In my two previous post I outlined the evolution of the attention economy, how this is monetised and how Steemit has moved in to create a more equitable distribution for your attention being used by business to make money. The social internet (internet 2.0) or social economy was the evolutionary next stage after the internet of knowledge (Internet 1.0).
Internet 2.0
The so called second iteration of the internet saw the growth of a few key factors, Social platforms, big data and mobility. These underpinned giants such as Google, Facebook and twitter, that came to understand and implement monetisation of the attention and data economies and also understood that moving away from traditional broadband based connection to mobile web and apps gives them more access to you the consumer. During the last 15 years they have build massively on simple principles comfort in the knowledge that it will be extremely difficult to challenge their control of this space, by sheer force of numbers.
Data and attention
As we have seen the attention economy has been around for more than half a century, and as I discussed in my previous article, Steemit an evolution of crypto, internet 2.0 was the fuel to make this central to the modern power corporation. Data has gone very much the same way. Most of us are more than happy to hand over personal information to the likes of google, Facebook, etc, and in turn get reward with functionality such as google maps, travel bookings etc. And how do they monetise these. Simple. Hyper targeted advertising.
Having captured your attention and by keeping your interest, they now want to create desire. To do this they need to know more about you. How is this done? Simple, by asking you via applications such as google maps, facebook, booking.com etc to track your information. Via Geo location services they can deduct vast amounts without you telling them anything. And this is used to understand your wants and patterns, allowing them to at targeted times and locations ply you with items you would most likely desire and thus buy. So simple Attention + Data = $$
At this point in Steemit
Steemit has done two really cool things:
- It is putting cryptocurrency in large amounts of people's hands, spreading the power of crypto
- It is rewarding you for your attention, making you get value out of the attention economy
Through the simple act of blogging and reviewing other blogs, you earn cryptocurrency. You do not have to buy it or mine it and this is at this time the foremost platform where non technical or investment people can get to own crypto. This can only be good for the crypto ecosystem. The more people holds crypto, be it Bitcoin or an Alt Coin like Steem, the less power individual people and governments can have over the system.
The internet of value
"Blockchain is promising to do for value what the internet has done for information: decentralise control, remove asymmetries, and change the way we transact and interact with everything." (www.rathbones.com). What does this mean. Well this is exactly what Steemit is doing. Sharing the wealth through a platform that is not centrally controlled. By using a combination of the immutable and transparent nature of the blockchain and smart contracts subject to community control, Steemit was started by a few but now is owned by the community as a whole. The community collectively benefits from its success and value is distributed based on an majority agreed principle or rule set.
Steemit are ground breakers in this regard, and it is inspiring new projects like 
We are a long way of and as we see with China and the USA trying to control and bully crypot, we have many challenges ahead. It is however fascinating to see the acceleration of crypot addoption. IN the last week a major online and a major bricks and mortar retailer has announced you can pay in store with bitcoin .... times they are a changin, to steal a phrase from the music world.