This morning, after checking out my feed on Busy, I saw many steemians reporting about Ned Scott's interview for Bloomberg from Tokyo (about which Ned posted on his blog).
Of course I watched the interview, as I suppose many already did. If you haven't, here it is:
Apparently, Ned is on a marketing tournament about Steem and Steemit, which started in the far east in South Korea a few days ago, now Japan, two very crypto-friendly countries, and from my understanding will continue in New York City as well.
This, I must say is quite impressive and probably well timed-out, given a relatively low-profile marketing Steem and Steemit had as far as I know until now.
So, an interview on a mainstream media such as Bloomberg, will help spread the word much quicker, and despite what we think, it will give Steem an appearance of legitimacy to many viewers who probably first heard of it.
Regarding the interview itself, I've watched it several times actually.
If you watch it, and I strongly advise that you do if you haven't already, please watch the questions and the answers.
Pay close attention to the questions.
- 1st interviewer: How does it work?
- 1st interviewer: What is the business model?
- 1st interviewer: How do you earn money to pay for posts?
- 1st interviewer: Where is the revenue coming from?
- 1st interviewer: What's your plan for improving the quality on the platform on the content side and how do you compete with the likes of Reddit and Instagram?
I wonder if they actually researched this one or it was served to them! I'm glad Ned didn't dispute there's a problem here and that there will be more software updates coming up to deal with this issue. - 2nd interviewer: I wanted to be clear about the business model, so people write these articles and then it's depending on the number of clicks, on the number of views, that's how they are paid then in Steem?
- 2nd interviewer: So, people cash out afterwards [after rewards have been distributed], that's how they're able to generate that revenue then?
- 2nd interviewer: So, could you see something like this business model working with other social networks, I mean thinking about Facebook for instance, which is so dependent on the advertising model, could you see something like what you are building fitting into Facebook?
What do you see here? These are questions anyone who has no idea what Steem or Steemit is would ask. It's great these kind of questions are asked instead of more informed ones. Regular Joe wants to hear answers to such questions, and not blockchain theory.
On the other hand, the last question is a perfect example of humankind's inability to easily break out of comfort zones. The interviewer seems to like what she hears about Steem's business model, but she would probably stick with Facebook, if Zuckerberg would adopt the same business model on his platform. It's hard to be second, even if you started a revolution...
In my opinion, Ned tries to give correct answers (which cannot be disputed by someone who knows what Steem is), but using relatively layman terms too. Hopefully they are clear and enticing enough for the regular Joe.
Looking forward for future updates on Ned's tournament, wherever it may be the next stop!