Overall Analysis & Study of my own case
July was an awesome month
We were all extremely excited about Steem possibilities and how good content would be rewarded on Steemit, how it could revolutionize Online advertising and good content creators, as well as curation rewarding and strong commitment.
Following the enthusiasm generated by several excellent information provided by @dantheman, @ned and Steem team, All developers and entrepreneur started to work hard on projects.
It started this new synergistic approach that motivated people to build things together and for the community
- The first info was announced : Steemit is open source ! And Piston/Piston.web (from @xeroc), as well as couple of API (SteemJS / SteemAPI from @svk @fabien) were really exciting,
- The second info explained how it was possible to build custom applications on top of Steem, also using the power of Subchains. Key benefits to subchains on Steem, and Graphene technology that inevitably results in creativity, entrepreneurship, project maker moves :
- Advanced Account Structures
- Pre-validated Account Authorities on Custom Operations
- No Transaction Fees
- Fast Block Times
- TaPoS (Transactions as Proof of Stake)
That was the most exciting new project's start-up I've ever seen, as a serial entrepreneur, it means something ! All these worldwide brains associated for the same cause, sharing almost the same philosophy combining anarchism, free market vision, and entrepreneurship...
People started also to realize that the Steemit Marketing posts and good introduceyouself could really Pay !
We had this full self-marketing phase when whales tried to the incentive on people getting involved in the community, by introducing themselves and feeling in the family enough to be paid to advertise Steem by doing Marketing or build tools and services that could improve the community and bring in new members.
This strategy aimed at enhancing competition in content rewards and improving the overall quality of content and increasing considerably Steem's popularity with all the marketing done by steemers.
This is the HYPE Phase.
HYPE attracts people, money, development, but it takes times to create product and value.
Remember that STEEM is in BETA test.
August stagnation and decrease of activity
A new opinion would claim that Posts/replies per day are decreasing for several reasons mostly negative ideas.
- A lot of debate on Steemit being a Ponzi / Pyramid scheme, see bitcointalk topic
- The problem with whales weight and other Steem limits underlined and recents changes on Voting, Debate on @dantheman Negative voting topic that had a lot of downvotes
- The Steem value, (0 to 4$ then 2$ in July, 2$ to 1$ even below 1 in august)
- and Synereo or other competitor arrivals
In my opinion, these assumptions are legitimate and quite rational for a new disruptive project on crypto-world. Steem birth is nothing common. We are like one the biggest "Foundation" working on a disruptive idea and project that could change the world, and things are going very fast on this Beta. So people needs to slow down and breathe. Gets elements to give deep analysis before going further.
The problem with this claim is that it tends to underline the negative side of things based on wrong elements and ignore what is really happening here.
Moreover, Steem is in a first phase Hype, and the challenge is to improve our model, then to scale horizontally to other niche markets. It requires time to enable clearer priorities to be established. Also to recalibrate correctly through the beta , to build teams, and choose the right path before starting the next move.
Begin planning promptly to capitalize on the goodwill and enthusiasm generated at the start up of Steem - and to demonstrate to the community that we know where we are going to. This is the next step.
So Why Steemit post/replies per day is decreasing ?
My overall analysis broadly reflects the study of my own case. I will try to explain why I think the activity is decreasing based on my own approach to the first phase.
People are learning from their mistakes
The first month helped Steem members realize what they could do and what they couldn't. Which expected quality standard deserves which rewards, how to prepare their content in significantly more qualitative terms.
Blockchain immutability and its way to fight censorship and also improve content quality begin to take effect. People did not realize how strong the blockchain transparency and immutability could impact the way they use this kind of Website.
As you can't edit, nor delete your content once it's posted, it pushes people to be more careful, as they understand step by step the concept of Reputation building, and Steem aim concept : more quality, more rewards. All in transparency. With the blockchain's transparency, those who prefer profit without work will have no place to run and no place to hide...
