What Needs to Happen in Order for Steemit to Go Viral!
Hint: It has nothing to do with money.
I don’t know what @Ned, and his minions, want for Steemit, but I’d think the goal would be to make Steemit in to a household name like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are. And with that, make the value of Steem rise to the moon! Houston, we have some problems on the way.
I’ve been active here for about two months and I think it’s long enough for me to give some tough love.
Disclaimer: what comes to the hardcore nerdy stuff, I’m a total noob, but I know my social media. From what I’ve heard, the blockchain technology behind Steem is top notch so that is nothing to worry about. I’ll be focusing on the things on the surface of Steemit platform.
Here are a couple of things to consider while on our way to the moon:
Make it PRETTY!
At this moment, the user interface of Steemit is just down right ugly. Regular Joe looks at the main page for all of three seconds, the same amount of time he uses to decide if he wants to sleep with the blind date his co-worker set up, and decides he’s not interested. We need Joe to get a major boner and buy us drinks (aka. buy Steem) all evening in order to get into our pants.
We are visual creatures and that needs to be taken to account.
Simplicity is good when it’s done right, think about the UI in Nokia Lumia versus the one on Apple iPhone. Get my point?
Nobody knows about Steemit!
Chances are, if you are a normal person, who uses social media every day and have no idea about crypto currencies, you have not heard about Steemit. I got in here out of recommendation from a friend, and I was really sceptical about it. I thought Steemit and Steem were a total scam, until I transferred my first Steem dollars into Steem, then Bitcoin and into my bank account. But by then, I was hooked.
In order to fall in love, people will firstly need to see you and get a little school girl crush.
Does Steemit even have a marketing team?
Make it possible to adjust the fucking thumbnail image!
This is one of the biggest pet peeves on this site for me, I’ve been ranting about it for several times already.
Yes, it’s fine if you only publish some horizontal pictures like price charts or something like that. But if you are into photography, like a lot of us here are, it limits your choice for first picture a lot! You might have a killer vertical portrait but no one is going to open it if the thumbnail only shows a part of the hairline and grey background.
Your Feed
I only follow about 80 people and I’m pretty actively refreshing my feed, but more times than not, I miss some really cool or interesting posts because the feed is so cluttered with resteemed posts. There needs to be a change in this.
Annoying notifications
How is it rational to alert about every fucking new post on your feed, but not alert when someone follows you or resteems your post!?
I’d prefer if I'd got notified when I get a comment, new follower, someone resteems my post, and when someone from a selected list of my favorite people posts something new.
There has been some issues with the notifications for a while and there have been close to none, even that is better than the evil red dot in the corner of the screen all the time.
Searching
I’m not asking to find the meaning of life, just simple things like accounts or maybe help with something.
I’m always put off when I want to search something inside a site and the search is run by Google. Yes, the first results are usually inside Steemit but I feel like it’s an unnecessary detour. Ain't nobody got time for that!
Intergrade all the great ”sister” sites to Steemit itself
I have Steemd.com, Steemdb.com and Steemviz.com all open along with Steemit.com to keep track of likes, follows, resteems and all DEM MILLIONS that are possibly coming my way. It would be really useful to have all these charts and information right inside Steemit.com. Please and thank you.
I think that is enough for today, but I could go on for hours.
Do you have anything to add? Agree, disagree?
I like Steemit, but not yet enough to confess my eternal love and devotion. You have so much unharnessed power and potential. I believe in you. Make me proud.
Ps. did you notice my amazing photoshop skillz on the first image!?
With love, Eve.
Steemit is still in its BETA form. This place is growing bigger and faster than a blue whale. #Steemit2017
How long will it remain in BETA? Progress does seem incredibly slow for a platform that is growing so much so quickly.
Hi Eve, very nicely written! I totally agree with you on all pints. Been here for about a month I think and my major problem is the IPhone App which sucks and what you said about all the sites not being in one... I don't even use steem chat and all the others because it's too much hassle.
This is a great post! You make such a good point about something changing for all of the re-steemed posts. I feel like my home page is cluttered with those! There needs to be a separate tab for re-steemed posts so you can actually see original posts and you don't miss them. I feel as Steemit grows, more people will learn about it. There are many people on Youtube talking about it, and I have Twitter and Instagram accounts dedicated to Steemit, and I'm sharing them every day. So hopefully we'll see these changes soon and I'll be interested to see what the future holds! Thanks for sharing :)
Exactly, I hate it when I miss a post from someone who always has something I like.
Steemit is growing every day, but we have a lot of inactive users too. I think it is partly because people are intrigued by the money aspect, but don't want to stay here because of these irritating things we have to deal with.
Sadly, the chances of seeing Steemit.com improve are pretty slim. Many of us have been asking for some of these improvements since last summer/fall. However, there's always something "more important" to do...other than fix the visual/functional aspects of the flagship social media website for Steem.
Priorities always seem to be out of order around here and "solutions" to things that aren't actually problems seem to get far too much attention (like trying to create some UBI-like, collectivist bullshit). But what else is new?
