Before I attempt to wax eloquent about STEEM here's a picture to distract people who may not want to read the entire post... I'll add a bunch more pictures of "influencers" at the end, so you keep the perspective of what i'm saying and the impact it can have on these people and their fans.
SALES PITCH TO A CONTENT CREATOR:
For many years you've been used to creating connections on platforms that stands Squarely in between you and your supporter/consumer. That platform has complete unilateral control of whether you get to keep your connections or not and if they decide they don't like you anymore... that's it... you aren't just not allowed on the platform but you have LOST all those connections. Those consumers never really made a connection directly with you ... they did it indirectly through the platform. The connection was was never fully yours.
It was like a brokered connection... "you two can be friends and read eachother's stuff as long as you agree to my terms."
I submit that 1. This is understandable that companies acted this way. 2. This is about time to end.
UN-BREAKABLE CONNECTIONS
On Steem if you follow someone there's nothing anyone can say about it... that connection is directly between content creator and consumer/supporter through an uncensorable public database we call a block chain.
The blockchain won't and can't sever that relationship the follower has made willingly.
All a steem website can do is decide to honor that connection and show the content or... I guess not and if so they go somewhere else to see it.
ROLE OF THE INTERFACE
The role of a platform like https://steempeak.com then becomes a role of creating cool features/tools to better the experiences of those connections. Platforms are also known as "interfaces" or website front ends.
If you look at the role of facebook, youtube, twitter, instagram, patreon you'll see they all have great tools and yet they all implement that concept that a large part of their value is that you are dependent on them because all connections with fans are through them. #dependency (It's actually smart business move on their part... not great for consumer or creator)
Now think about the Steem blockchain and direct connections:
Then you realize the need for multiple interfaces. Because the interface itself may block someone. In fact the interface may still be forced to do so by national or international law and very real threats of imprisonment or fines if they don't comply (presently not the case)
Sure it's their prerogative to block people... an interface may state that only content that mentions my little pony is allowed on their site. Heck there's a whole slew of interfaces being released recently via tools on steem-engine.com that are thematic in nature and only allow certain types of content that have the appropriate tag. (nitrous instances)
MULTIPLE ACCESS POINTS TO THE SAME DATA = DECENTRALIZATION
The beautiful thing about STEEM is that we have DECENTRALIZATION of interfaces to Steem.
This creates a market place of ideas where the best should succeed and experiences crafted to different segments of society and each company works hard to build better things instead of or in addition to any unique features or small dependencies
(SteemPeak also adds in features you'll only find on SteemPeak hoping people find us so desirable a user wouldn't want to go elsewhere... but we'd never want them to feel trapped like they couldn't go elsewhere)
At SteemPeak we don't want to be the only interface because the story we will want to craft to content creators is a story different from Facebook, Twitter and all the others. It's one of decentralization... and we'll craft the message in the language the content creators speak.
They can use the interface they like the best (we will work hard to make it https://steempeak.com/) and their fans and consumers will choose which interface they like the best.
THE EVOLUTION FROM MYSPACE & FB TO STEEMPEAK
I've mentioned this for a long time to friends...
- With Myspace they gave the tools to creators to make their profile look however they wanted and a consumer's had to experience whatever seizure educing idea a person had.
- With Facebook they reacted to that by saying Facebook INC will decide what experience everyone should have and what all profiles will look like and they can just edit content.
- With Steem/SteemPeak we're saying let's let the USER decide. The proposition is the creator puts out content and the interface/steempeak works to standardize the data (like FB did) but then give options to the user. "This is how we suggest it... or this is how the creator suggests it... but if you have a way you prefer, go ahead." And on SteemPeak we have settings for stuff like default view style or whether you want the slideshow to be default. Or whether you want to sort comments chronologically or by rewards.
HOW WILL THIS CHANGE THE GAME FOR THESE PEOPLE?
These pictures are of people who make a living (a good one for most of them) creating connections with consumers through social online applications. I know they get concerned about how DEPENDENT they are on the whims and algorithms of these companies. I've heard them say it many times.
They appreciate what Youtube has enabled for them... but they're also scared of them at the same time.
They have never even thought of a reality where a company didn't have that control of their connections. (unless of course they are great at email lists... which some of them are... or have struggled to make a private website appealing, in those cases they've dabbled with the idea of having control)
Pictures were taken at CVXlive and VidSummit ... both are amazing conferences featuring primarily Youtube creators. The wonderful thing about Steem is that we're saying keep using Youtube, we're more than happy to publish your Youtube content
... just perhaps trust making connections on Steem more than anywhere else.
