When I went to sleep late night Sunday there was a feeling of unease, I had just accumulated a larger long position in Steem in the external market, selling off some of my crypto portfolio to do so.
The price on bittrex was ticking down below my average price of the day… around 90s in bitcoin. I saw it push a little lower, 88s… 86s…
I had a look at the charts, there was really nothing scary there, it looked like a good buying opportunity… in any trade I get into it's always a game of probabilities, you win some, you lose some. The way to make money in the long run is to get involved when the odds are in your favour, when you have an 'edge' - like the casinos. This trade had an edge, but I wondered… could I stop out if it went wrong?
…I feared that I had become biased after having spent so much time learning about Steemit and the underlying value…
...was I just convincing myself that Steem was a great buy because there were financial incentives to do so?...
...was I brainwashing myself and letting go of reason?
These questions came about because of what I read and absorbed on Steemit over the weekend. There was this uproar about a girl called Tara who was an attractive young woman and had received the highest payout of the day. I attempted to make a few comments that it was just a temporary thing and it would work itself out, but an idea seemed to be spreading
… hot chicks get votes because all the whales on here are these weird socially inept crypto dudes...
…multiple trending articles spawned off of it, discussions raged on in the comment sections of tongue in cheek articles…
All of a sudden my Steemit page was flooded with #introduceyourself photos, each one holding a card or piece of paper with the date and steemit plastered on it…
This got out of control, quickly…
When it really degraded to the very low in my personal experience was when I saw a picture of a dude in a dimly lit room with a piece of cardboard… written on it was the date and steemit in a big black pen, above the picture was a line of text…
…I can't quite remember what was written, but it was along the lines of a generic, 'Hi I'm xyz here's my proof that I really exist…I like steemit… and that was it'. No value, nothing else.
One of the comments struck me, one of the few negative comments I've seen on the site, but I think it was entirely appropriate.
...it said something like 'I've seen homeless people begging on the streets with signs up like this, all you've provided is a few lines about yourself, how is this any different?. Oh wait, it's not…'.
It really didn’t help that my trade was slowly ticking offside, it amplified any emotions I was having…
...but I started wondering… is this inevitably what social media is? Given all the incentives on Steemit, is this what happens when you get a sudden rush of people to a site? The quality dilutes and people start arguing over someone's introduction… pushing dozens of people to try and imitate that success, slowly degrading the quality?
… The answer is no, and here's why…
When I woke up, I checked my Bittrex Steem trade first to make sure I wasn't completely screwed, I was onside! I then went onto Steemit to see some new posts, fully expecting the content to have degraded even more. It hadn't in fact it had got better, much better.
I read an intro post from 
I then looked at another introduction post, this one from 
It suddenly hit me… this is just simple economics.
Supply and demand.
Someone pushes the boundary and offers something new, in this case it was Tara - she wasn't the typical user so far and she represented diversity and a mainstream appeal - the whales knew this. It's in their best interests to upvote anything that increases the pie and adoption as their share will increase.
Tara had the 'first mover advantage' think of it in terms of a business coming to market first, they'll get to take all the profits from the market before anyone else can get in. They're then followed by a raft of competitors that attempt to imitate them and drive down the price and quality to make a profit. This is exactly what happened in Steemit, until, finally the quality was reduced so much that the whales...just stopped voting.
...the supply was too high, too unoriginal…and the bar was raised for someone else to come in and offer value.
It also left a gap for some other topics to have some exposure, this is the first time I've seen photography in the top 3 tags. This is a great sign.
So, given all that….I can see three long term ways to make money with content on Steemit that really make sense...
- Provide something new and original that could improve adoption, provide value or connect with people
- Raise the bar of quality
- Talk about something that’s on the proverbial 'tip of the tongue' of Steemit
Genuine original content is pushing its way up through the cracks. It seems that when a certain type of content gets over supplied, it leaves a gap for raising the bar and allowing different, original content to push on.
Hopefully the reward allocation continues to work as people are pushed by competition to step up their game and offer value.