Nice post. I agree, the quality of content on Steemit is incredible. Silly little memes go viral on Facebook, but they don't really count for much here. The other angle is that, Steemit solves the "clickbait problem", where content producers just create a title and image which is enough to get you to click, make their money from ads, and then who really cares if there is any substance to the post. Here, people have to make content which is truly engaging, so Steemit has killed quite a few birds with one stone.
Welcome to Steemit and have a great day!
Is it the quality of intellectualism and prose, or predominantly the quality that the content matches your interests?
Engaging as in much discussion and spawning communities of like interests? Or appealing to the site-wide most prevalent desires the voter has to upvote if the post games some emotional need the voters have, such as the desire to get others to promote certain causes, the male desire to see girls show their boobs, the "Steem will change the world" meme, etc..
@govspiders:
I'm skeptical for the reasons above.
Both. The assumption in your question seems to be that there is some kind of problem with finding a niche, or having a site that's more popular with certain types of people. There isn't. Actually, that's a good thing, because it helps something become popular faster, and more of those types of people will want to join.
Nevertheless, the range of content on Steemit is also quite wide. People write here talking about art, philosophy, psychology, anarchy, personal secrets, economics. If you really think it's so limited, perhaps you'd like me to link you to a few things which demonstrate the diversity.
Churdtzu your blog posts are an example of that diversity, and your consistent payouts probably reflect that - one of the next things I plan to do is read more of your posts and see what I can learn because you are clearly doing a bunch of stuff right on Steemit!
Thanks @sift666, much appreciated.
It would be a problem if that "Western tinfoil hat, hippie/druggie, nerd backslapping while extracting $ from the collective TO DA MOON" niche is too small to scale the merchant ecosystem that they are relying on to create enough demand for Steem tokens so that we can afford to pay bloggers without imploding the value of the tokens.
I am not interested to read about someone peering at their navel, which is how I characterize most of the content on Steem.
I am reading a lot of it everyday, it is nearly all amateurish crap that I wouldn't read if I wasn't investigating Steem. The great bloggers stand far above, and I read them only when I need to, because they have something important to say. I don't have time to whirl away browsing amateurish blogs daily for entertainment.
I agree with the premise of content quality finding its worth in votes, but I'm concerned with what happens when demand leaves and there is an inability to cash out to all users regardless of an mechanism to lock up their currency.
Yes. When would demand leave though? You mean like, if someone creates something even better than Steemit?
There can't really be an inability to cash out to all users, because the Steem is right there in your wallet. The more likely scenario in that situation would be that the dollar/BTC value of Steem would approach zero.
Because not everyone shares the same interests and they may not find their engaging connections here?
Because the rewards for most users will be less than $5 per month, i.e. meaningless?
Medium reports only 20,000 of its 25 million readers blog weekly. Blogging is not something everyone can do well. So what do the rest of the users do that is engaging?
Which would disincentivize cashing out at some level above zero, because of the cost of cashing out isn't 0.
Not everyone in the world likes Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or McDonalds. Not everyone has to like something for it to be successful.
I'm not sure where you're from in the world, but $5 is a lot of money to a lot of people around the world. And besides, when a platform is consistently allows the publication of high quality content on the Internet, that's valuable regardless of if you're getting paid to read it.
I think you've answered your own question here. Why is Medium so popular, if only such a small percentage like to write on it?
Yes, agreed.
Have a good one
"So what do the rest of the users do that is engaging?"
It's true and is a valid point. On most media platforms, there is a ratio of 90:10 for consumption and creation respectively. But it is also true that Steemit has forced this creativity up, even if it's partially forced and the only way to excel on this platform. I am very against for-profit platforms because they WILL dry out and it this case they may dry out while you still hold tokens.
Another point I make often is that nobody's personal biased truly matter. ALL of these decentralized, liberated platforms of media and technologies MUST come together through time to facilitate something that serves humanity, not our pockets.