Introduction
Now, I'm going to re-state this several times throughout this post: I am no computer expert. Yet as a user of Steem and someone with a starry-eyed vision of the future applications of blockchain technology, I'm hoping these thoughts may stir up some feelings and excitement regarding our collective future and prospects as a community.
Let me begin by stating that I feel that the way the Steemit platform looks, feels and works seem to me like the absolute most basic way to be presenting the blockchain to users. Though I am unfortunately not very well-versed in computer science whatsoever, I still hope that in this post I will be able to convincingly convey some ideas for a new kind of vision of the Steem blockchain and some novel conceptions and future applications I could see taking place in and around this blockchain, so that the users in this eco-system can make the absolute best use of this incredible technology. So let me share with you some desirable functionality I believe users would love to have with regards to the Steem blockchain.
As a side-note, I think these suggestions complement 
Re-imagining the Steem experience
Where is the hidden and untapped demand?
So I already stated that I believe Steemit is not good enough (currently or will ever be given its current format) to really serve the kind of demand that people have for an alternative social-media networking platform and related information-sharing economy, of the sorts we are trying to build around Steem (based on the principle of dynamic blockchain interactions between a vast and diverse network of incentivized users who form the constituents of the Steem community.)
So if Steemit is not good enough, i.e.: sure people like blogging and earning monies, but are they really feeling compelled to give their absolute most towards the experience of blockchain enabled micro-interaction with the network and all of the consequences this entails?
Do individual members of our Steem community want to be able to set themselves up on a profound, deep and complex virtual crypto-space, which enables them the flexibility and control to completely shape and construct their own unique Steem experience on the network, being only limited by their imagination?
That is to say, is there not an existing unfulfilled demand from individual members of our community to be able to transact and interact with their fellow users on the network in the most creative, non-constricting, the-sky-is-the-limit ways, thus empowering the user to not only create and contribute to the Steem economy, but to be able to completely thrive and flourish from a well-rounded, all-inclusive, infinite-potential information-network and cryptocurrency eco-system?
Or do people simply have a demand for a way to earn a little bit of extra-income through a part-time hobby-style casual experience of blogging?
I for one would argue that there is a huge untapped potential demand for the former, and actually very little real demand for the latter, which is why Steemit seems to have such promise yet continually carries this chip-on-its-shoulder, as investors and new users alike fail to understand the underlying value propositions that the Steem blockchain offers them.
A Brand New User Experience on a Revolutionary Front-End:
BlogSpot-style "Steem Widgets" and Wix-style "Steem Pages" Incorporating Composition and Design Options that Allow for the Greatest Level of Customization Imaginable.
Picture
Also, please excuse my utter lack of comprehensive technical knowledge regarding how this would be achieved. I know there are some very promising possibilities regarding the use of side-chains and forks, and I believe the following ideas certainly fall within the realm of what is not only possible, but in a certain sense, necessary to ensure the continued evolution and growth of the blockchain and the potential impact it has yet to make on global society.
So this is my belief: I think we should create an intuitive and easy-to-use front-end that allows us to incorporate various Widgets (BlogSpot calls them Gadgets) designed by our community that will offer us all the functionality of any sophisticated website, directly on on our "blog" Steem accounts.
Because doing so would unleash the full-potential of the blockchain, essentially destroying the entire previous social-media paradigm by enabling users to use their "blogs" for a much wider variety of purposes (think YouTube, SoundCloud, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Discord, all of it in one sexy open-source package linked to the blockchain), and in-so-doing, not only attract a whole host of diverse new users to Steem due to the added functionality and versatility, which would finally make Steem an ideal and suitable alternative medium for all their social-networking/social-media needs; but even beyond this, stimulating the developer community by creating a demand for incredibly useful and versatile Widgets that we could then use to have more complex interactions with each other, in and around the blockchain.
The “leasing” of these Widgets (using Steem) could be a great stimulus not only to create demand for Steem (People who want a more professional-looking blog will be willing to invest in some Steem in order to lease the most advanced Widgets from the competing teams of developers who would all be incentivized to introduce the best and most cutting edge innovations to the eco-system), but it would also be a big motivator to draw in a richer and more diverse pool of app and IT developers and coders to try and solve these problems and create the best value for the end-users of Steem.
