Steemit: Between Social Media and Professional Content Platform

Picture from https://news.bitcoin.com/steemit-awards-1-3-m-users/

Earning money by posting content online is not merely the privilege of professional writers thanks to blockchain technology. With the use of decentralised network in content production, it turns “public attention” directly to profits to the content contributors, instead of the profit being engulfed or shared with the platform. It seems to be a good news for content creators in this attention economy era. By using one of the leading blockchain social media Steemit for 4 months, there’re something I want to talk about.

Steemit creates a virtuous cycle to keep users’ liveness on their web. By contributing content on Steemit, users will accumulate Steem power by the upvotes and comments for their post from other users, as well as Steem dollars, which is the currency on Steemit that can be transferred to real money. The higher Steem power makes their posting and upvote more valuable. Similar to social credibility, your upvote and comment to others post give credits to their works, which can help raise their post value (both on Steem power and Steem dollar) with your high Steem powers. For rewards of your participation, you also gain Steem power by upvoting and commenting.

The Two Sides of Reward System

Similar with other social media platforms, users on Steemit are looking forward to get recognition. This need even amplify when you see the number of money right under your post grows. As the description above, we can see that the value of a post is decided by Steem power that owned by poster, commenter and voter.

When capital profit is involved, quality and diversity of content become vulnerable parts. Since “whale” users’ recognition brings more value to the post and more reputation (appear as Steem power) to the users, getting upvoting from them could be a major pursuit for content creators. The purpose of decentralized network is getting rid of authority. But when it goes to free market, the dynamic still cluster naturally around “whales”. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just run counter to the original purpose of blockchain.

The post of "sndbox" who has Steem power of "73"

The same day post from me whose Steem power is "47" (with the upvote from "sndbox")

The post from me without the upvote from "sndbox"

However, the capital reward system do keep the liveness of users. Users stick to the platform by even just vote others’ post to build their Steem power, which makes the platform looks alive. But what’s the quality of the liveness here?

Limitation of Steemit Style Social Media

The most popular social media, like facebook and snapchat, are based on acquaintance network. Knowing what your friends are doing and sharing your life with them meet our need of being cared and liked. The things people post also build their identity in front of others. However, users on Steemit are more like isolated dots. Even though the capital reward attracts users to keep posting, the bond is not as strong as acquaintance network. Users eventually cannot experience relational network on Steemit.

The content creating ability of Steemit users is also higher than other social media. Not as Twitter who prefer short expression and not to mention visual forms like short video and livestreams, posts on Steemit are more like traditional blogs, which have some requirements on length and words composition. These requirements for higher narration ability shut the door in front of a portion of people, which limited the potential audience of the platform.

Layout of Steemit frontpage

Another weakness is the content categorization on Steemit. Now on the website, contents are categorized by their population: “Trending”, “New”, “Hot”, and “Promoted”. Posts attributes are only identified by different tags, which could be very broad and vague. From content perspective, Steemit is far from a mature platform for any profession. People will tend to go to specialized websites to check the information and contents they’re looking for. Those posts on Steemit will become merely decorations of the revelry among Steemit users. Without systematic management and categorization, contents, no matter how good they are, are scattered dots. Since the platform was only started from 2016, we can give it more time to become more mature in future.

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