@ekitcho own case
Like everyone, I tried several types of posts and topics to test the UI and getting a good user experience. As well as gets every side of the Steem blockchain to be able to catch the right idea and build an outstanding project. I started to work on SteemDebitCard.com and apparently did not set up the things well enough and was quite naive on how it could work. A DebitCard project involves tons of parameters that require high-security grade project and TRUST as you manage funds. I did post it even before any Presentation or proof of identity. I actually learned that reputation and networking are the keys. If you want to do something for, and with the community, you have to actually work seriously on it and getting involved to gain trust and good reputation. Not only writing a concept the win money and asking upvotes.
I also figure out that I wanted to prepare better content to post than useless stuff that would basically just Spam the blockchain without adding any value to it
For this reason, I think most people try to analyze more than posting. And keep working on their project as well as building links with other steemers.
People are networking, building team and reputation, finding their niche
Steem model is not built to work alone, posting without any followers hoping some whales to catch your content within the first 24 hours.
It requires good networking, building links with other steem members and create/join existing Teams and project, deep understanding of the model and which direction we are taking, and reputation building.
@ekitcho own case
I've been working on several projects. My main project is a new disruptive app based on Steem, solving social media matters like Synereo tried to do. We are building a strong team with @fabien and have a prototype working on the Steem blockchain. We have the support of @ned also @bitspace team with @clains and couple witnesses and devs. We are going big. Also on the market part as well as internalization.
I've been working also to open a new Steem Foundation to help people start their project and every niche. We are building links with @fabien @clains @cass and other people to try to make something really useful for our community.
I've been building links with CHINA and JAPAN community and plan to go to Japan by the end of this month to make a presentation of our different projects based on Steem and open to the Asian market. I have contacted all the Chinese members and start working on some ideas with Japanese too. Some VCs and startup founders I know in Japan are waiting for me. We plan to host Conference and Hackathons there !
I have pause the SteemDebitCard project to gather more information and bring more people in this to build this in a more collaborative way, and full transparency approach. I've discussed it with the @steemdrive team and @thecryptodrive or @instructor2121 and they try to help on this for a while to make this project happen and build a reputation. I had confirmation of a Chinese friend who will invest in this project in October and is building a Hong kong corporate company to manage this. Still figuring out how to handle all these germinated seeds and may pass it to the Foundation to get more trust.
Everyone is now busy building strong links and team and try to figure out what is the next step. So we have less time for Posting. That also means big projects are coming.
People are analyzing more deeply after the hype, and waiting for more a new exciting event
Things are moving fast. We see Steemit UI changes. Almost everyday You will have a new commit. We all realize that we are adapting fast to the problems and the Synereo vs Steemit debate, did actually Steemulate the activity. We now have Promoted content and Boost payment.
But that also means that we are not really stable. As well as Steem currency which tends to be quite unstable during August (4$ to less than 1$ a STEEM)
As Synereo is launching this month, (9th September they have their Conference Start in Vancouver), @stellabelle did come with a now-famous debate that tried to disrupts the global trust around Steem. In my opinion, Synereo is a good competitor. They solve some problems we still have to figure out on Steem. In Synereo, people are Paid to read. That quite interesting because if you read a content and put time on it, even if you don't vote for curation, you somehow generate value like you do on Facebook or any website and should be rewarded for it.
People are observing what will happen with Synereo and also waiting for Steemit to stabilize our model and decide more clearly about Negative votes, Vote power, Promoted posts, and fix a good U.I/U.X according to the features.
@ekitcho own case
With all my project I don't have enough time to read all commits comments or updates on Steemit. It's also hard to catch all debate about those important topics and try to build new teams, apps, at the same time.
I just realized also about the voting power which I agree with @jesta, is quite difficult to understand how it's really working. even for us.
I do also wait to see what Synereo can bring and how we should react to their start up. As I should go to Japan after the 20th September, I feel like these 3 weeks will be crazy and hectic !
***
At first glance the chart looks bad, users continue to sign up but activity has fallen or remained flat. The post/replies per day decreased for some normal reason, and it's not negative. I see that as a very positive transition to something bigger. Better content, less crap, new Steem app, Subchains projects, and Free market using ESCROW transfer that is just released as a new feature, as well as Saving accounts for more security.
