Many seem to think that Steem has little to offer. They mistakenly believe that token price reflects what is actually going on. Sadly, this has caused many to leave. Mindset often tells the entire story.
I recently read an article about traits of billionaires. One of them is they are often optimistic about what they are doing. Sure, they face challenges, often monumental, on their path to success. However, they have a vision they believe in and can see it unfolding before others.
There was a time when Jeff Bezos was running just a small, online bookstore. Today, he is the richest man in the world.
Elon Musk has been tarred and feathered online more than any human alive. His ventures of Tesla and SpaceX became laughing stocks to many people. Yet, the recent run up in Tesla stock made Elon $9 billion while SpaceX, after Monday's launch, is the largest private satellite company.
I bring this up to highlight the fact that success does not usually happen instantly. It is often years in the making. This is a similarity I see with Steem. There certainly were (and are) problems. However, we keep overcoming them an moving forward. Project teams are hard at work doing what is necessary to make their visions a success.
They say that copying is the best form of flattery. Steem does mirror Tesla in one way. In fact, it also mimics Bitcoin. There is a core group of hodlers here who are dedicated to seeing this through to success. They are doing all they can to keep the activity going in the right direction. This includes investors, developers, and content creators.
The community of Steem cannot be overvalued.
EOS entered the fray with a splash. BlockOne was able to raise a lot of money. This ended up putting it on the radar.
That company is creating a new social media application that Dan Larimer describes as a "Steemit Killer". It appears the release date in February so there is a testnet running. What does one put on a testnest for a social media application.
According to Dan himself, Steem is used.
This image from a post by 
He did state in the past he was looking at creating Steemit 2.0. I guess using the content that was created by Steemians over the past 3 years is his way of doing it.
Of course, this is one of the beauties of open source. Innovation can be accelerated by using what is already out there and building upon it. The question is whether that will happen in this case.
Another project that got a bit of news is Commun. This is going to be a true Reddit-like site where people are rewarded for posting links. There is a difference between what this project is doing and Steemit...evidently.
But unlike Steemit, which uses one token for the whole network, Commun uses Bancor’s “Bonding Curve” to give each community its own token. So Commun’s art community would have its own token, as would its dog-lovers, DIY-ers, and flat-earthers.
https://decrypt.co/15522/communs-launch-kicks-off-new-wave-of-decentralized-social-media
I wonder where they got that idea from? Steem is presently in testnet to implement the ability for each community to have its own token.
Sure, one of the challenges was the length of time that it took to get here. Of course, we can keep bashing the errors of the past or acknowledge that Steemit Inc did get its act together to have a good year in 2019. Either way, SMTs are only a few months away barring any last minute issues cropping up on the testnet.
The Commun project is an interesting one. I do give them credit, they did post on Steem as a way to generate interest.
Here is their announcement post.
If Steem is broken, a piece of shit, worthless, and going to zero, why is everyone trying to copy it? Why do we keep hearing about Steemit killers? I mean, do we hear about Amazon coming to be the killer of some worthless online store that has no value?
Obviously, this is not the case. Everyone is targeting Steem without realizing what Steem is. It is not the technology that makes it great. In fact, it is open source, thus can be forked. Instead, the power of Steem is in the dedication of the people who are here on a daily basis seeking to make it a success.
One thing I think Dan is learning is that it is easier to create superior technology than it is to get people to adopt it. The later is the hardest part of all. This is something marketers know all too well but, unfortunately, developers can overlook.
At the same time, Steem advanced from where it was even a year ago. Soon, Steem will be offering most of the capabilities that most of the Top 10 blockchains are offering. In fact, from a social media perspective, it laps them in that Steem has fee-less transactions. This is something that EOS and Ethereum cannot offer.
Ultimately, most, including myself, are not going to care. "The more the merrier" I say. We are working on laying the foundation for Web 3.0. Our path is only enhanced by having more ways people can be rewarded, regardless of where those rewards come from. Hey, if I can earn some Commun-related tokens, I am happy to do so. By the same thought process, if I can get some Voice tokens for my comments, I have no problem with that.
However, it is repeatedly being proven that simply having an idea of a better way of doing something does not lead to the next "Steemit Killer". For the past two years, I cannot count the number of projects that got that title only to drift off into oblivion. It is a catchy title but it takes a lot to get to where Steem developed into.
Perhaps some day there will something that comes along and makes Steem like MySpace. The challenge with that analogy is that MySpace basically remained the same for years. Steem is an evolving ecosystem with new features, tribes, tokens, and ideas added on a regular basis. We are not at the same place we were three months ago and will certainly be in a different place three months from now.
I am optimistic that those who remained on Steem will be handsomely rewarded in the future. The optimistic outlook is going to pay off big time when some of the ventures roll out what they have planned. It is just a matter of developing what is in the minds of some people, which is happening.
In the end, there are more than 7 billion people on this planet, more than half of whom are online. Over the next 5-7 years, there will be the remainder added.
With that number, it is not unreasonable for a couple hundred million people to find their way to Steem-related applications.
That is the potential that exists for this blockchain.
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