RE: Steemit is suffering from negative network effect
But many social media platforms started that way. It took a while for Facebook to implement algorithmic filtering and for Twitter to follow with the same. I agree with the final goal, but I'm patient with the time needed to get there.
I'm just trying to raise awareness of this problem to make sure it will get prioritized properly.
Based on the latest hardfork proposal, Steemit Inc wants to prioritize getting as much new users as they can. I don't think that's very good plan. It won't go well for anybody, not for the old or the new users.
The first priority should be to develop the UI/UX to the level that can handle millions of new users so that everybody will be happy. After that has been taken care of, we can start to talk about user acquisition.
I appreciate your concern, but that doesn't appear to be the path other successful examples took. Growth is key, more so then every person having a perfect experience. If growth took off (even without improved UI), Steemit signups would be crippled. Seems to me that's a higher priority over UI. But guess that's the backend programmer side of me talking. :)
I'm looking at this from the business perspective. It doesn't make much sense to try to get us much people to join as possible, if we know that their experience will suck. The users retention rate will be low and the brand of Steemit will suffer.
It would be much better to focus on the user experience first and let new users buy their own accounts. That would make the whole ecosystem much more valuable faster than focusing only user signups.
Have to disagree with you there. Facebook and Twitter didn't grow to millions of users by requiring an initial investment. I think requiring an up-front investment would kill growth.
The value of connected systems often comes from the network effect and who can get it faster. Craig's List isn't a great UX/UI, but they have the network effect lead. Steemit needs exponential growth in order to have a chance at overtaking the incumbents. Yes, some will sign up, have a bad experience, and leave. It's a numbers game. How many will we lose based on how many will we keep? That should be how we prioritize things. If we get the network effect value, those who left will eventually come back, hopefully to a better UI by then.
Steem is totally different ecosystem. First of all, this is a blockchain and there is a cost for creating a new account. FB and Twitter can create as much accounts as they like, basically without any cost. We can't.
Just look at how much money people are throwing in the blockchain world. A Steem account is valuable cryptoproperty, it's not only a login name to a social media site. We should let our users know this, rather than acting like a Steem account doesn't have any value at all.
And of course I understand how important it is to have way to get accounts for those who, for some reason, don't want to or can't buy an account. In an earlier post I proposed that SBD should be replaced with Steem account token (one SAT gives a right to create one account) and users could earn them as rewards. That would make the system more viral and decentralized.
Read the OP again. ;-)
I know very well the network effect. But it's too simplistic to think that only thing that matters is the number of users. It can turn to a negative thing, too. That leads to chaos.