September and October will be decisive and I'm very confident on what's happening inside the community as I take the time to discuss almost every project with active members.
If I did some English mistake, you'll have to excuse my french :)
Thanks for your support !
Thanks for the analysis. The Steem world moves quickly huh. I've been reading a lot about voting and the more I read the more it mystifies me. With this latest change and people debating this way and that I've decided that I'm just not qualified to have an opinion on it.
In terms of voting and payment there are 2 things I feel would make a better experience.
Being able to upvote/downvote as much as I want without it effecting me financially. I don't think it makes much difference for me as a minnow but I'm assuming it does for the whales. I think there's maybe an issue with trying to earn money vs voting for quality. I assume many people vote because they think something will be popular rather than liking it.
Posts having an expiration date. Currently payouts are at 24Hr and 1Month. Why not add payouts each year as well? I think I've written some interesting stuff that hasn't got much attention. I'd like to keep working, building networks, producing more content and hopefully getting better at what I do. It'd be great if people could discover minnows and then look back through their body of work, vote and earn money from that. I think it makes it so much harder for minnows to break through when they have so much pressure to find a whale's vote in the first 24 hours. It becomes complete luck. And if Steemit wants to uncover hidden gems then some will need time to be found. Maybe that would increase the quality of content as well.
The main reason is this:
@theoreticalbts commented 17 days ago
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/267#issuecomment-240443565
But the good news is that probably @xeroc had a nice idea to overcome this problem and open the doors to older posts to get paid also !!!
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/339
Thanks for the reply lion. Perhaps we could just keep 5 of our posts that we could feature as part of a profile page? I guess it's a pretty massive amount of info to keep to the chain. What happens to our archived posts?
The problem in my opinion is that we need to encourage new users to Use Steemit,
but as we are calibrating and adapting several features, it's now quite hard to understand the meta game of Steem and how it actually works. Even 'old' members have some doubts about their voting power and how they should use it.
It impacts so much total average payout and people are discouraged to post because of these low rewards while other are auto voted by Bots. It will mostly create frustration
I think all these questions are being brainstormed everyday anyway
thanks for your contribution though
This is a good analysis. People always forget that real competition improves everything. If another network offers something that is important to users, so important that their quality of life goes way up, well, it's time to have a closer look and take the competition seriously. Users are very feature-oriented and we are spoiled. FB and others have so many features, it's ridiculous.
If I don't feel safe somewhere, and another network has addressed my very important need, naturally, I will go where my needs are being properly addressed. That's just the reality. I took significant heat for my honest feelings, but that is the nature of the mob mentality when personal gain is attached.
I don't operate on personal gain like most people. I am not attached to money in the same way as others. I notice me being attached, and then I become aware of how that is having a negative effect. Then, I spend time looking within to find out why I feel weird, uneasy........this happened to me on Steemit. Now, I am not worried about losing anything. Whatever I made, I can make again. The important thing is to align my energies with expressing the truth, even if that truth makes the power players uncomfortable. I have to be honest with my energy or else my art will suck. That's the deal that artists/pure creators make with themselves. That's also why they are not usually motivated by money. Money creates short term people.
I like your philosophical and spiritual approach to Steemit, @stellabelle. I've also been enjoying your posts since I first signed up here a month ago.
Being a writer who is married to a musician, and who spent my teenage years acting and singing with the local theater groups, I understand the pull between artistic integrity and authenticity of expression, and the desire to make money from what we produce. I do believe you are correct in that detachment from the outcome is the key.
We need to keep producing what we love, be ourselves, and trust that our audience will find us. When they do, the money will follow naturally. It's a process that can take time....I still make far more from doing business writing for clients than I do from my novels....but if one has patience, the desired success from more enjoyable, creative endeavors will come.
I see myself as a best-selling author one day, as long as I keep writing what I like. Other people will have the same tastes as me, and my audience will find me....a small one already has, which I hope will continue to increase with future books I write.