For the way I see it: if there was really one fundamental blockage point preventing Steem from really changing the way the world thinks of and uses social media, it would be the fact that front-ends (specifically Steemit and Steemit clones) draw too much on traditional social media for the UI and user experience, and are not adequately drawing from other styles from the internet to expand the range of possible types of interactions users could have with each other on the blockchain, increasing the scope of potential applications the Steem eco-system could actually serve: undeniably making it into the most well-rounded, polyvalent, social-networking all-forms-of-media-tool available on the market: period.
What I'm trying to suggest is that Steemit and other frond-ends are not making full-use of the potential possibilities that blockchain technologies should and will offer in the future.
I contend that if Steem wants to fulfill its promise and transcend its current limitations, it needs to keep evolving, and become a more versatile tool that can accommodate and adapt itself to a wider range of applications and even more diverse crowd of users than it currently does. The eco-system must continue to grow and evolve so that we can realize full-network potential via Metcalfe's law.
There’s no doubt in my mind that humanity has already proven that successful economies can be built around the circulation of information and creation of content. And Steem has already proven not only can this be done in a decentralized manner; it has also shown that the world is increasingly moving in a direction that demands new models of online social-interaction; and beyond this reality, simply that there is an existing and growing demand for this in the world as people are actively searching for better alternatives to dinosaur, legacy, centralized (closed-source) social media.
Steem is already on its way to becoming a very elegant possible solution for a world that desperately requires new economic models that can accommodate a shifting paradigm in an era that is increasingly revolving around digitally-administered material abundance, a paradigm itself resulting from a rapidly changing economic environment where technological advances in automation and programming are increasingly causing society to shift its focus on a protestant work-ethic of "toil" that was prominent during times of perceived material scarcity, towards a model of society that maximizes the creative value that is achieved through leisured "pleasurable work", which now has more value in the eyes of society than the "human toiling" that can now or very soon be better achieved by highly dexterous machines.
In other words, one could already make the case that Steem allows a viable way for creative individuals to earn a digital living; artists/vloggers/researchers/writers/performers/adventurers and of course coders and developers… Any kind of hobby, passion, interest or skill which can now be turned into some kind of hustle or grind and harnessed for the benefit of our community. And these are all very exhilarating developments that we can only hope to facilitate and accelerate.
But; the actual format of the Steemit platform leaves a lot to be desired… First of all, how is purchasing Steem actually incentivized, outside of the current incentive system of trying to attract investors meanwhile not really giving them a good ROI in relation to other crypto available on the market.
Currently, investors and new-users alike have to go out on a limb and "bet" that Steem is indeed the direction that the world is moving towards, and not going to fall flat on its face from some sort of internal market implosion.
People believe that Steem has great promise and that investing time and resources in this network will have a huge payoff; yet this is far from guaranteed given the current way Steem is being used.
Additional thought and work really needs to be put in to allow the network to fulfill its promise and this eco-system to truly blossom; and it is incumbent on this community to collectively achieve it to safeguard the wonderful aspects of its decentralized nature. (Otherwise a mega-corp with infinite capital will just swoop down and do it for us; and we will grow dependent on monsters even bigger and scarier than the current internet giants of this era)
People who invest their wealth in Steem should be entitled to expect a truly revolutionary technological network... Additional promises need to be made, and a deeper commitment to the culture of innovation that has been germinating in the eco-system needs to continuously be fostered and receive the nurturing it desperately requires...
At the end of the day, people willing to invest resources in this platform will need to get something quite extraordinary out of it... Some kind of marketplace that will give them access to the best functionalities the community can come-up with, and they should be given priority-access to the most cutting-edge and trail-blazing developments happening in the eco-system.
At the very least, we should all be trying to think up news forms of additional incentive structures that makes owning and transacting with Steem incredibly alluring, even for the biggest skeptics and disbelievers of a blockchain-enabled information economy…
In this post, I want to outline several ideas that I see need to fundamentally take some kind of shape if this platform is going to keep growing and evolving towards its final form that we can all imagine it becoming through our collective efforts.
