quickly? I see two main reasons.

(1) Authors multi-tag their posts. What begins as a pure link within # newslink does not stay there, because people submitting posts are tempted (encouraged?) to add additional tags when they submit, up to five per post.

So a submission in the # newslink category also might have a # news tag along with something more specific like # food or # sports. When one post gets rewarded, others follow, and suddenly a tag like # sports may end up with a bunch of sports-related links, though these would have fit more squarely in # newslink only.

(2) Steemit has no real rules. Yes, @cheetah is out there spotting plagiarism and Steemcleaners has done a great job keeping the site tidy (thanks @anyx !). But short of plagiarism or spam, anything goes. We only have two tools for curating posts: we upvote/reward them or we flag them (in rare cases of spam or abuse).

Generally, Steemit’s curators are not heavy-handed. Flagging a post has very negative consequences for the author’s reputation. So curators are not flagging posts that fail to conform to format guidelines. Because a # sports post may be upvoted/rewarded by sports enthusiasts, it also will rise in another tag that is used, such as # til .

And so the only two methods of curation which we have available (the upvote and the flag) are both impossible to use effectively in maintaining tag “integrity”. All we can do is let the community and the market do what they will with the tags. It’s fascinating to watch this evolve, but often the tags end in a mish-mash of content and formats.

Also, there is no place to “sticky” any rules within a tag, as Reddit does within its /r/ subs. I like the fact that we don’t have rules. But how can we expect new users to understand ‘unwritten’ rules? We can’t expect that, so we do not flag them when their posts do not conform to ideals.

As a result, a tag like # til cannot maintain its integrity for very long. Three weeks ago, we began testing that tag with the simple model format of a 1-2 paragraph post + a link. Instead, people submitting posts in other tags (such as # sports, to take an example) began to notice that # til is a top-rewarded tag. And because a sports author believes his/her post is an informative one, that author may multi-tags it with # sports and # til (most people are using more than two tags). So pretty soon, the original # til format is lost. It just becomes another random tag that people add to every post for a while.

Unless it’s something clearly different like # photography, there’s nothing distinguishing about the posts that use a tag anymore.

So Steemit Becomes a Stew, Too

What we need on Steemit is a diversity of content where people can quickly locate and interact with their favored content area. Topical tags are not enough. They are not getting this job done.

We need long posts, short ones, pure links, FAQs, Wikipedia-type articles, videos, music, and much more. If I go to a buffet, I want different foods on different platters, clearly recognizable. Yes, people are being paid to curate Steemit, but there’s a difference between cleaning up a desk top and a garbage dump. Most don’t have the time or patience to pick through a stew to find their favorite bits of food.

If we build it, they will stay when they find it. When we have all (or even a few) of those clear types of content functioning well, the site will be attractive to people who come here for those different reasons. They will find something they like here right away. We will grab and hold their attention and participation.

But we’re not allowing that right now. Yes, we have the tags, but as I showed above, they aren’t very effective at delineating content. And that is especially true when the content is of a different type (e.g. a link or a video) rather than just a different topic (like history or sports).

What we’re doing is inviting people to Steemit for the sausage, but then throwing that sausage into a steeming stew full of vegetables, grains, meats, and everything in the kitchen sink. You came here to eat sausage? Sort through the stew pot and find it yourself. Hope you like vegetables, grains, conspiracy theories, photography, SteemSports, and openmic also.

And the only people who stick around are the oddballs (there are a few of us) who actually do enjoy or have the patience to sort through the whole spectrum of content. We'll eat stew or drink smoothie; others come for something more specific.

For all other potential users, we fail miserably to grab and hold their attention.

How Steemit Can Win in the Attention Economy

Give them what they want and let them sort/curate within that area. These last few weeks, all we have proven with these recent tag experiments is that the community will welcome different kinds of content. And that was an important step.

But we lack any way to maintain the separation or integrity of those different content types, unless they are something so obviously distinct in type and topic (e.g. photography) that a tag can be a more effective separator.

Some people come here to paste links, so let’s give them links, but they shouldn’t have to sort through thesis-length articles, photography, and other types of posts to find those. YouTubers come here, but they often leave quickly because we have no established place for video. Shouldn’t we have that? If we decide that there should be another Steem-powered site/layer/app that handles video, and not Steemit.com, that is fine.

But if we want Steemit to be the hub for all content on this blockchain, then we need to make that content visible and easily accessible for people.

Image: Public Domain

Separate Content by Category

There might be other ways to solve the sausage stew problem. First, we could force authors to choose just one tag at submission, and narrow the content that way. Second, we could come up with some lighter-handed tool for curation, something less than a flag but somehow strong enough to discourage non-conforming content in a particular tag. But both of these “solutions” are limiting and both would lead towards more aggressive moderation, which may not be the direction we want to go.

I think the better solution is to separate the content on Steemit by type.

When people come to the site, they should see clear, separate areas for different types of content: long posts, short ones, pure links, FAQs, Wikipedia-type articles, videos, music, and so forth. Those types of content should be whatever Steemit.com wants to present. If Steemit.com wants to leave some type of content (e.g. music) to another Steem-powered site, then Steemit.com would choose not to compete for users’ attention in that particular content type.

Within each content type, people would still see the topical tags. For example, when they click on video, they would have a choice of videos in tags such as # animals # birthdays # WTF and so forth. Like different flavors of gelato.

Should these different content types be formalized on the blockchain or simply presented in a more organized way on the site interface? That answer is above my pay grade. I am just a content person, so others can debate those more difficult questions. Having worked on the content here as an author and a curator, I can say quite honestly that we have some work to do on the site if we want to compete in the attention economy.

And the easiest way to excel at this is to give people what they want. Steemit should be a buffet of diverse content in clear locations, not a kitchen sink stew of everything they want (and do not) want mixed together.

I think that implementing this change would set Steemit up as a clear alternative to Reddit, Medium, YouTube, and a lot of other content sites. If we want peoples’ attention, we can get it and we can keep it. Doing so would launch Steem into the stratosphere and make this the “go to” place for content.

All images from Pixabay unless noted.