I read your post on detaching from the monetary outcome and focusing on what you enjoy, and that is exactly the right attitude to have about these things. It works in the artistic community at large, and it will work here, too.
@stellabelle thank you for your support ! appreciate, and i Do agree, competition does improve as it tends to steemulate and gives tons of information. About Steemit features, it's actually designed to be a Reddit/Medium -like, and expect people to build on top of Steem blockchain different Decentralized App that could cover other niches like a Facebook, or other types of Apps. Means different apps that we all expect to be released very soon.
I do also think it pays in long-term being honest but somehow a closer look reveals that the worm is already in the fruit of this utopia. Most people are there because if the incentive, which means profit, gains, money. You can always use Steemit as a personal blog and not paying attention to other people payout and your own payout but it's not design for this. It's design to build competition and somehow can create frustration and make people stop using it.
But i totally agree your philosophy. Align your energy with expressing the truth, your truth, without adapting it to get upvotes, or the seduce the crowd, thats the deal which will define if you are pure author/Artist, or just a copycat product that tries to sell his self-eSTEEM for SBD.
Money does create short-term people but it also creates some lucky guys that are there to lock the secret and keep the trust at a maximum level for the minnows. But it always ends the same way: Frustration of a majority. Depending on which direction we will choose to adapt to these problems, Steem will be a success story or not
That's my opinion
I can only speak from my experience: Two months ago or so I joined and wrote a couple of posts, and put a lot of work into them.
None of them picked up, and in the mean time a lot of (very frankly) poor quality content was trending day after day.
I'm currently giving this outlet a second try, but it doesn't seem like it will be any better the second time around.
Probably you need to work to get an audience. Right now the best way to get rewards is to get a lot of followers. Best way to achieve that is to produce more than a couple of good posts. If you have several good posts and you promote yourself by leaving intelligent comments to other posts, you might have a good future here.
Your audience isn't going to pop up magically, you have to do something to attract it first. Of course miracles can happen sometimes but just wishing for them isn't a good strategy.
Totally agree @samupaha. In my opinion it's not clear for new users. They think they can win without networking and promoting correctly the post. Building an audience remains a key point in this new economy as innovative as it can be, you still have to promote it if you don't have followers, otherwise it will mostly be invisible, or you need to be lucky
Thats how i explain the post activity decrease because of this new phase. People start to understand and prepare their strategy rather than posting quality content that will end with low payout and frustration
Well that's a real problem. But i do still believe in steem in the long term. And how we can solve different problem in the old and boring economy.
Look when i see some useless content auto-voted by Bots doing 100$ after 1hours, when my post is right now at 43 votes, 0.68$, I don't care. If i do 1000$ it's great (maybe even not deserve that much), and if i no 2$ whatever, What you build here, is reputation, commitment to a long term project that can disrupt an old model. I'm pretty confident that if you keep being consistant with good contents and build your network you will be rewarded.
Otherwise we would just have to move on other platform like Synereo to try. But i think Steem will adapt fast. For now the voting power feature is a problem. People think they can't vote 100% because it will waste their entire power in only One unique vote...
So average rewards/vote as well as total payout will get lower and lower for a few days until it's fixed
Thanks for your feedback @psychonaut, appreciate
Totally agree @samupaha. In my opinion it's not clear for new users. They think they can win without networking and promoting correctly the post. Building an audience remains a key point in this new economy as innovative as it can be, you still have to promote it if you don't have followers, otherwise it will mostly be invisible, or you need to be lucky
Thats how i explain the post activity decrease because of this new phase. People start to understand and prepare their strategy rather than posting quality content that will end with low payout and frustration
I've studied the platform here extensively since I joined a month ago. While some of my posts have been pretty successful, not all of them have. Since I write in a pretty consistent tone and use a standard format of paragraphs of varying size, sub-heads, bolded and italicized words, and colorful images in my posts, I wondered what made some successful and others not so much. It was often the ones I least expected to be moneymakers that took off, while ones I expected to do well did not. After looking at the trending posts, the users who consistently HAD trending posts, and other things, it became clear to me that networking really IS key to getting good results from most of your posts. I've started trying to do more of that, kind of like building my brand on here. But, it's difficult. People mostly don't comment back when I comment on something of theirs, so it's hard to get a conversation going. I've been to the chat room, but with so many sections, it's hard to know where to go to strike up a conversation. I've tried a few times without really being able to engage anyone. I do have some followers, and people who upvote my posts consistently, but I'd like to increase that number, and I seem to have reached a plateau with what I can do without networking more. Learning to network properly and get people to engage with me more here is something I will be studying, and will hopefully learn the secret. :)
The secret is Whales. Since you can get an upvote which worth more than 100 other minnow votes... (in rewards i mean)
So you should get whales upvote, but you cant force them to vote for you or to spam them with useless content or non-targeted ones. Because most people try to do it and its annoying for them.
