To me what’s exciting about Steemit than Steemit itself is the fact that we as a community are at the forefront of the massive amounts of disruption this new technology will cause. Today, I’d like to share my thoughts on what Facebook should learn from Steemit and whether they will or can do anything to remain the big dog in social media. I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments section below.
When I first started thinking about how social media giants may change their business model as a result of Steemit, (as in pay their users for their work on the network) I immediately threw Facebook off the list being the enormous profit-driven corporation that they have become. As a publicly traded company, a change to their business model which would result in less profit would be resisted top to bottom. However, Facebook has been innovative in their evolution and I’ve come to realize that many of the key components to make such shift are in place if they wanted. Let’s take a look.
- They have a blogging platform, video uploading, and a live streaming feature.
- A content curation algorithm based on likes, comments, and shares.
- Facebook Instant Articles encourages publishers to publish unique content behind the closed wall of Facebook's network.
- They have their own advertisement system.
- If you haven’t noticed, they even have a feature which allows you to send and receive money.
Let's not forget that currently, as the highest valued social network on this planet, a lot's at stake for Facebook. They have smart people working there and have the technological and financial capacity to go in any direction they desire. It'll be interesting to see what they do and only time will tell.
Regardless of what Facebook does, blockchains like Steem and Ethereum have opened up opportunities to create something better than Facebook. For example, Akasha (http://akasha.world/) a decentralized and censorship-free social network is under development on Ethereum. However, the reason why people don't ditch Facebook is because there's not much reason to. Everybody’s on it, it has robust features, and content in their feed keeps most users entertained. In other words, the platform which will disrupt Facebook would need a very attractive value proposition on top of what Facebook already offers. I’ll write more on this in a future post. You may also be wondering why I'm focused on disrupting Facebook so I’d also like to write about that as well.
That's it for today. Thanks for reading and let’s all keep on Steemin’!
Even if you’re a minnow like me and our upvotes don't translate to $, your votes genuinely matter to me. Writing has been a huge fear of mine throughout my life but I write now because I found it helps with my PTSD and depression. It's hard to be depressed when you're forced to focus all of your thoughts into the what you're writing. Ironically, being subpar at writing and it taking longer than most people has made it more enjoyable for me. lol If you enjoyed reading this and would like to hear more of my thoughts in the future, please upvote, comment, and follow me. Your vote will encourage me to keep writing and I'd love to connect with you. Thanks!