Hello,
This is my first week with Steem and the community around it. Decentralized social media idea is a hot topic for decades, a lot of parties tried to it before, but they all kind of failed.
Two of the things I love the most about the blockchain projects are open-source philosophy and decentralization.
If you use Facebook, that means you're a product of a private company who sells your data and make money around it. This is mostly same with other social media networks.
These two topics what makes the STEEM great.
Understanding STEEM
It's hard. Really hard. It lacks documentation. STEEM, Steem Dollars, Steem Power, witnesses, memos. I have a technical background with blockchains, and still, I had trouble with the concepts at first. (And I am sure I have so much to learn)
Most of the technical how-tos are old. (1 year ago — I believe price was top at that time) End users don't have any idea about the technology behind it. I can use my local steem (python package) instance and blog without using steemit, and somewhere in the world, my friend can read it from their local steem instance. We have the network, steemit is just an interface — a good interface. However, I have talked a few people that they believe steemit is the technology.
I think, steem already passed the point when the user base was just early adopters. So, if we need to go big:
- Official documentation should be better. (Both technical and non-technical) We need to be able to lower entry barrier. Bombing new users with unfamiliar terms mostly scares people away, they will just use it because they heard that they could make money by writing stuff.
Anyway, I like what I have seen so far. I see brilliance on the core concepts and will try to learn as much as possible on my steem ride.
Thank you for reading.