The whole concept of replacing social capital (others' opinion of you in RL) with Steem on the web is interesting. It should be pretty intuitive for people, since the underlying principles align closely with the way interactions work in everyday life.

One might not think this is the case, but human communities are basically blockchains.

"Is this guy cool?
-Yeah, he's cool."

"Huh, you guys think I'm cool? Heck, that's pretty cool. You guys are cool!"

Consensus, validating that one's opinion of a person is in line with others, is an integral part of human interaction. There's no dollar sign attached to any of this, but our brains, for sure, are keeping track of some sort of social currency.

I just hope that the explicit addition of "value" to one's contributions is not going to make the platform too mercenary. Where everyone's nice, but only because it pays. Like I've said, that's pretty much how it works in RL, but one can only hope it's not the only way to interact.

In any case, this is an extremely interesting experiment. It was going to happen eventually, if only because it has so much potential in studying what could happen if the internet was the default means of communication.

It's like FB, but honest about it's intentions. Same mechanisms, but quantified much more concretely.