Ned Scott On the Future Of Steemit: a Non-profit Foundation, Advertising-based Revenue and Competition over the Blockchain

At the first Steemit hackathon in Oslo, (which I guess just came to an end today), Ned Scott (co-founder of Steemit and better known as @ned here) gave a keynote on the future of Steemit. After watching, I decided to make a short and concise report out of it. All the info is described as I understood it and where I felt the need to stress out my own comments I used italics. I linked the original video at the end of the blogpost, just in case you want to verify my conclusions.

The Current Status of Steemit, As An Organization

At the moment, after a lot of “soul searching” and discussion with the other co-founder of Steemit, @dan, @ned announced the creation of a new vehicle for Steemit. This vehicle will be a non-profit foundation that will manage the repository of Steem and Steemit.com. There were a number of reasons for that, and many of them became obvious in the Q&A session, but here are the most important ones:

• a no-profit foundation may be closer to a decentralized network, like Steemit, than a for-profit organization
• this foundation could manage multiple “instances” or “interfaces” over the same blockchain, and @ned mentioned http://bus.yt, a nice project still in alpha (I hope I’m allowed to link to it). At this point, @ned said something interesting: "I would like to see more competition over the blockchain, more interfaces for the content in the blockchain".
• the intellectual property and possible legal problems generated by the user generated content (that repetition of "generated" sounded weird) can be better mitigated by a non-profit organization (Linux Foundation came into my mind while listening to that part)

Steemit Development Status

Soon after starting the keynote, @ned popped his trello board and showed what the dev team is working on (couldn’t see much of it in the video, unfortunately, so I had to rely on what @ned was talking about)

• he mentioned a few enhancements already going on, like phone verification at sign-up and the savings feature

• front-end:

  • they’re working now on a new editor, probably upgrading the UX
  • they are building profile pages
  • they are building notifications “to create more of a feedback loop for the user”
  • they are adding emojis
  • flairs are on the list too (@ned seems pretty drawn to reddit, he uses it a lot in comparisons with steemit, my 2 cents is that steemit can’t be reddit, but that’s another story)
  • badges are coming and at this moment he mentioned Foursquare and his mayorship system. Gamification will be a nice addition to Steemit, from a psychological point of view, because it will take a bit of the unconscious pressure we’re experiencing when evaluating our own activity in the system. It will give another self-esteem indicator, not directly related to money.

• back-end (features implemented at the blockchain level):

  • curation guilds (lending voting power) will be implemented at the blockchain level (@ned will publish a spec on steemit for community review. Right now this is done via streemian.com.)
  • they're working on marketplace features but he didn't give many details
  • they're also working at an invitation system (@ned shared a few funny stories about mainstream social media - Facebook, reddit - blacklisting silently steemit.com in the first days, in July. "This was total vindication. We knew we're on to something" said @ned.)
  • they will most likely get rid of the 4 rewarded posts per day limitation - "you shouldn't be penalized if you socialize", said @ned.

Steemit Business Model: Attention-driven Economy, Paid by Direct Advertising

Probably the most surprising announcement was about advertising as a business model. "We created an attention economy and we found some ways in which the value comes directly to the user", said @ned.

As I understood this, the first experimental implementation would most likely be in the form of a "related posts" span at the end of each article, where advertisers could place their own content. Money paid will be split in 3: one part will be "burned", or distributed across the whole network (that will create a "dividend model", in which money will be blocked in SP, probably, which will make it slower to access), a part will be directed to the blogger and a part to the curators.

Please be aware that this is just what I understood and even if I understood it correctly, it may change at any moment. It wasn't an official announcement, just a 20 minutes keynote.

Personal Selections

I specifically liked @ned's hints to a truly decentralized platform, and at some point he stated something like: "we will hopefully build a platform that is transparent". I think if they can do this, it will be huge. Because in a transparent platform, the business model can be easily changed, if it's not working. Also, each individual could choose his own way to benefit from the platform.

That was it.

All in all, I think the development news are moderately good, the organizational news are way more important than we realize now (I'm talking about the non-profit foundation part) and the business model news are a little bit strange.

I will give it more thinking and if I find something worth sharing, I'll do it, but so far it looks like something that may not be very sustainable. I may be biased, though.

Here's the video, enjoy:

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.