3speak is an amazing platform that allows people who have been demonetized or deplatformed from Youtube or other video hosting sites to speak freely. One of innovations the team has brought to Steem onboarding via the use of incubation accounts which allows people that hasn't got Steem account yet to be able to comment on the website and awarding them with a Steem account when they has earned enough Steem for account creation.
Comments written by users without proper Steem account can be obviously seen from other Steem interfaces but after seeing a lot of 3speak videos' comments I was wondering "Why there hasn't been more comments by incubation accounts? Signing up is as easy as logging in with an account of other social media, right?". I have no problem logging in and commenting on 3speak, I have a Steem account after all, I can even comment from other interfaces. So I tried signed out and clicked the "Register" button to see what it takes for someone totally unfamiliar to the platform to sign up. There I got my answer:
A prompt for buying a Steem account pops up. From a perpective of people that don't know about cryptocurrency (let alone Steem) just being prompted to buy an account that they don't know anything about (What is a Steem account? Why not 3speak account? Why do I need to pay for an account in the first place?) is almost a guaranteed deal breaker and I suspect the site has lost potential users and as an extent potential Steem users. There are people that tried clicking "Sign in" button after seeing registering is pay walled in hope there are multiple methods of signing in and those people managed to use the platform as intended but that doesn't change the fact we might've lost a lot of potential users, who knows how many?
Recommendation: When potential users clicks the "Register" button present them with two buttons. The first button should have the logo of FB, Google, IG, Steem, and Twitter and be labeled "Register with social media" or something else indicating that. Clicking the first button has the exact same effect with clicking the "Sign in" button right now. The second button should have the logo of Steem and be labeled "Create a Steem account". Only people with awareness of Steem but hasn't got a Steem account will click the second button. Clicking the second button has the same effect with clicking the "Register" button right now.
3speak has a tremendous potential as a video platform. I'm grateful to 