What I learned from my first ride on the steem train!
So I wanted to jump right into this and lay down my take on the current state of Steemit and where I think it’s headed, but there are a few things I feel need to be put out there before we hop into that side of things.
First off, I love STEEM! I really do….but it wasn’t always that way. I started out as a naysayer!
I recall being told about the platform back in early 2017 and, after some quick investigation, thinking to myself, “What a cool idea, but my god is it poorly constructed!” And that was that. I wrote it off, both as a media platform to utilize and as an investment.
Boy do I regret that decision! But that’s the way of the crypto space, right? If we all dwelled on our missed opportunities, this would probably be a pretty sad community!
Anywho, having written Steemit off, it became little more than a fleeting memory until early 2018. Then I began to see STEEM articles popping up left and right as the crypto big wigs flocked to the seemingly revitalized platform. Nevertheless, I stubbornly continued to ride out my skepticism for a bit longer...that is, until it eventually became clear that the entity I stumbled upon many months before was now a force to be reckoned with!
And with that realization came an important decision: it was time to dive in! We might have been whales as far as traditional social media was concerned, but being a minnow in the crypto-media space was too appealing a chance to pass up!
Now don’t be fooled, I may have entered the crypto space some time ago, but this was a whole different approach to the game for me, and it is still very much an ongoing learning experience. At first, it was difficult to really grasp all the different facets of the STEEM community and how it functioned, but the more I learned, the more entrenched I became.
Forgetting the social media aspect of the platform for a moment, the biggest thing I felt stepping in was an overwhelming sense of excitement; the leveraging of blockchain in such an innovative way truly opened my eyes to just how flexible the technology really was. But enough about my tragically missed opportunity to get in early on the Steemit game! Let’s get to the good stuff!
What I expected wasn’t what I got!
Obviously, if you’re reading this it’s likely that you're already on the platform and have at least a moderate handle on what the service (in its most basic form) is packaged as: social media on the blockchain.
But let’s be real for a moment here. While Steemit may by definition be “social media,” it functions very differently than the traditional platforms we’ve grown accustomed to. That’s not a bad thing by any means, but then again...it’s not completely a good thing either. In my opinion, it’s honestly one hell of a double edged sword!
Granted, my views may be slightly tainted by my interest in blockchain and extreme frustration with traditional (centralized) social media, but all the same, these were some of the big things that stuck out for me as a first time user:
The Bad
- UI is far from intuitive
- The sign up process can be tedious
- No native mobile application
- Steep learning curve to truly understanding its many nuances
When it comes to Steemit, I believe that the pros far outweigh the cons, but one issue that I believe will definitely need to be addressed as we push further into the mainstream is making the platform “feel” more like traditional social media. I know that many of us are here specifically because we are fed up with Facebook, Instagram, or any of the other data-trawling giants. But to really take STEEM mainstream (and crypto in general), we absolutely must onboard people looking at the project because they see it as a solution to their traditional issues, NOT because it integrates blockchain and that’s the hot topic.
As a diehard crypto fanatic, this was a hard realization for me...believe me! Nevertheless, I think it’s a necessary one. On the bright side though, the majority of the faults I see in the platform are primarily with its “usability” and appeal to non-crypto folks. The core STEEM system I think has some serious potential!
The Good
- Getting paid to post and curate! (kind of hard to ignore this one)
- No Big-Brother entity endlessly funneling your data for resale
- No constant bombardment of ads
- Anonymity is simple to achieve if desired
- Vote-based ranking of content over some whimsical hidden algorithm
Now, what is it about STEEM that I think is so promising? Well, there’s a whole slew of things, but the shining star of them all is the power it gives back to content creators!
As a group that has been entrenched in the crypto social media space for some time, everyone over here at the Crypto Playhouse has seen firsthand the dangers of the absolute power that the social media giants wield! I won’t delve too deep into the nefarious actions of Zuckerbot and the evil Google Drones, but suffice to say that the big boys of the internet felt threatened by crypto and laid down sweeping restrictions on cryptocurrency content under the guise of simply “ad bans.”
We actually covered this briefly on the Steemit/DTube post below and will be releasing a full report here with our findings in the next couple of weeks.
While I am undecided on the sway of bot and “whale” upvotes, there is no question that the benefits of a self-regulating community far outweigh those of an unseen entity squashing content out of existence because they disapprove of the subject or have an ulterior motive. Of course, in the wake of yet another Facebook data breach, the lack of a data trawling web giant manning the helm of my chosen social media platform also has obvious appeal.
It is also plenty obvious that there’s ample allure in being rewarded for your content in STEEM! While I do believe the community could definitely address some distribution and “power” issues, the built-in monetization factor is definitely a real game changer for content creators.
Of course, the concept of content monetization is nothing new. It has been around for quite some time. What’s exciting is the idea of rewarding creators based on the viewer response they can elicit instead of on how many eyes they can drive to advertisers. Not only does this reduce the drive for data gathering; t also incentivizes people to create more well thought out and genuine content, not appeal to an unseen advertising god with an ever changing set of rules.
That incentivization is a HUGE one for me! It reminds a sentimental me of a past when people made YouTube videos because they wanted to share something funny or meaningful, not the current ocean of frantic creators warring with each other over the next advertising dollar.
Final Thoughts
So what’s my takeaway from this initial foray into STEEM? As a community, there are notable issues that need to be addressed. That’s for sure! But man, Oh man...if I’ve ever seen a diamond in the rough! As blockchain technology continues to grow and become more common, I certainly believe that STEEM will become one of the pillars of crypto adoption.
Anyway, I hope that you fellow Steem-goers got something out of this!
And, for those of you looking for something a little extra, our Senior Money Manager has also just completed a technical analysis forecast of the STEEM token, which you can access by clicking on the chart below!
Let me know what you think.
Comment Below!