I think of steem as a constant flow of water, and the more that water flows the more areas it is able to reach. The more steem is flowing within the platform the more wallets it is going to reach.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about the future of steemit, mainly in regards to distribution . I wrote a more detailed post about it for the curious https://steemit.com/steemit-ideas/@snowflake/what-if-i-told-you-i-ve-uncovered-a-top-secret-community-this-community-is-so-secretive-that-if-you-want-to-work-your-way-up-its
I think that the main challenge for steemit will be to reward everyone ( the amount doesn't really matter but everyone should be able to receive some reward )
There is a rule stating that only 1% of the users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
To me this rule is going to be more and more relevant in the future as we grow and adapt for the increasing customer base.
We already see a pattern forming today where only a few percentage of people are actively creating content while all the others consume it.
This is why we need to find ways to reward the other 99%.
Steemsports is a good initiative that do exactly that, however it uses a lot of money from the reward pool, which means that authors are paid less. What steemsports does is good for redistribution assuming there is enough money to pay for authors. If there is too many games like steemsports authors will start being penalized because these games will take too much of the pool rewards. So there is a middle ground to be found there.
The good news is that there are ways to reward the majority who do not post, and the key here is to increase the flow of steem within the platform and it's participant.
Below are 4 suggestions that will increase money flow. Note that some of them may be difficult to implement but I think they are worth looking into.
- Allow users to bulk send steem to their followers. Without the followers authors are nothing . Steemit could create an option to bulk send steem/steemdollars/SP which will be equally divided among all followers. Senders could also make a personnalized list for the bulk send so that they can select loyal/active followers/commenters. Bulk sending to me is an interesting feature, the ability for someone to send 10$ divided to 1000 people instantly is a powerful and fascinating thing and I think most user will take advantage of such feature. It will also allow popular authors who earn a lot of rewards ( thanks to their followers) to give back and redistribute to users.
Reward the best/most weighted comment ( or 3 best comments) of a post with a tiny percentage of author reward. This will incentivize people to get more involved in the discussion and create quality comments which will also benefit author. It will also give one more option for people to receive steem without authoring.
Enable tipping on the platform ( this is probably the feature I think is the most important)
Every post and comment should be tippable with a mouse click, the same way users upvote content.
There would be an option in your settings to chose how much each TIPvote will give to author ( ie 1 cents, 2 cents, 3 cents, 4 cents,5 cents,etc..) Then you would have a TIPvote button on every comments/posts and every time you upvote this button 1,2,3,etc..cents.. is deducted from your balance and transfered to the other users.Assuming steemit or busy has a marketplace integrated, users could become moderators and collect a small moderation fee ( similar to openbazaar) Note : I am not sure how escrow functionality works on steem and if it requires moderators or if it is some kind of smart contracts.
Let me know your thought and of course share your ideas to get that steem flowing!!