Bitcointalk Ten Times More Popular Than Steemit for Cryptocurrency
That’s right, TEN TIMES more popular.
Well it is in my experience. What makes me say this? I’m a relatively new user of the Steemit platform, and have posted six blogs, all broadly focused on cryptocurrency.
Of these blogs, four have less than 40 views, and two have over 400 views.
What separates these posts to explain such a large difference in view count?
The two that have over 400 views each are posts I mentioned in threads on Bitcointalk - about Monaco Card and Straks. The four that have less than 40 views were only promoted on Steemit, with no links provided on Bitcointalk.
Now of course, the Steem posts I have ‘promoted’ more actively through a simple mention and link on Bitcointalk should probably get a few more clicks, but TEN times more? That’s a huge jump and shows the power in the cryptocurrency space of the old school looking Bitcointalk forum compared to Steemit.
Now I understand for Steemit whales with an established following are getting by just fine. But it is not a particularly good outcome for any new Steemit users like myself to have to rely on OTHER (perhaps more popular) platforms to drive traffic to the Steemit platform. In the long run, why would a new user blog on Steemit, when the traffic is coming from other sources? You could just post in the blog where the traffic is coming from.
I’d imagine it would be even harder to get interest in your blog if you write about an entirely different or obscure topic.
Challenges for Steemit
Part of the challenge for Steemit is the difficulty in splitting content into niche threads. A platform like Reddit has a large user base and has specific niche threads to suit everyone’s interests. At the moment, Steemit is stuck on a few large threads, where generally the same handful of people come up on the Trending and Most Popular sections.
It is a challenge, and a bit of a chicken and the egg situation – Steemit would get more niche threads and topics if more people came to the platform, but people aren’t sticking with the platform as the niche topics aren’t getting the views and support from existing users.
I like the Steemit platform in terms of look and feel, but I think I’ll need to link to Steemit posts where I can from other popular platforms, like Bitcointalk, to reach people.