Building network is the key yes. You should build an audiance according to your topics and also promote your content. People just start to understand that there s no magic in here, good content is never enough by itself, it needs promotion and networking, as well as.. Luck :)
So good luck to you @stephmckenzie :)
ps: by the way you did more than thousand dollars in a month posting on Steemit ;) i do think you're in the lucky ones ;)
Thanks for the words of encouragement, @ekitcho. I've had whales upvote my my content more times than not, which is great. And, I added up my total from my first month on Steemit yesterday, and I actually made more money here than I did at my main writing gig (mainly because I spent most of my time here instead of there), so I'm really pleased about that. I'll keep doing what I'm doing, which is posting high quality content, and commenting and voting on other people's content. What I REALLY want to do is increase my followers and reputation here, which seems to be trickier than getting good pay on a post. But, I'm studying the environment here, trying to engage with others, and working on it. :)
J'espère que vas prendre masse dollars avec ce taff
Je ne pense pas mais ce n'est pas bien grâve je crois toujours à Steem :)
eh bah !! cest quoi ce langue curieux que tu parles la ?? ; - )
I started about 2 weeks ago. At the beginning of minnowunited. Nearly every person I was friends with in the first week are gone.
They are gone because they were brought here by marketing saying they could earn. Once getting here, they were told they were entitled, they should lower expectations, not everyone is going to make money... Etc.
I think Steem needs to evaluation Marketing vs. Reality. It is not just daily posts going down. It is also.. Less active users.
We need to find a way to greet new users and paint a pathway to success, and assist them (me, us) to see the path.
The UI isn't easy, and doesn't have features that people using blogging sites or other Social Media accept. We can only chat and connect on a separate, but related chat site. :) But, yes, I think you have some valid points as well.
I agree. That's why i mentioned what @jesta said in his post about Voting It brings more difficulty for new users to understand how it works.
It's hard enough to suscribe, understand how SBD/SP/Rewards works, now it adds even more barrier for them.
About the fact they could earn and finally end not winning money is a major problem i must admit. I have a friend @najoh who stopped writing because he felt his content worth more than the few cents he did give good Trading analysis. He mentionned also bot voting to other posts that can misleads the new users about earning expectations...
Thanks for your feedback
The readers will make wrong assumptions...We don't have these futures because of the debate! They where working on these things weeks before the debate. Except you think they intra-day panic-code futures only when debates like this happens... A good way to have a feeling of coding activity is to visit https://github.com/steemit/steem/ and specially take a look to open and close issues... I don't see less activity prior the "debate"... Correct me if I am wrong.
You are not wrong i did not mean to link both information are independant and correct.
I've been reading every discussion from github for a while (getting all mail notifications)
Of course i agree it does not necessary depend on the synereo debate but the timing is there.
Having promoted content commit so fast in the same time AMP( synereo amplify) bump x2 its value few days before the start.
Quite interesting coincidence though but i dont feel like its intraday panic code features much more a global vision anticipation
Great and usefull analysis! I guess it will be competitors who force steem founders to make long-awaited changes in voting system.
@ekitcho The "pay to read" model imo mirrors YouTube's transition from rewarding (with increased visibility/page ranking) the amount of views on a video post to the amount of time spent watching a post.
