Earning money with posts and likes? Facebook without filter bubble and censorship? Sounds too good to be true? Maybe it’s soon a reality!
Who does still remember those old days? There was only e-mail and all the nerds were gathering in chats like IRC. Maybe one was also active in one or the other online discussion board. Later other messenger clients like ICQ and MSN appeared. And the first cool people suddenly had an account on MySpace. I still remembered when I heard of Facebook the first time. I happened to be in the United States at that time and 2 years later in Germany everybody had a Facebook profile as well. Ever since it is not possible to imagine social media without Facebook. What should ever compete against this?
Is Facebook just incompetent or very shrewd?
I am regularly annoyed because of Facebook. Constantly I get different states of notification on my several devices. For example, I will get informed on my computer about private messenger mails and group notifications which I have already seen on my smartphone a day before and therefore actually marked as “read”. Or for example, on my Liberated.de Facebook page I get a “new” private message notification now for already several weeks even though I have of course already answered the person who wrote me. The notification won’t just go away. For a multi-billion dollars company, it should actually be possible to build a smart server infrastructure. That’s at least what I always thought. But a friend of mine recently gave me a different and much better explanation for these phenomena. He assumes that Facebook does this on purpose to attract users to their page more frequently. After all Facebook is earning money with every minute of our attention. And of course, they earn money with our content and our personal data, too.
How the monopoly can be broken
But there is a new invention which has the capability to beat Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. I am talking about Steem which is a kind of crypto currency which is connecting the blockchain technology with social media. The result is a hybrid of Facebook and Bitcoin. And as well as Bitcoin is possibly taking apart the financial industry very soon Steem could also taking the Web 2.0 to the next level. Some people might now ask themselves: “Yes, there are surely some downsides of Facebook and also an increasing (danger of) censorship. But why should a huge amount of users suddenly turn away from the established Facebook?” The answer is: A combination of monetary incentives and the free market. For example, in Steem you can earn money in the Steem crypto currency when you post articles. This money you can either withdraw in US-Dollars or Bitcoins or you might turn them into what is called “Steem-Power” which represents more influence in the Steem community. Because you can also promote posts of other people – just as in Facebook by liking and sharing. If you have more Steem-Power then your recommendations are counted as more important. Another benefit is that you can cash up here even more. Let’s say that I early promote a post which afterwards becomes successful or even viral I can financially participate of this post’s success. Therefore, not only the authors of content earn but also the so-called curators. So, it is a win-win-win situation for all parties. The author creates a value and earns money with it. The market notices the value and distributes it and therefore earns money. And in the end the consumer (the many readers of the post) enjoy very good content of market-tested quality. Those qualitative contents are another possible success factor of Steem. So, if you can earn money with Steem and have the same benefits as with Facebook in the long term you naturally would prefer Steem. Therefore, Facebook becomes obsolete in the long run.
The benefits of Steem
So, not only the sweet but meaningless cat videos will go viral in our filter bubble because those videos keep us on the page for a long time according to the Facebook algorithm but also real valuable content will be lifted. Not only Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook shareholder will earn money but also all parties which help to create great values. Spam and trolling will be prevented and good authors acknowledged. But also, people which are rather the journalist than the creative type will be acknowledged for their work as curators if they have a good nose for interesting articles. There will be no censorship since all posts are directly saved on the blockchain. Because like Bitcoin the blockchain is decentralized and therefore nobody can manipulate it without authorization. I have to admit that currently it is still everything in the early stages of development. And also, Steemit which is the first social media platform for Steem still lacks many functionalities. But over time it should become much better as more and more competition will appear. Because if Steemit doesn’t convince as a platform anymore or if they start to filter or censor then new pages can be created easily which use the non-fakable Steem blockchain. Theoretically one doesn’t even need to invest money in Steem to earn money with it. Some good posts might bring first earning in the Steem currency as well.
The downsides of Steem
To be able to pay for all the good new content the Steem crypto currency is unlike Bitcoin designed to be inflationary. But here I have to mention that Steem is meant to be less of a financial investment than Bitcoin but rather a competition for the unfree media and social media pages. The influence which can be gained through Steem-Power might be more important than the monetary aspects. Whoever starts now will be a pioneer and still has a good opportunity to become the next Rupert Murdoch.
But there is one inevitable disadvantage with this new technology. Because no matter what you have once posted on the blockchain it will be never deleted anymore. The fact that the internet doesn’t forget anything becomes increasingly important at this point. While I might delete in Facebook my wall at least once per month nobody except Mark Zuckerberg and the CIA has still access to my escapades and stupid comments. But on the blockchain all my “contributions” are visible for everybody and forever. And there are also no privacy settings. Everybody no matter if friend or stalker can see my postings on the blockchain.
Conclusion
I believe for social media it will be the same as for the money. In the run the blockchain technology will dominate. I cannot say whether Bitcoin, Ethereum or something else will become the future world currency. I also cannot predict if Steem or a similar future community will supersede Facebook. But I am very sure that it will happen because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
What do you think? Will Steemit supersede Facebook? When could it happen? You may post your experiences with Steem in the comment section below.