Direct link to the blog:
http://avc.com/2016/07/some-thoughts-on-steem/
Full text
About a year ago, in the middle of the Reddit soap opera that played out last summer, I wrote a post about how someone could (and would) build something like Reddit on the blockchain.
A number of developers and entrepreneurs have done that and the one that has garnered the most interest is called Steem.
The community is still small and the links are still a bit all over the place. But things are happening at Steem and I think its worth paying attention to.
At the heart of Steem is a tipping system, called Steem Power, based on a crypto-currency called Steem. All of this runs on the Steem Blockchain.
Readers can buy Steem Power with Bitcoin and then they can tip posters who receive Steem Power. Steem Power can be converted into Steem through a mechanism I don’t really understand to be honest.
So unlike Reddit, where posters receive no compensation other than upvotes, on Steem upvotes are done with money.
Steem is traded like other crypto-currencies, and currently has a market cap of $287mm. That feels a little bit ahead of itself (Reddit was valued at $500mm a couple years ago), but markets go up and they go down. We will see where the Steem market cap goes from here.
Another thing that is interesting about this whole model is that Steem can finance itself, the cost of its team, an office, bandwidth, servers, etc by selling Steem vs selling equity.
This is the Decentralized Autonomous Organization model that many blockchain entrepreneurs are following today.
So if you like the idea of Steem, and want to back this company, all you have to do is buy some Steem, some of which you might be buying from the Company. And if you change your mind, you can sell your Steem and move on.
I think Steem is a really interesting experiment that may turn into a really nice business. The Steem founders are experimenting in multiple dimensions at the same time. They are trying a “paid” model vs a “free” model for curating a content discovery engine. That’s interesting. They are using blockchain technology vs some centralized system to build all of this. That’s interesting. They could finance this business via their users vs VC or something else. That’s interesting. And their users can participate in the value creation, if this turns out to be valuable. And that is interesting.
I am rooting for Steem. They have some things to get right and watch out for (including the rapid rise in the value of Steem which is concerning) and I hope they take steps to avoid the “dollar/hype cycle” I talked about in this post. That is one of the great challenges with this whole DAO model of starting and building a company. But someone is going to figure this out. The Steem founders have already figured out a few things which I am sure others will now emulate. And that is what is great about experiments, even if they fail. We learn something. And when they are done in public more of us learn something.
Fred Wilson (imaginary quote that complements the article): "Someone posted a news article about me being bullish on steem and got 12k. That's interesting."
Wha?? The link to the article and text is in the OP. I thought the idea was to not take others creative content and to send Steemit users to the original sites that hold the content so that those sites will get hits/views. This is why @kevinpham20 didn't just post the full text in his post, I assume.
Then someone posts the full article in a reply and gets a lot of votes for doing what the original poster thought wasn't appropriate and ends up getting rewarded for it.
I've seen people on Steemit.com suggest that it's ok to link to YouTube content, because those channels are getting views and therefore money they wouldn't get otherwise. Well, if people are going to just copy and paste other people's content for convenience, what are the remaining arguments for this practice not being plagiarism?
I know it's still the wild west and proper etiquette is not clear, so I'm just adding my 0.02cents to the discussion.
So, we all want decentralization and less censorship, but we want it in such a way as to not have it conflict with the existing order of things. Have I got this right or am I missing something?
Your assumption is correct.
Also @doctostrange, the best way to voice your displeasure is to downvote the comment yourself.
Good point, and I would have downvoted if I didn't see that @dantheman , among others, had upvoted it. This is sending us all mixed messages about what are considered best practices.
Users like you @kevinpham20 are the kind of users I want to promote or curate. Not copy and paste users that are part of a scam to game the system to make millions of dollars off of the original content of others.
Pilfered content from YouTube can be promoted by whales and their lamprey for no effort to the tune of millions of dollars, while the real users are trying to:
Feels like a variation of Citizens United. Money is speech. You pay for influence which begets more money and influence.
I really want to see a site where people are civil, are rewarded on merit, and create new original content. That is the promise of Steemit.com, but we aren't close to that right now. It's being exploited in a huge money grab. Hopefully, the ship can right its course before the damage done prevents it from avoiding crashing in to the rocks.
@doctorstrange I felt uneasy voting against whales as well. Until I realized that we're all on the same team. If I justify logically that my vote was done in the best interest of Steemit, they'd understand. Our interests are all aligned and no one is infallible, even whales ;)
Interesting content -keep it coming
wow this post really steemrolled.