I sense Steemit will need to move in this direction also; rewarding time and engagement rather than a quick "upvote/like".
Regarding posts declining, I offer the opinion that this mirrors the honeymoon period in any new relationship - after the initial euphoria, each person takes inventory as to whether this is something they want to commit to longer term or not. Obviously, the "relationship" must remain attractive for people to do so.
The YouTube model has changed in interesting ways, beyond just the amount of views. Now, we are rewarded most (with increased visibility) when we have high continued watch time. That means we get the most credit when we someone starts their YouTube session with us and then continues to watch videos. They don't have to keep watching me, but as long as they keep watching something, anything, YouTube is happy -- because I 'activated' someone who is going to keep their eyes on YouTube. The worst is if someone ends their watch session in one of my videos. That's why folks can make playlists that of other YouTubers' content, even if they never, make a video themselves, and still make money. The goal is to get people to the platform and then keep them there. Our personal videos are just the marketing arm to bring people in and get them started.
I can see an analogy for Steemit. Steemit will want us to bring outside people to look at our blog posts -- and then to stay and look at more and more posts, anywhere on Steemit. And that's where YouTube rewards content that has value over time, because our videos stay active, with comments and earning potential, long after we have made them. That allows more opportunities for people to engage and connect and stay on the platform. People will follow trails of content if they can have interaction with the creator or others in the community.
So I could see Steemit rewarding people who bring in a blog post viewer and then leads them, or starts them, on a Steemit session that could cover many posts. It's that original post and creator that prompted someone to initially engage with Steemit. I have no idea how you would track that, but it would encourage us, as creators or curators, to get people here and keep them here in a single 'watch session'.
thx for compiling all of this data for us!
Thanks if you have any question feel free to discuss
Nice analysis. Thanks.
it took effort to get this done. I like it! keep up the good work!
thanks @cristi for your support, appreciate !
great read !! i was worried when i saw the title and thought it might be another fear thing !! But in fact your analysis is interesting and i must say you may be right. Or at least i hope so !! I'm not a techy at all so a lot of the tech talk stuff goes right over my head. But i do see that we have some brilliant minds working on our steem plant and we do have to stop and breathe and give this beautiful balloon of hope to take flight !! up voted by little me !!
thank you for your support @gomeravibz
I hope i'm right too, but i can confirm a lot of things are coming very soon and will help Steem a lot.
@ned just published about a Bounty System that will allow a lot of project to see the light :)
This kind of project need time to build real value
think is more people grabbing for attention and people maybe getting a bit tired. just need time to recover. I hope. :-)
I signed up only a week back and it is a bit disheartening to see the posts related to down trend.
However, I am going to try and hang on to steemit, I believe this is long term too.
may-be because are just fed up to read stuff about steemit (which isn't the point of steemit)
yes great comment up voted at 27 percent !! ; - ) I love the slider gives me far more flexibility !! Helps me throw a few coins or actually blast a post when it turns me on !! So i had reticence's when i read the, as you put it so well, perception that we had just five votes a day. Now i can dose my love and spread it further and too more diverse style posters !! So this new feature i am totally happy with !!
Yes it's coming :)
We're still in beta and a lot of things to fix. We can expect a lot of new updates in september
You're right. But they will come back. If you stop use an App for a while doesnt mean you wont use it anymore. People are just trying to get their own perception. I do agree that frustration is real for most people thinking they could win but end with 0.02$.
About Ned / Dan / they do listen the community opinion for sure...
The voting system is not clear for anyone so people tend to vote 10% and never 100% yes they afraid it would spend all the voting power in one vote
It really requires proper explanation or we will face a lowpayout phase and lack of activity for sure
I mean they listen to us. doesnt mean they do a perfect 100% job.
You will always see many things to improve as it scales bigger than the Steemit tech team does actually scale.
About voting explanation i did not look for it, I'm sure i can find some explanation but i already admit it to you, real lack of information for sure; They need to work on a proper way to communicate all informations on Steem features