Great explanation for where value might come from into the Steem ecosystem. Thank you.
Question: What if we build an amazing mouse trap, the best one that ever was, and still no one shows up? BitShares and STEEM are incredible blockchains from a technical perspective, but the value of their tokens and their overall usage as a DEX or Social Media platform don't seem to reflect that reality. What are your concerns related to this and SMTs? If you build this amazing thing, how will you promote it? How will people like The New York Times take you and the STEEM blockchain seriously enough to try it out? So far, the marketing efforts of Steemit,inc have been a bit ad-hoc, so I'd love to see some solid plans here or maybe even some signed contracts with some big players to launch this with once it's ready. Is this being done behind the scenes?
This!
I agree with many of your points.
In my view, Steemit is not really ready for mass adoption. For every 10 people I have signed up to the platform only 1 or 2 actually post consistently. The rest just quit claiming it is too complicated to use. This is actually not a bad retention rate when you condider the 1% rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an internet community.
The user experience on Steemit is not geared towards mass adoption as of yet. For a content creator like myself I love the platform and will continue using it, but to talk of taking it to the masses in its current form is laughable.
What good does it do to bring it to market if the majority people who sign up don't do anything with it?
All this would serve to do is create 9 out of 10 dissatisfied users spreading their negative reactions to signing up. It need more work prior to bringing it to the masses.
Still, the platform has been doing incredibly well and the users that do genuinly get involved create some great content and communities within the platform are growing organically. Yet, relatively speaking, most people online are content consumers, not creators. This has been the case since the internet was created and I don't see it changing just because Steemit came along.
The protocol of Steemit is a very unique way to reward an online community for content creation and for engaging with the community and the prospect of adding those capabilities to other websites with the use of SMT's is a step in the right direction regardless of the current government pushback on ICO's.
This could bring more awareness to Steemit and cryptos in general to a lot more people through their exposure of getting rewarded on sites they currently engage with as those sites begin to implement SMT's and as a result it should be good for Steem holders.
I'll be watching these developments closely.
Great line of thinking and questions...I hope we get some indications soon
People showing up is going to take some serious platform development in my opinion.
I agree, without any real effort to promote Steemit what value will come of it? It's like when I talk to my friends about Bitcoin or any altcoin they just stare at me.