I have two that I think are very valid use cases and one is exceptionally unique, but I learned ideas on this platform are often copied so will wait to discuss them :)
That being said I think people should tend to think small and practical unless they have the experience to really pull it off. I get feeling tons of people will be launching yadda yadda token and just sort of fall flat or be a scam etc. I am sure billy is working on one right now lol
I think with some proper planning and realistic expectations that really can add value and have a use, so I am excited for them. I also can see many pitfalls, failures and abuses though, so hopefully can weed those out as best we can.
Great comment!
I am completely in agreement with this statement.
SMT is an amazing concept and quite revolutionary too. However, it would be mainly beneficial to those who are doing reasonably well with their online properties. If you have a site that does well, it could be made to do better by incorporating SMT tokens into its interface.
But if you create your own new forum, website or community on the web, you will have the same problem as the average user on Steemit - that of no traffic coming to your site.
On Steemit, once you create a post, it disappears down the feed in minutes, unless you have a very high SP or a huge no. of followers to ensure its survival at the top few spots aka the trending/hot spots. Also, the same authors' posts always appear on the trending pages and bloggers who are doing well, continue to do well notwithstanding the lower quality of some of their posts - putting it very mildly.
Ranking in the search engines is also quite similar in a way, as they always favor established authority sites. The search engine algorithms are tuned in such a way that even if you have the best content on the web, your posts will not rank in the first few pages for at least a few months if not years. A new forum may have much more activity than many old and established forums, but it will never be seen in the first 20-30 results of a search.
Almost all traffic from a keyword search goes to the first 3-5 results on the first page of search engine results. After the first page of results, sites appearing in subsequent results get almost no traffic.
Whether you start an education site, a voluntary activity site or anything else that may truly be for a noble cause it will not gain effective traction because, I repeat, traffic is everything.
Unfortunately, SMT does not address this issue - not that anyone expected it to be addressed.
I am only highlighting the fact that it can work only if you have a site that is already receiving a good amount of traffic, so that you can monetize it effectively whether for yourself or for your community members. Moreover, those who are experts at monetizing their sites, already know how to get the best ROI from their sites through sales of their own products or as affiliates, product promotions and banners, and reward or repay their members.
It definitely is an awesome and unique concept, but I don't think the common (aspirational)blogger will understand this issue until the time that he/she has already invested in creating a forum, site, community etc. as given in the examples. It could lead to disappointment over the fact that even after having SMT tokens on the site, the aim behind creating the site is not being achieved.
It would be great if this is explained in the white paper, for the masses to understand so that the right expectations are set before the incorporation of SMT leads to any kind of disillusionment among bloggers and site owners, especially those who are new and would like to raise funds for a cause.