Best way of mass adoption is by word of mouth. I personally got 6 people to sign up and start using steemit, that know nothing about crypto nor use it. The user interface on the website is very easy to use, anyone can do it! It's all about hype, just get normal people to signup and it will spread like wildfire! :D I remember when facebook started, you had to get a private invitation from someone that was already on. Why did people initially signed up? Hype and because it was something new.
It's not about the product but of howwwww you sellll it!
I knew you'd be on the same page with me on this.
Things could look and function a lot better, but they have done something right, we are here!
Exactly theFacebook was ugly getting started and has been through a lot of growing pains to get to becoming one of the most used websites in the world. If I thought it was not getting better I would sell!
Or you'd talk shit in comment threads, which seems to be the default response for people who feel that way. :D
Regarding all the ReSTEEMS, you may want to try my "hide resteems" script that allows you to toggle resteems on and off when you view a profile or feed page. Since I wrote it, I've used it non-stop and it makes it so much easier to key in on a person's own posts, especially if you're deciding to follow them or just to "catch up" on some of their recent posts you may have missed.
Link: Hide ReSTEEMS + Minnow Post Vote Slider and Past Payout Monetizer Script... and next, here comes SteemTUBE!!! 😲
Regarding notifications, you may want to check out @void's https://steemwatch.com:
"(like trying to create some UBI-like, collectivist bullshit)" you got that right!
I believe it's the 5th time I see you rant about the thumbnail image 😂 You are pretty much spot on with all your suggestions.
Hahaha, you might be right. But it is sooooo annoying!
It's 2017, people are now used to simple interfaces in which everything just works and looks great. Your suggestions are all in fact spot on, but do try to keep this in mind; when Facebook was launched it didn't look as perfect as it does now. So yes, Steemit is still in beta and maybe not fully ready for big mass adoption just yet...
Personally I think that's a blessing in disguise. This gives you the time to perfect your blog and become an established household name here. Your suggestions will surely become reality at some point, until that moment, I'd suggest to just accept that Steemit is still in BETA.
Good points @fitzgibbon.
The "blessing in disguise" is basically how I've seen it all along, especially since Steemit has had steady growth in terms of number of active users in recent months.
I agree with this! I also would love to see a scheduled posts option.
Yes, that would be really useful.
How would you feel about a save format option for posts?
I don't know about you, but I have somewhat of a "cookie cutter" format to my crypto trading posts. It would save me a lot of time with copy/ paste if I had the option to save the general layout that I use for those posts (in terms of where I have the hashtags and dotted lines, etc., for headers and breaks).
Perhaps we could be allotted a few MBs (KBs?) to save one or two formatting/ layout options. I know it would make things a lot smoother for me.
Agree on most points. Regarding the search, this works pretty well.
https://www.asksteem.com/
Cheers
and here is how you hide re-steems:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@alexpmorris/hide-resteems-tampermonkey-script-toggles-feed-and-profile-resteems-now-for-golos-and-steemit
ah, just commented about my script above, then so you had as well, thanks for that! :) lol
Very good points. I would be happy already by improving the search feature.. but I can imagine it won't be enough to attract big crowds to the website.
Don't be so sure. Most people didn't think Facebook would make it. Facebook looked quite useless, especially when there were plenty of other chat services out there. Then there's Twitter which really no one thought would make it. Google was another big surprise.
An online book retailer which everyone thought would 'go by the wayside' has become the largest Internet based company in history -- Amazon.
I am an "old man" of the Internet. I have many more stories of sites which shouldn't have made it.
Thanks for sharing these insights.
Yeah, there needs to be a lot more changes for that. Though I do not mind that the community here is still quite small, feels more homey.
I have to admit, I hated the website when I first joined. That's why I didn't actively use it for a while. Now most issues are things I can withstand instead of enjoying using the website. New users will most likely be scared by few issues with the website design and UI.
Eli ominaisuuksia, joita olen oppinut sietämään mutten nauti ;)
Exactly my friend, exactly.
meep
Thanks meepy
meep
I'm impressed. I've been a fan of your meeping for a long time already and I'm honored for having this conversation. Have good meeps in your future!
meep
I'm impressed by your strength and strong guts. You keep on meeping my frend, keep on meeping!
meep
Improving search would help too.
See my other reply below this post for better search and hide re-steems.
I'll compile all useful links I have found so far into one post to make our steem life easier, but not today :)
I'd pay good steem to hide re-steems...SO ANNOYING!!!
What is going to happen to design? Stay with me and you will see! :)
Aah, interesting interesting!
Ok I can tell you right now. I will redesign whole steemit from ground up :) In series longer than simpsons.
Do it well and I hope the big man hires you :D
No need for that :D I just want to inspire users they will have cool and BEST Steemit website to visit daily :D Follow our group Steemit Designers for updates :)
Wow. Steemit Designers. This is great. A group on Facebook. People can go here and see.
Try to use www.busy.org. It's steemit designed a little bit different. And you can search accounts from the side menu.