If Medium and Steemit had sex, their love child could become the killer blogging platform no one could touch.
Throw away your logic and your ten thousand reasons this could never happen before you read my post. This is an extension of the concept of idea sex as popularized by James Altucher.
With Ev Williams new announcement of Medium’s new changes, I hope that Ev has a chance to read this. Maybe you’ve heard of Steemit? I think each platform contains what the other is lacking and I think if Steemit just broke down and had sex with Medium, I’d be a much happier person. I might have to get Ned Scott and Ev Williams to go on a blind date in order to forge this affair, but I think it would be totally awesome if they did. The future of blogging and reward systems lies within these two blogging platforms.
Let’s look at the strengths and weakness of each platform:
STEEMIT
Strengths:
First mover status in the “decentralized” social media space.
Founders are experienced and knowledgeable in economic models and cryptocurrency.
Innovative and scalable Graphene technology.
Payment algorithms and mathematical design is innovative and well-designed.
Has a blockchain.
Excellent monetary system including wallet, money transfer abilities and savings accounts built-in.
Ability to earn interest on Steem.
Certain bloggers are able to be paid.
Curators can be paid.
Censorship resistant.
Ability to scale.
Tons of digital apps, website and Steem tools have been developed.
Provides home for niche communities in crypto, devs, anarchy circles.
Has introduced cryptocurrency to wide audience of newbies.
Weaknesses
Lack of diversity at the top of the food chain.
Centralization of power.
Newbie unfriendly.
LIttle to no thought goes into basics of human psychology.
The “fun” element doesn’t seem to exist as a priority.
Inability of founders to communicate to users in a thoughtful manner.
Miners who lack experience curating, writing and reading are largely influencing blogger’s payouts.
Gaming of the system from certain whales degrades reputation of platform.
Marketing slogan, “anyone can get paid to blog” is misleading message. Actually it’s a lie. Only the strongest, fiercest, greediest, most talented and most stubborn will see any modicum of success. The rest leave fast.
Voting has become politicized: whose ass you kiss the deepest largely determines your payout.
Investigative journalism is shunned.
Whale-shilled bad writers are getting huge rewards that make the platform look like a joke.
Controversial and engaging writers are not being rewarded. See my post that generated 239 comments for example
Organic curators are not being recognized.
Social energy is not being used as a metric for rewards.
Reputation is tarnished because reward system is flawed.
Reputation is low because of whale-shilled account voting and overuse of bots to upvote shitposts that no one actually reads.
Reputation is sinking because Steemit Inc. is supporting conmen.
MEDIUM
Strengths
Currently ad-free or in beginning stages of adopting old ad model.
Very clean reputation.
Ability to block users.
No censorship that I’m aware of.
Writing editor is the best out of any blogging platform.
Newbie friendly.
Professional writers make up a huge percentage of users.
Big publications are migrating here.
UI is clean, and simple.
Culture in Medium is diverse.
Abundance of niche publications that are professionally designed and maintained.
Controversial content is regularly featured by Medium staff
Controversial articles tend to trend and gain massive exposure.
The ones at the top of Medium’s food chain are writers and intellectuals.
Communication to Medium community is a high priority by Medium staff and CEO.
CEO is a good communicator, well-established also founded Twitter.
Medium staff listens to users and responds to them.
Medium’s front page lists most popular articles, based on organic social energy.
Front page also contains a section which includes Staff Picks.
Medium staff contains diversity: many women, LBGTQ, non-whites, minorities.
Here’s a selection of some of the most thought-provoking Medium writers, many of whom write for VICE, NYT and WSJ: Henry Wismayer, Holly Wood, Alana Massey
Weaknesses
No robust monetizing strategy yet.
No blockchain technology.
No clear path to figuring out the solution to publishing content on the internet.
No usage of digital currency.
As you can see each platform’s strengths are in opposite areas. Steemit’s strongest attributes are completely lacking in Medium. If you combined the strengths of each, you’d have a killer blogging platform. Medium has already done all the work in migrating the vast intellectual minds and has created well-unified niche communities within it. The only thing it really lacks is a monetization strategy.
Steemit is trying to recreate too many wheels all at once and I think it’s quite overwhelming.
Steemit is trying to recreate from scratch: a new monetary system, new reward system, new power structure, new blogosphere, new bloggers, new currency, new blockchain technology, new culture. It’s trying to do too many things all at once. Remember, it was Facebook’s status update that killed MySpace. Facebook didn’t invent social media, it only refined the existing ones. Most people I know can only add one or two new things to their existing framework. They don’t have time or energy to recreate their entire existence from scratch.
The other option I could see is if Steemit is able to outsource its Steem currency monetization and blockchain technology to Medium so that it can finally become monetized. I could see that greatly boosting the demand for Steem which would have a very positive effect on the currency. This boost would enable Steemit to possibly focus on developing its identity moving forward. If both Steemit and Medium used the same currency, then there could develop cross-relationships between users of these very different platforms. I think mass adoption of digital currency could ensue and the competition, Akasha, Synereo and Yours would have two competitors not just one.
If Medium and Steemit both utilized the same currency, a cross-pollination would most likely occur because Medium writers could enter Steemit and already be familiar with how the currency and wallets worked.
This would greatly help to onboard professional writers and curators into Steemit. Steemit could develop into a unique kind of platform which is different from Medium.
As it is right now, I’m considering going back to Medium to read creative, high quality, thought-provoking articles, but my wallet and bank account are located in Steemit. I wish I could either move my wallet to Medium or move my reading materials to Steemit.
The other option I could see Medium do is to create their own digital coin. But the Steem developers have already done all the hard work, so it would be much easier to adopt the Steem coin than to recreate it a new one.
Let the gene swap begin!