I'll start by saying I believe in steemit, it fascinates me, and I apologise for any pessimism you may be about to read.From where I stand and what I can see right now, Steemit can ONLY go in two directions. It can either plunge into obscurity, with a dwindling community. Or, it can boom, really boom, and be one of the major players in social media and cryptocurrency. You may say this is obvious, of course it can only do either of those two things, but that is only if you disregard scenarios such as a gradual increase in users or a stationary user level, which I disregard as being unable to happen, but for brevity I'll explain why in another post.
Assuming that it will either boom or bust, I'll say why I think it will boom, why I think it might bust, and what we must encourage for the BOOM.
BOOM
Why should steemit boom? There are two parts to the success of steemit.
- Steem - the cryptocurrency
- Steemit - the social media platform.
Cryptocurrency is the future, a decentralised form of electronic cash. Taking out the banks and the middle men, giving more freedom to the people. The success of crypto relies on people adopting crypto into their lives, acknowledging it and using it. It is only worth something so long as people will use it and trade for it. The more people are on board, the more likely it is to succeed and the more opportunities will arise.Success of social media platforms, as proven by Facebook, LinkedIn, are based on it's number of users. Increase the users, increase the profits, Success!
Steemit is simply both of these things. The intrinsically beautiful design means that the success of one of these parts, produces the success of the other, but not vice versa. Let me explain - if it has not become obvious already.
Both Social Media and Crypto's success are based on the amount of people who take an interest. Steemit is designed so that by creating a social media account you already have a vested interest in the Cryptocurrency by having SP. This is vital. This gives the cryptocurrency a backbone, it gives it that 'Facebook potential' where it can spread to people who would not normally be interested in crypto (such as myself) an interest. It can create a new community that is not already involved in cryptocurrency. If the user count on Steemit goes up, then so does the amount of people who have SP and inevitably steem. And by implication an increase of users with steem is the recipe for success. I.e. If you can make the social media platform Steemit work, then the currency will take care of itself.
Interestingly this doesn't have the same implications the other way round however, if the currency steem or SMD take off on the markets like other cryptocurrencies in the past, this may have little impact on the amount of users on steemit, making the crypto as vulnerable as any other to fail.The point I am making is the success of steem as a crypto depends on steemit as a social media platform, and nothing else. By giving people a vested interest, the crypocurrency can be as big and stable as any other; if not more so. But for this to happen, the user count MUST increase! And if it doesn't rapidly increase in the early stages, it should be a concern.
Bust
If we fail to increase the userbase then why should people take an interest in steem? There already exist more cryptocurrencies, with more people using them. Why would someone other than a trader adopt steem into their lives when it can restrict them in terms of trade with others, when other currencies have more users? We should not aspire for steem to merely be a trading device for markets. At the moment, steemit's users are broadly people who have an interest in other cryptocurrencies, the 'Cryptocurrency Community' if you will. This community is of a certain size, sure people come and go, but more come as they learn about cryptocurrency and the community keeps growing, but the community is small when we think on a global scale.Steemit can fix this problem.
Steemit can target, attract and influence other communities;, social media is the concept that gives almost every community an 'in'. Steemit can push the boundaries and and merge these separate communities together, and give itself a foothold of both social media and cryptocurrency, this is how powerful and big steemit can be - if we play our cards right. If we do not target these communities then we are still only within the cryptocurrency community.
Now I know what you are thinking, when you see those posts trending, that diverse bunch of 'introduceyourself' with unique and interesting people then we already have a diverse community outside of the crypto community. I argue that we don't, we are merely attracting and bringing people into the crypto community right now (with one or two anomalies). My reasoning being that Steem posts are still covering the trending page. "Why Steem....", "How Steem....", "How I did (...) Steem" etc. It is full to the brim. And the reason is, because people see that is the most likely way to make steem, and also it is the main interest of the people with the most SP. People are joining Steem with the best intentions, with great content, but they sooner or later learn that it is the Steem related content that is most likely to get you on the trending page, and as such, their pitch changes, such as mine is right now, the content turns to the topic of steem (it is ironic that I am writing about steem, but maybe this can be a lesson in itself). This needs to change. Otherwise we create a niche and limited community that some people want to be a part of which can never be as big as merging communities and building new ones. We need to be careful not to create and encourage this elitism as it is literally the opposite of what we all want, yet we are only human and prone to group think.
Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot!
Steemit's success depends on bringing new communities in, and this community not devouring it, but merging with them and living alongside them - giving those communities their own whales. Steem content needs to lessor and EVERYTHING else needs to increase. The success of steem depends on it.For these reasons is why I am worried we might fail. How can we help ourselves?
What we must encourage
There will be a tipping point.
There must be a point where the steem related content goes, and the 'EVERYTHING else' content takes over, where diversity truly occurs. If not, we failed. Sure we have diverse characters, but right now we have a narrow focus. The community is full of whales who have their main interest in steem related content. And so this content gets upvoted, and thus due to the design, people jump on the upvoting (curator rewards), and everyone is happy, we all live happily ever after. This is small mind thinking, yes we are all happy - but this is really just contentment.
We need new people with new ideas; Not more people adopting the same ideas.
We need whales with other areas of interest, we are not all the best judge of content on every topic, we can't be, how can we be? Don't let your SP balance fool you into thinking you have great judgement, we may know what is good in our fields of interest, but how can we ever know great content for every topic? We need experts and personalities with other topics apart from steem who know what great content is, so that this can get upvoted, so that we can have equally good curators and authors, less group think, and bring more people from those diverse topics and communities to steemit and thus then we can be TRULY happy.I don't know the solution, but we need one soon because that tipping point is coming, and its coming fast. Maybe we can have a sub heading for steem related posts which may need to be moderated for a while, to make sure steem related posts can't be on the trending page (I'm not saying they shouldn't be upvoted, but maybe less in your face, in the new users' face), because the main page should be stuff which excites you, which is new to you, which you want to read. Not just another introduceyourself from a vaguely interesting personalty, we don't want steemit to end up as some egotisical society where all they talk about is their wealth, their currency and their one post autobiographies.One think I am certain on, We are turning great authors away from great content and incentivising them to feed our ego's, making them dance for us with their introductions, or flatter us with the Utopian steem future. This needs to stop before it's too late, before the whale population is too strong, and we are the victims of our own success. Or lack of, in this case.