Screen shot from - https://steemit.com/eos/@eosgo/eos-telegram-summary-3-22-18-dan-s-best-q-and-a-to-date
We all know there are plenty of problems with steemit. Whales abusing voting power, bid bots, slow signups, article visibility/search. Can a new decentralized social media platform on EOS solve all of these issues? I think it is unlikely to be solved right out of the gate. The governance, politics, economics and incentives of change must be factored in. No matter how smart the coder is there will be unforeseen consequences and unintended incentives. People will always find the best way to cheat the system and enrich themselves. Any new platform on EOS will have learned lessons from Steemit but solutions always need to be tested in the real world before the intended effect can be confirmed.
Steemit does have the first mover advantage with around 60K daily users and 800K+ accounts. How long will this keep a new platform at bay? I honestly have no idea if an EOS competitor will struggle to engage or not. EOS will have many accounts already created through the year long ICO but it is impossible to know how many of those participants will be interested in a social media platform tied to their EOS token investment. They could also airdrop to STEEM and EOS in the hopes of pulling people over. (Note: I would guess there would be a cap or equal distribution to avoid creating whales with an airdrop.) Whatever they decide, they will be starting from zero in term of users. Dan and Brendan will be the main user draw to start and it will build from there.
Steemit also does have a lot of nice integrated dapps now too which provide it an advantage. Busy.org, d.tube, dlive.io, dmania.lol, zappl.com, esteem.ws, steepshot.io and on and on. This may be the bigger advantage but EOS will also have access to a large dedicated developer community so it may not take long for devs to jump on board if there is money to be made.
The way I currently see it is, Steemit needs a competitor. It will drive both platforms to improve and be better. Options are always best for the consumer of goods and usually the best solution wins in the end. I really hope Steemit Communities/SMTs will improve the dynamics and bring many more new users. The new STEEM fork probably can't come soon enough! Rapid growth for any blockchain social media platform will only come once the non-crypto masses start to adopt.
-fow-