Authorship.com, has the Competition arrived?

Props to Hive account@frankydoodle for finding this one https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@frankydoodle/free-75-authorship-tokens-after-signing-up-here. Authorship.com, the people behind SeriousReading.com and DotWriter.com are coming to the ethereum blockchain with their own ATS TOKEN

The ICO

To kick things of they have a referral program in place just like the WCX exchange I posted about in one of my previous posts earn free coins!.
You basically get free coins by signing up (75 ATS which is about $10 worth) and can get even more if people use your link to sign up. So if you have a large network you could potentially get a lot of free coins.

You can sign up using my link here.

When signing up you have to submit an address of your ethereum wallet that supports ERC20 tokens.

For wallets like Metamask use the following info:
The ATS token contract address is : “0x2dAEE1AA61D60A252DC80564499A69802853583A”
Token Symbol: ATS
Token Name: Authorship Token
Token decimals: 4

You can also just buy the tokens. The minimum is 1 eth and will get you 2000 ATS.

What are they about?

Here is where it gets interesting. Authorship wants to bring authors and readers together and cut out the middleman by using the blockchain. Authors will receive payment in cryptocurrency (the ATS token) which can be exchanged for fiat currency.

Sounds rather familiar don't ya think?

The implications

Reading about authorship made me think a lot of Steemit, with the exception that they focus on literature, but I can imagine that this will be interesting for authors on Steemit specializing in writing stories.

I started to wonder if it is possible that more specialized platforms like these will come and draw people away from Steemit.
For example:

A snapchat-like cryptocurrency driven site
A forum-like cryptocurrency driven site
A youtube-like cryptocurrency driven site
etc.

Now I know what you are going to say in the comment sections, Steem does all of this and has Dtube but hear me out. I would like to pose the theory that Steemit is in danger of becoming a jack of all trades but master of none.
This means that Steemit opens itself up to competition from specialized platforms that might lure users away.

Competition good or bad?

So is Authorship a competitor or a different kind of service? Even if they aren't it raises the question if competition will be good for Steemit or just plain bad.

My take on this is that competition is good and will force Steemit to up its game which will benefit the users.