View the original post on Musing.io
Several months ago, steepshot became famous since it was one of the first Dapps for the Steem blockchain. I personally used it for my photography posts.
During that time, it is trying to compete with Instagram (centralized photo sharing app), so Steepshot is the "decetralized" version of it. On top of that, it could directly monetized a user's photography content.
The UI was acceptable at the time of its release and if I remembered correctly, the team who is developing the app actually invested a reasonable amount of Steem power to their own Steemit account ~ of course to reward it's users through upvotes.
Even though Steepshot have an acceptable UI and it's backed by some of the Whales, it seems that it's popularity didn't progress. I can't answer for the others that stopped using the app, but I personally think that it was due to the fact that there is a cut on the earnings of its users ~ meaning part of the user's payout will be donated to Steepshot for its further development. This is what I can think of at that time.
The way I see it now is that the majority of photographers that are sharing their photography contents is for a simple reason that they want to showcase their skills & their artistic point of view of things. Of course, there are some professional photographers who actually intend to sell photos as part of their earnings, but most of us are just happy to share our pictures to the community.
And so aside from a good UI and monetary incentives, I think that a community that appreciates a work of art is the one being revered by the photographer more than anything else. Even if there are a lot of amazing photographers here in Steemit and we have more than one ways to share our work through the Steemit interface or any other Dapps out there, it seems that the lack of engagement and appreciation to the photography contents is actually the one that is preventing the mass adoption of photographers to this amazing technology ~ the Steem blockchain.
So, if we really intend to use photography contents as the selling point for Steemit, I think we must first build a solid community that will consistently create contents and promote the contents outside Steemit.