Steem is Peer to Peer.
Steemit is an interface to a social media platform called steem that is running decentralized on a block-chain, they use a technology called graphene that is also being used for Bitshares. Tokens are created by miners to represent value on the platform.
This is all very familair to people involved in crypto-currency and this one fact alone would probably make a lot of people shift without a thought to this platform.
Anyone involved into crypto already knows the benefits of decentralization.
The average social media user doesn't care much about the technical or ideological stuff. They come to the website and at the surface it looks like just another social media platform. Everything looks familiar: there is nothing special to install or to configure, just register, login and post.
Steem is Paid to Post
This will probably be what brings in the hordes of people to steemit but many skepticals might still ignore it because if they can't grasp the concept yet and it could sound like something to good to be true.
On steem you can register and instantly post stuff like on a normal social media website. If your post is received well you will see the rewards flowing in pretty fast. Those many stories that get shared will make a lot of people very excited.
People are loyal to their friends and they will go where their friends go and once we get to a certain number of pioneers it could become a virtual mass migration of people fleeing to more prosperous territory.
Steem is Paid to Participate
On steem you don't only get rewarded for posting, you also get rewarded for participating in the community. Your votes matter and you get rewarded to promote quality content. Comments get rewarded, create tutorials and people will up vote, create anything that contribute to steem and you will be rewarded. Ultimately it is the community that will decide what content gets rewarded and which writers that will be encouraged. This could become a place where writers go to be born , a sort of the writer's womb.
Steem is Poverty to Prosperity
For tons of people in countries with low wages this could have an incredible effect, the wealth in steem is being created and redistributed in relation to your effort, no matter what your geolocation is you get paid the same. Those people are the pioneers and if these people also invest into their local communities and introduce more people to these new possibilities they could create a real change within the local economics.
Even if you live in a richer country, that is not a guarantee for you being rich and I think everyone will agree that extra income is always a catalyst for change in a person’s life even if you don’t have money problems per se.
It might create more freedom to spend with family because now we can quit that extra job, it could make us happy because now we can spend more time doing what we really like.
Steem is People to People
Steem content is created by the people for the people.
At the moment steem is almost exclusively populated by individual people instead of the usual professionals. Because of that we see more content based on personal stories on steem instead of the usual marketing content, on steem we share personal stories, we share our mistakes and our flaws. The posters are not one dimensional characters but have the profundity of a real person, their posts are like listening to a friend talking about the news. This creates another relation between the writers and readers, a relation that one normally would not have with a news reporter or a writer of books. This new sort of relation is based on trust and it stimulates and maintains a more gentle and familiar environment to freely communicate in. This allows for people to express their very unique and distinct opinion which in turn enriches our global understanding.
Steem is Power to People
Media is heavily intertwined in our everyday lives and it keeps bombarding us constantly with new information. It has extended and augmented our reality to a whole new level and it helps us better relate to the global problems we are facing as humanity but the price we pay is very high. New's company's worldwide are owned by only a few completely centralized entities. This organizations feed us with information and shape the public opinion into whatever is needed to get the required behavior and acceptance. To think that a company that is part of an even bigger multinational with various billion dollar interests worldwide won't have an agenda is a maybe a bit naive? Concepts like steem will change the media landscape completely, it will redistribute power and create new opportunities for many individuals that never have been given a voice before. This could create a whole new network of independent people recording and posting news, they will become media participants and that way they will accumulate more power as individuals to shape their lives and bring forward change in their communities.
“If the media were honest, they would say, Look, here are the interests we represent and this is the framework within which we look at things. This is our set of beliefs and commitments.”
Noam Chomsky From Lecture titled "Media, Knowledge, and Objectivity," June 16, 1993