WAIT FOR A MINUTE
I fully acknowledge that Steem is not ready for prime time.
I have met with many creators who have millions of subscribers and have told every single one of them to wait.
"Wait for https://steempeak.com to finish up with an important list of features that I believe to be VITAL to making your time worthwhile. I don't want you to come in and just leave because it's not ready for all your consumers to jump in."
P.s. In that list no it doesn't mention rewards pool stuff... for a content creator making 6-7 figure incomes reward pool income should NEVER be mentioned as an incentive for them to come to Steem. Please never do that. Instead tell them they can increase their connections and influence with their fans by utilizing the rewards pool to help incentivise actions of their fan base. Now that's another golden avenue to go down.
Thanks for the post and for your work on steempeak. Steempeak is definitely my "go to" front end onto the Steem blockchain now. I think you're right about the importance that influencers would place upon having direct connections to their audience without needing to manage an e-mail list. It's the first time I've seen it expressed that way, and I've been thinking for a while that the ecosystem needs more of an audience before rewards dynamic. I think the two points are closely related, so I'm glad you raised it.
As long as I'm posting anyway... I know this isn't the ideal place for it, but I don't really do discord, and I have some observations/suggestions for the steempeak team.
I included a link to your post in my recent article, Business, entrepreneurship, and leadership micro-summaries for July 8, 2019, and set a beneficiary so that you'll receive 5% of the rewards.
to be fair there is only one thing that i miss about steemit. the fact that we actually had human interactions here not just likes and shares, maybe some day we'll all be back on it
yap it felt like good old days :D
i feel it could be still, but we just don't have enough of people. maybe in that period of time we had optimal number of people, where it was enough for people to find content and interact and yet not to big to be another click through platform :D
It'll be just fine... we are laying down great foundations and better to build off of solid foundations than opine about good ol' days which I don't happen to think were that great because everyone was chasing a scheme or over-inflated value proposition.
i was talking about good old days on internet before i got my adsl (used dialup) and spent most of my time on forums, where people actually interacted. then i got faster net and got in to the world of consumerism and interaction was just gone. Great opportunities, great things, but it lost a bit of the soul :D
when i got to steem i felt that connection with random people from around the world.
And i do agree there was a lot of chasing a scheme and over-inflated propositions, but i was just ignorant about all that :D
I liked what you are doing from the day one, and i really hope that you will do something great with steempeak.
I miss nothing about steemit. But I still enjoy steem and specifically steempeak. haha
But yes there are some significant things we still have left to do to make this place great.
But the issue at hand is that the foundations are great and really change the game.
i am so off with youtube that i only recognise Mckinnon :)
while reading this, even before i got to the end, i was thinking about something. you are definitely right about mentioning rewards for them, because all of them are making a lot more than they could here with these prices of steem. but i am sure some of them care about their followers, could steem at this time be sold to them as a way to reward your followers? (well with new curve it will be harder, so just scratch whatever i was thinking :D )
is that man interviewing Mckinnon filming/photographing with a customized projector lens or they just started making "gold" lenses? :)
I'm guessing it's just a limited edition lens on a mirrorless camera that he probably uses for video... since everyone there was doing video.
And you may be right... maybe a lot of us want more of our vote to go to the content creator. However i think there are bigger battles we can fight easier in regards to steem.
no you got me wrong about that.
i thought that you can say someone on youtube that is making x amount of money (x is a lot more than 10$ a day) that he could invest (idk have no SP calculator) 50.000-100.000 in steem and by just voting on interaction on his videos give back to his followers. it would be small but i would be happy if i got "coffee" from Pet for a nice comment :D
And if he does not like it, he could sell that steem, so he is not throwing money away.
Reading this gets me excited on the future of the ecosystem and how value is being built! Shared on twitter as well! Thanks for sharing!
Posted using Partiko iOS
Have you ever went into detail on the features you feel would be vital for these creators to jump? I enjoyed the features post so would love to see some deeper detail on what would make Steem the game changer we all believe it will be.
Hi @jarvie!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 5.340 which ranks you at #751 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has improved 2 places in the last three days (old rank 753).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 202 contributions, your post is ranked at #56.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server