What’s up Steemians? This is my fourth day actively using Steemit and I really haven't post anything yet besides my introductory post, instead I’ve been navigating the site, reading posts mostly about Steemit, learning how others are using the platform and how things really work, so I ended up with some conclusions I would like to share with you all.
We are riding the first wave and we might not get what we expect (at least not yet).
Steemit is a boom, its aproach to social media and blogging is truly innovative and this is attracting a lot of attention. At the beginning some people might have made some really nice profit really easy and this attracted the crowd (including me), but its getting harder and harder to make a quick profit, and that’s a good thing.
Steemit is for those who want to hit it big in the long run, but mostly for those who love to write about what they do/know/love, and author’s intentions will be tested in this stage of the platform. Authors posting spammy, duplicated and plagiarized content will eventually give up leaving the road open to the valuable and passionate authors.
I’m my case I think I’m in the right place at the right time as I’ve been thinking to start a blog myself. Steemit provides me the blogging platform, free hosting, lots of exposure, the opportunity to make a profit from my passion and who knows it maybe makes me rich in the future when Steem overcome Bitcoin.
So if I wasn’t thinking about starting a blog before getting to know Steemit I don’t think it would be a good fit for me.
Great authors are getting lost in the crowd
The Stemmit boom, and what is yet to come is making that some really good authors producing quality content are getting lost in the crowd, some might feel their efforts are not being rewarded as they payouts might hardly hit the $0.10 barrier.
The truth is, at the time you need to attract the attention and upvote of a whale in order for your post to hit an attractive payout, and it’s not easy, just imagine how many posts a whale must be reading daily.
But this is in fact a good thing, if minnows upvotes counted as much as whales upvotes this might lead to heavily spammy content and upvotes/payout abuse.
I think eventually Steemit will shrink a little, commited and passionate authors will stay and those attracted mainly by the gold rush will leave.
In fact I think Steemit must be a place for passionate authors who wants to give more than what they get, payouts being nothing more than an incentive for authors creating only quality content, otherwise this could end up being just as any other social media that many people are getting tired of.
Luckily, efforts are being made to retain good authors
I’ve found really cool people uniting efforts to make good and deserving authors stand out.
Project curie “help reward content creators who are posting great original content, yet who have not yet become established”. They are actively looking for great content, upvoting and making authors hit nice payouts but mostly giving them exposure.
The Robin Hood Whale (RHW) is a community that “wants to be the “whale” that finds and helps a diverse set of talented, yet unrecognized authors”. Just like project curie they upvote hight quality content helping unrecognized authors.
The Steemcleaners guys are making a great effort trying to clean Steemit from spammers and abusers, as they state it: “Steemcleaners are a group of Steemians concerned with the plague of plagiarism, copy paste, spam, scams, and other forms of abuse that keeps cropping up on our site. Since fighting individually seemed fruitless -- resulting in retaliation flagging, harassment, or other issues, we have created a group account, to stand as a united front in the defence of steemit”.
The projectnewbie guys also make a great job making newbies feel welcome and giving them some initial exposure. As they state: “is the account that will be in charge of commenting and welcoming new users to the platform, while at the same time informing users who haven't verified their account - the pros of doing so.”. They in fact nominated my introductory post which was like an incentive for me, plus after that nomination I got +15 upvotes so thanks…
The After-Boom Steemit.
I think what is being done by the projects I mentioned before is really great, they are bringing equilibrium to the force, but I think (and hope) in the future Steemit will naturally find it’s balance.
Time will come in that survival authors should get stablished with their own followers base and upvoting rewards will be more balanced, valueless authors (those looking to make a quick profit without delivering value to the community) will naturally vanish and a evergrowing readers base thirsty of quality content will support their favourite authors in the long term.