About twelve years ago, I designed blog service named “Mediamob”. (Domain name is the "http://www.mediamob.co.kr", not the “http://www.mediamob.com”. Sadly, it was closed long before.) Mediamob, an early media venture service of Korea started in 2004, was a blog based internet news service.
In Mediamob, I was planning to try three experiments. First was to give the editorial rights to the users and second was to pay manuscript fee for whom upvoted by other users and third was to give users stock of the company. I thought it was fairly reasonable to give users editorial power, monetary reward or share of stock for their participation. Moreover it would be helpful for the company, I thought, because the users would participate voluntarily and actively with those policies.
But I was not a owner of that company at that time and I failed to persuade the management because they didn’t understand what those experiments was meant to. The only one experiment I had tried was implementing editing algorithm with which we could replace the role of editors in order to give editing power to the users. I applied it to mediamob service.
The other two ideas were not reviewed seriously because not only the management but most of the internet service owners didn’t understand what does it mean to share their powers and money (and stock) with their service users. Not only ten years ago but even today!
Let’s talk about today. When you write on Facebook, Facebook earns the money. When you post your own photo to Instagram, Instagram earns the money. When you googled in google, Google earns the money. Of course their services are excellent and their technical levels are great. I do not deny that they give some values to their users. But if we saw this in another point, we can think it otherwise.
What is the true value of the internet service? Where does it come from? Let’s suppose that they have excellent technology and nobody use it. Are they still valued so high? Maybe not. For example, if there were no links between internet pages that ordinary people make voluntarily, "Page Rank" that makes the Google today was impossible. So I think that the fundamental values of internet services are from users and their activities.
Several years ago, there were services that calculate the value of each Facebook account. I can't remember the exact value of my account, but the value was higher than my expectation. Let’s calculate it now. Recently, the number of Facebook users exceed 1.5 billion. Facebook market cap is about $355.77 billions as of 08.25.2016. This means that the average value per one Facebook user is about $237.18. But no user has been paid from Facebook yet.
I was wondering at Steemit service for couple of months because it is too different from other internet services. Then I suddenly realize that I had wanted to make this kinds of service about 10 years before.
Most services said that “We make great service for you. Come and enjoy!" "Upload many contents as much as you can because we made good service for you.” But Steemit said that you can be rewarded if you participate.
In Steem Whitepaper, they said like this.
There are some key principles that have been used to guide the design of Steem. The most important principle is that everyone who contributes to a venture should receive pro-rata ownership, payment or debt from the venture. This principle is the same principle that is applied to all startups as they allocate shares at founding and during subsequent funding rounds.
The second principle is that all forms of capital are equally valuable. This means that those who contribute their scarce time and attention toward producing and curating content for others are just as valuable as those who contribute their scarce cash. This is the sweat equity principle and is a concept that prior cryptocurrencies have often had trouble providing to 2 more than a few dozen individuals.
Steemit is the project that issues the question that where the value of internet services come from. And if Steemit’s experiment makes a success, the rules that dominate the internet ecosystem would be changed.
I think that the next wave of internet services would be the combinations of services and cryptocurrencies based on blockchain. I hope Steemit goes well and makes big success. Of course, no one can guarantees that Steemit will make a success. Who knows the future of service in advance? (Coincidentally, the price of Steem is going down now.) But even if Steemit’s experiment fails, the innovation that Steemit makes would not perish because Steemit opens the door to the new ecosystem in internet world.