Yesterday, Ned held his streaming video. During it, he answered a lot of questions and spelled out some of his views on the direction of Steemit, Inc.
The basic premise is he broke down Steemit's present focus into two categories. One is the development of blockchain with the second being social media.
I must say, to nobody's surprise, I agree with the conclusions that Ned came to. A lot of what he said I wrote about over the last few months.
One of the big things he mentioned was the original vision for Steemit. This company was set up to build a blockchain that provided the tools for developers to establish businesses and create great projects. While Steemit still did that, they got a bit expanded in their focus. This caused them problems.
For a number of months I have contested the idea of the importance of Steemit.com. One of the biggest issues is the confusion between Steem and Steemit. Obviously, the names being so close is the cause. This is only enhanced by the fact that Steemit.com is the most popular app in terms of usage and the landing page. It also was the only way people could sign up until recently.
Naturally, Steemit.com is part of the social media and perhaps it was needed in the early days. Now, however, there are better options out there. Both busy.org and 
I was happy to see that Ned feels this way also.
On the development side, one of the main moves is to switch to rockdb. I am not a techie so I cannot explain this fully but it is a move that will save Steemit a great deal of money in how the blockchain is stored. It will take a while to get implemented yet will keep costs down on an ongoing basis versus the present system.
It was good to see they did take the long term view on that instead of a quick fix.
Personally, I am content to have Steemit focusing upon the development only. I do not want them involved in social media. They need to stay away from marketing. Their sole reason, for a while, only needs to be the blockchain and the associated support mechanisms.
That said, since Steemit.com is still widely used, I believe that a percentage of the posts should be used for development. I think people are now realizing there are no free rides with sites and networks. Applications take a portion of the payouts to fund their operations. Steemit.com should do the same. I believe 5%-10% is acceptable and in line with some of the other applications.
This is not a long term solution but can assist in raising some of the $2M that is spent annually. By the way, some of the moves Ned mentioned that are being made will cut that number to $1.25M in the medium term.
Ned's overriding attitude was "all options are on the table". This is good to see. I am hoping the other developers in this ecosystem are brought in to assist with some of the challenges going forward. As I stated yesterday, we need responsibilities decentralized. Depending upon one organization for everything is a mistake while exposing us all to 3rd party counter risk.
Unfortunately, it does appear that SMTs are on the back burner at this moment. One suggestion that seems like it will garner some discussion is the idea of creating a scaled down SMT which allows DApps to create a token without all the features of SMT. This is something they could explore as a way to get a MVP out there. More functionality can be added later.
It is no surprise that Steemit, Inc is in "survive, not thrive" mode at the moment. Mistakes were made and it was put in a hole. Now it is time to start digging out.
I will say that the communication the last few days was encouraging. It appears the community is brought up to speed and Ned is intent on keeping the lines of communication open. This is positive.. Over the next couple months, I am sure we will see a lot of posts with ideas offered up as the best way to proceed forward. I only hope that Ned and the rest of the development team takes them to heart and seriously considers them.
There are a lot of smart people on here who understand what needs to be done. Steemit, Inc needs to tap into that ability.
It will be better served for it.
Less is more.
It is time for Steemit, Inc to concentrate it's focus and do what it does well.
And the community needs to hold them to this.
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