I think the move will be towards wider adoption beyond crypto nerds using some of the same ideas that make STEEM popular. The difficulty of getting into STEEM, I think, is one of the main reasons for it languishing. STEEM is growing, but 50K active users on a planet with billions of people is not a wild success.
Another reason, I think, is demonetizing. Minds, for example, is doing rather well because of its hands-off approach to censorship. They permit anything that is legal. I find it much easier to make friends there because there is no profit motive. Whereas on STEEM, saying the wrong thing can get your posts voted down. The profit motive of STEEM keeps things clean. But, it is also a form of censorship that makes it unpalatable to mainstream users.
I suspect @dan learned much from STEEM and has been working on making MEOS easier for the mass market to use. With millions or billions of users, it would not be long before whales control a smaller percentage of the pool, versus 50,000 “active” Steemians.
What would, in my opinion, make all the difference is to have private messaging and e-commerce. There is no good reason for me to keep liquid STEEM. I power up all of it. With e-commerce, I could buy things. There would be incentive to keep liquid Steem. Of course, it requires private messaging for sharing transaction particulars like shipping address.
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Minds pays nothing? I can't understand how getting flagged on rare occasions on Steem can make not being monetized on Minds an advantage.
Steem has encrypted memos, which means that there is no reason e-commerce could not be done on Steem.
Minds pays tokens that are only good for buying views. Not completely worthless, but not a great benefit. I only mention Minds because it is more entertaining and lively there. A thriving community, which many Steemians lament isn’t happening here. On the one hand, Steemians want engagement and more content. On the other hand, Steemians insist on snobbery about “quality content”. Minds has no such standards, which is very evident. But Minds is a ton more fun with a mix of all kinds of content.
You say “flagged on rare occasions”. Most people are more attuned to loss aversion than potential gain. Thus, they can be very happy on Minds with the knowledge that they won’t lose anything.
Regarding e-commerce and private messaging, I guess I haven’t found the menu options for encrypted memos. I don’t see it in Steemit or Partiko. With so many smart people like yourself, I am shocked, SHOCKED, that there is not an existing e-commerce solution on Steem. We can all make much more STEEM by selling goods and services than pecking at a keyboard. I would imagine e-commerce would have been one of the first dapps developed.
Where does Steemit keep the encrypted memos feature? Send me a private message.
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You make many good points. I've found Steem to have a pretty lively community. And there is a range of content published through many apps such as DLike, which is a link sharing app.
I agree on the quality content snobbery. Mainstream adoption is definitely not in quality content. It's in mediocre content - by definition!
You're right about loss aversion but I honestly haven't found flagging a huge issue myself. There are some controversial figures who have been shadow banned or outright banned from elsewhere such as @tommyrobinson here. They seem to be exercising their freedom of speech just fine. Besides, Steem is not Steemit or any other particular front end. No matter how much SP you have, you cannot delete anyone else's content from the chain. Front ends other than Steemit do not let flags influence the visibility of content.
People are happy on Minds, not because they are not earning anything, but because they most likely don't even realize they could earn something for what they post online. The whole concept of users owning and governing the platform they use is so radical and novel that most people aren't even aware of how badly they're ripped off on traditional centralized platforms.
The economic model of Minds is something very different from that of Steem. Steem is no longer primarily a social media platform. It's a fast and free blockchain-based content delivery system. It's most high-traffic applications are actually games these days.
I agree on e-commerce. There was a startup called DStors here but it failed on its own accord.
Memos can be made private simply by adding the # sign in front of them. For example, '# This is a private memo' could only be read by its recipient and sender.
Thanks for the private memo instructions. I’ll give it a try.
One minor disagreement about Minds. I met several people there who are Steem refugees. They have some rather extreme views that got them voted down and reputations lowered. They weren’t banned. But Steemians made it clear they weren’t wanted.
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Victims of flag wars.