Why we Need Customizable Blogs and Widgets
In this day-and-age, it is crucial that we be able to stand-out.
7 billion + humans, most of them soon to be connected to the internet? Think about the infrastructure that really needs to be put in place by and for the people if we do not want to all become the slaves of some corpo-technocratic world order... The global economy is not going anywhere, the only question is who will create it, and who will control it.
Thinking in expansive terms, what is the real underlying future of our societies? Neo-capitalism on crack, with ecocide and genocide for the next century? Or a genuine Brave New World? And what would this world be centered around?
I contend the future of the emerging global catallaxy will revolve around self-expression, self-actualization, and self-fulfillment... What does that translate to? That means that we need tools. And these tools need to enable us to express our true, authentic, Higher Selves... They need to allow us to show the rest of the world what makes us unique in a sea of carbon copies and clones…
What are the true aspects of our personalities, of our mindsets, of the very fabric of our beings that distinguish us as that one special snowflake that upon closer inspection, is absolutely nothing like any other snowflake in the known Universe.
Now let me focus this back to more practical concerns: when a Steem front-end actually allows users the creative ability to customize their own “MySpace” / “BlogSpot” / "Wix" Steem Page, which would be fully linked to their account and the Blockchain, and which would incorporate in one open source platform and format all the functionality that the community could create via complex and proprietary Widgets which could all be integrated on these Steem Pages as easily and seamlessly as someone can design a stunning website just by swiping, clicking and dropping on an iPad...
When that day comes, the day that users will have full creative control over all of the possible and diverse compositions of the various elements that make a particular web page alluring, pertinent and relevant to the real world… And they have full control over all the functionalities of that blog through these sophisticated Widgets…
In this scenario, users could pick and choose which items from their Blockchain Account they want to display… We could make compilations and playlists of our favorite shared content, the stuff we’re most proud of and want to display to the whole world first and foremost…
Imagine I want to release my hip-hop album on the blockchain, which would in reality be 12 separate posts to DSound for each individual track, and I then wanted to group it all together under a "Music Widget" which renders DSound audio files directly available on my Steem Page, in a specific folder/playlist that has the name of my album, and then all the songs in the right order… Even if the songs had to be published one by one on DSound, and they may not have been published in chronological order…
A Widget that allowed me to go and pick and choose all the relevant blog posts and organize them in any way I see fit. A Widget that allowed other users to listen to the audio file and upvote it directly on the main page of my Steem Page without the need to be re-directed all over God's Earth to the other front-ends (thanks to these sophisticated Widgets that integrate and connect the whole blockchain with all the software and services built on top of it, giving the user full control over their interactions in a never-seen-before manner...)
I mean how much more professional and incredible would this make the blockchain for users from every strata of society? Suddenly, a Steem account could be like a YouTube-MySpace-SoundCloud-LinkedIn-Blogspot paradise that offers every member complete digital freedom to directly interact and transact with their fellow community of users…
Whether it be Widgets regarding videos and video series, or songs and albums… A widget that would allow the content of DTube and DSound to be played on a user’s blog page, right there, without needing to be redirected... It could all be right there, on a new, re-imagined, completely over-hauled free and open source front-end…
This would or at least could trump absolutely all the existing services in one collective and sweeping blow to the existing internet structure… By truly creating that open-source, free and fair platform that everybody can use and which is adaptable and suitable to everybody’s needs and wants.
Some additional Widget suggestions for your consideration:
A Widget for “Featured Stories”; our most meaningful posts that had the biggest impact on the community… We could pick and choose them to showcase what our blogging is really all about…
An "Instagram" Widget for hosting our pictures or any other visual digital information.
Then we could have a Widget for Sub-Series: “Political Rantings” (all our political rant blog posts), “Crypto News” (all our genius insights regarding cryptocurrency), or “Philosophical Musings” (our more abstract and contemplative pieces of writing)… You get the point.
Make it so that we can exercise a great degree of control over the way our blog and its contents are presented to the world. This would make it a much more dynamic and professional tool, and would definitely be a huge bump to the value of Steem if this could be executed…
There could be a Widget that simply displays our “Feed”… Other users you could take a look at our own personal feed from the Widget on our blog. There could be a Widget for absolutely every way of accessing and thinking about the blockchain.