Absolutely!
Defnitely! 2
Defnitely!
merkle tree
Is this inherently Flawed..
appears to be a spamming thing.
No wonder why this comment got so much dough, dantheman liked it...
I agree, it will be next success story similar to Facebook and more rewarding than other social media platforms. Guys party has just begun.. Lets roll !
It is very interesting only the first steps have to explained properly so everybody can easily understand what to do. Then i guess the wave is unstoppable and Pages like Facebook have to think about to share in the future some bucks with the comuntity.
keep it coming
Very well thought-out. The market cap is concerning, although, this isn't REDDIT. It's way, way different in the fact that content establishes a value based on market participation, immediately. Apples to apples, not really. As an expert underwriter, I do agree with many of Fred's spot-on points. Rather, I think Steem is creating, literally making it up as we go along, a new valuation model that is beyond LTV. Think about it, I can utilize Steem for our various businesses online and offline to "blend" my customer acquisition costs using full-cost accounting.
There is nothing like that in the world that allows me or my team to publish content, monetize that content and then create leads for structuring $100M deals. I'm sure this post - https://steemit.com/solar/@joshuanboles/closing-usd100m-deals-for-breakfast-is-not-fucking-easy - will end up with at least one phone call, or hopefully many, that will result in a deal closed. Just nothing like it that I know of...
Ah interesting thanks for posting the full text, it was not clear to me from skimming the article that Fred wrote more.
For those wondering:
Fred Wilson is an early investor of Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Zynga & Kickstarter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Wilson_(financier)
We're in pretty good company.
HUGE NEWS: 2nd Largest CryptoExchange Poloniex has added STEEM TRADING!! Price Increase incoming!! https://steemit.com/news/@camelbe/huge-news-2nd-biggest-cryptocurrency-exchange-poloniex-just-added-steem-trading-mass-adoption-incoming
steemit, poloniex a good steering
bump
A man in Utah discovered $45,000 (£28,000) stuffed into tins and boxes in the attic of the new home he had just bought – and gave the money back to the previous owner's six children.
Josh Ferrin was exploring the house he had just bought when he made the discovery.
"I freaked out, locked it my car, and called my wife to tell her she wouldn't believe what I had found," said Mr Ferrin, who works as an artist for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City.
Along with his wife and children, they spread out thousands of notes on a table, separating the bundles one by one.
They stopped counting at $40,000.
Despite being tempted to keep the money to help him pay for mounting bills and broken down car, Mr Ferrin sought out the children of the home's previous owner, who had died, and gave them the money.
"I'm not perfect, and I wish I could say there was never any doubt in my mind.
We knew we had to give it back, but it doesn't mean I didn't think about our car in need of repairs, how we would love to adopt a child and aren't able to do that right now, or fix up our outdated house that we just bought," he said.
"But the money wasn't ours to keep and I don't believe you get a chance very often to do something radically honest, to do something ridiculously awesome for someone else and that is a lesson I hope to teach to my children."
WTF is this? $300 just for copying shit (and the link was also in the article already)? Can we get 200 downvotes on this comment from @sune pls? Don't let him get away with it! And why did @dantheman and others vote on this? Shouldn't they down vote this to punish bad content to give the right example? Aren't they supposed to represent quality because of their insanely large STEEM POWER? I'm actually getting really pissed off right now.
I agree, which is why I downvoted. We shouldn't be setting a precedent by rewarding people that literally copy and paste other people's content.
Is the avc blog yours Kevin?
CG
I don't mind copy/paste if it's clear that it is copied & the link to the original exists. There is value in bringing this content to steem. I (and others) may not have come across the link any other way. (But not $12k worth. That's hilarious. I hope the largest whales diversify themselves soon.)
How does what I said merit a downvote? Come on. Are we advocating censorship here?
correct..
absolutely!
funny enough I have created a couple of posts copy/paste and I didn't get 1 cent... this guy got already 11k+$ how funny is it?
Wow, this blew up. It was just meant as a friendly comment, so that people who don't like visiting unknown websites could read the article. (This is cryptoland, and people are often paranoid clicking links to unknown sites - with good reason)
As far as I remember, you didn't link to the original blog in your first edit Kevin. That's why I linked it with the text. I'm not claiming to have written the text, and therefore thought it was okay to copy the text into a comment. (I'm not making an entirely new post for it.)
I'm sorry if I stepped over somebodies toes, but clearly a lot of people appreciated being able to read the article on Steem.
.
Really living up to your username, huh? :-)