Introduction: Learning from the past, but looking to the future.
I have been using quite a few social platforms over the past years. Not all of them, but I did start my journey on Myspace sometime over 10 years ago. I can still remember how great a platform it was. Everyone was using it, it was revolutionary. The networking potential was really massive. But the social media has come a long way since then...
After Myspace a lot of new platforms started their journey. I used (and still am using) many. Although I know some of the platforms are very popular at the moment I don't use all of them. Let me quickly review the ones, that I currently use:
- Facebook - Everyone knows it, most people use it. I really don't like it. In my opinion there is too much "trash" and ads on it. I can hardly justify using it at all, since there's virtually no control over the things that you see.
- Youtube - The site we all know and love. The only thing I don't like about it is the comments section. But hey...
- Twitter - Simple, yet effective platform, that has proved useful over the years.
- Reddit - I joined Reddit about 5 months ago. nd I have to say that this is my favorite site of them all! It's like a forum for every topic that you may be interested in. For me it has proven as the second go to place besides google.
- Soundcloud - Awesome site for music discovery. Even tho they are turning evil slowly I still find it a great resource, and where I get the best and most fresh music.
- Bandcamp - Another great site for music discovery. I have found some really awesome stuff on there and they have a great business model that empowers the musicians.
- Tumblr - This blogging site is pretty cool. I use it occasionally. It definitely is not as popular as some of the other ones, but I like that you can make it look really nice and there's a lot of cool blogs to be discovered there.
- Google+ - There's barely anything going on here. I honestly don't understand why, since a lot of people use google services one way or another. Nevertheless I think it's pretty cool, since it also integrates with platforms such as Wordpress and so on.
I know there's other great sites out there, but I only mentioned the ones that I actually use. We have learned a lot from other platforms... And with that, I can start talking about the topic at hand.
Steemit: Initial thoughts.
It's obvious that this site is in a very early stage of development. The site literally combines some of the best attributes of its older brothers and sisters. Combined with the blockchain technology I think this site has a great potential and hopefully a bright future as well.
So how do we get this site to stand the test of time?
I have been using Steemit for a bit more than a week now. At first I really liked what I saw, and the community is pretty cool as well. I also noticed some flaws almost immediately. But after doing some research I actually saw, that the developers are actively working on the project and the communication between the team and the community seems great as well. That makes me believe that this is leading somewhere. In fact some of the things I thought to be most problematic are already being addressed. Good job to the whole Steemit team!
Here's some thoughts I had in the first week of using Steemit.
- The fact that everything is public is a double edged sword. That is fine for most cases, but there is no way to message users privately. Not everything is meant to be public and I think this is another crucial thing that any social platform needs. Otherwise we'll just have to use alternative ways for private communication.
- The one thing I'm most excited about is the implementation of communities. This is the thing that I immediately looked for and was disappointed not being able to follow topics that interest me. On the bright side, this is something that is already coming and hopefully it gets implemented better than it is on Reddit. I have a feeling this might be possible with the feed.
- The concept of down voting or disliking is crucial to the long term existence of the site. Without it we loose the ability to properly curate and keep the content in check. Currently down voting and flagging is the same thing. But I don't think that's appropriate.
- Interaction with this site earns you money. Yet another thing with two sides and it makes me concerned. Sure the concept is great! However people are greedy and real money might just take away the fun and turn it into something else. It's just the human nature and not much can be done here. But I think this can be fine with proper regulation and maintenance.
- Fair distribution of funds. It didn't take me long to see that some people get absurd amounts of money, even with mediocre posts. Is this ok? I honestly don't mind it that much but I don't think it's completely fair. Someone might try and work on good content, that will just never be discovered and quickly forgotten, while some others might earn insane amounts of money with very low effort. I think regulation is the key here. Some changes related to this are already coming. I'm very excited that the platform is going in the right direction. But I still think, that it would be good to have some form of diminishing returns of profit on highly upvoted posts. Or at least some other way, to incentivize people to not only vote on the content that is already being supported heavily.
These are the thoughts I had in the first week of using the site. I am aware that Steemit is currently in beta, but I want to express my feelings about the platform, because I feel in love with the community almost immediately, and I'd like to stay here for the long term.
By the way, I made about 3 STEEM in the first week. A big thanks everybody that supported me so far! Let me know what you think, all the best to y'all and Steem on...