Personally, I think Musing should have released that feature after HF20.
It is indeed a good advertising method but let us not forget that the major problem Steem has that prevented it from gaining mass adoption is the Creation of New Accounts.
People who will see the shared thread-post will most likely create an account on Steem as there is no more enticing than earning $$$ just by answering questions online. However, those people will most likely be discouraged after waiting for 3days-1week to a month before Steemit Inc approved their account. Based on personal experience, People hate waiting.
But overall, I think it is a good advertising method to get more people into Musing.
Medium disagrees with the “people do not like waiting” assessment.
Now one of the biggest, and highest quality, user generated content (UGC) platforms, Medium’s Beta was read only for most. Most people who joined and signed up in the first week needed to wait 4-6 months before they could actually create content.
Only people who already had a solid Twitter profile with decent following and interaction received access sooner.
Medium’s “extended private beta” (yet publicly visible) was an absolute success.
That is actually a very good point considering if my "Creation of New Account" problem will be solved, this could open a room for potential abuse like creating one account for questions and one account to answer or something like that.
Waiting for accounts to be approved first for months might filter out those who are in here only for the sake of upvptes. So that is really good point. And seeing Medium is successfull as you say, I won't argue about the quality of their user base.
However, I still do think that people will hate to see a platform in which it takes weeks to get an account. People now wants instant things.
Exactly.
Theoretically, and ideally too, Musing appeals to a long form content audience. Those willing to put in the time to craft solid answers more than likely also accept having to wait.
That said... it’s only 3 weeks anymore and then there will be a plethora of options to create accounts within usually 24 hours.
And people will have always less patience if we feed their wants. When I was 12 I wanted a HiFi setup and my parents told me to work for it. 12 Months later when I finally had saved the amount needed for the model I wanted... when we went to buy it my parents paid for it all. And the money saved went into my savings. :)
Medium has a lot of low quality content, obviously. SEO bottom feeders are everywhere. But Medium built its reputation on “shop window” content created mostly by social media “gurus” and bloggers they knew or could see had invested in profile building already.
A friend of mine signed up same day as I did and I got in 5 weeks, with 7k followers on Twitter and hundreds of replies every day. He got in after 8 months because only 200 followers. He got in when they quietly opened it up for everyone.