Fuck, probably could integrate a “Discord Server/Group Chat” Widget/Plug-In that could allow people to directly message us from our Blog page to our Discord…
A company (or brave individual / group of individuals) that offered encrypted instant messaging via Open Whisper Systems could offer a Widget for Steem, crap, there could be several competing instant messaging Widgets which would ensure reasonable prices and a dynamic economy driven by innovation and efficiency.
Developers could start selling/leasing their custom-made Widgets in exchange for Steem. Designers and illustrators could make “theme templates” and “blog skins” and other types of designs that would impact the actual shape, feel and look of the Widgets and individual Steem Pages…
The Key Is This: It should be designed in a block, plug-and-play type of way like a Wix website. Just drag here, pull there, and click here to add Widget. Click the little cogwheel in the corner to edit the settings… Have a Widget Shop that developers can upload their programs to… That type of stuff… Something in the middle of the existing Wix format and the existing Blogspot format.
Towards Integrating Shop-Functions in the Blockchain?
Steem-Paywalls
I think this would probably be a back-end fork or require some sort of side-chain. Yet I believe this idea is absolutely vital to encourage transacting within the network: make it so that there is some content that we can post to the Blockchain which is encrypted, and the only way to decrypt this data and make it available to the user is to make some form of payment (maybe a monthly subscription, one-time payment, what-ever) on that person’s account which unlocks the content behind the pay wall and makes it available in all kinds of formats for download and usage, etc.
Say for example I am a graphic designer, and I design logos and want to do branding work for other users on the network. A Widget could be displayed on my Steem Page, and upon clicking it, several options could be displayed. "Existing works for sale", "New Commissions", etc.
Each could redirect to a specific command I want other users who would like to purchase my services to execute. In one case, a "send Steem to [
That way, specific kinds of users, maybe who don’t want to necessarily make a blog post can still sell services over the Steem blockchain. Think of any kind of information based service as potentially creating demand, real economic demand, for Steem.
Customized video tutorials showing how to do things online, written guides, poetry collections, music albums, video-series, personalized services like designing and illustration, voice-over work for documentaries… I mean, is the sky not the limit with this technology?
I have absolutely no idea how one could possibly fork the blockchain to integrate this idea of selling stuff we create online for Steem, but I do fundamentally know that if people were allowed to barter their skills, talents, knowledge or anything else they possess in their minds through this blockchain, that would create an incredible impetus for user involvement on the platform.
Any kind of digital good whatsoever… Customized arts, music/mp3 files, really anything…
As long as it was information-based (service), or an information kind of special content, it would be perfect for inclusion in Steem shops.
I believe what would need to be considered is having a way of storing encrypted goods (files we want to put behind a Steem pay-wall), either directly on the blockchain or on a side-chain of sorts, and then have a bot capable of encrypting and decrypting all these files depending on who is getting access.
The Steem eco-system could use this kind of style, reminiscent of a MySpace/BlogSpot/Wix page, except being completely adaptable and functional crypto-enabled media account, connected to the wider blockchain.
And in conclusion, I would just like to posit to you that we have only really just begun to see the true power of the blockchain... That's why I think it's important to try and think of the blockchain in big, expansive ways that take the power away from big (and often hierarchical) institutions and organizations and place it directly within the hands of communities and individuals (often of mutually-interested equals cooperating and competing to create the best possible outcomes for themselves and others).
A futuristic outlook on the blockchain.
This is part of a series of blog-posts I want to work on and develop, but I really thank you all for your attention. I searched all through the Github and related Steem posts on Google but could not find anything really similar to this, so I hope these ideas have not been presented in this manner before.
This is the first in this kind of futurism series of posts, although I recently made a post to Steemit regarding my appraisal for this community, and why I have very high hopes for this network. In it, I began to discuss future applications of the blockchain which do not yet exist, but which we can very easily imagine them one day becoming the norm. You can read it here
Look at this:
Wix: Drag. Drop. Done.
What more could we hope for our precious Steem than elegance, sophistication and simplicity?
Source: Edited Pixabay and a Screenshot from Wix
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors