Fallen leaves and new branches of Steem

Over the last three years of Steem, many accounts have come and gone, I say accounts and not people because there has always been a much higher amount of accounts than actual people interacting. As a result, I do not think the churn rate is very reflective at all, regardless how it is calculated as a person with 10 accounts that stops using Steem counts as 10 people in the churn rate. There are people with hundreds, a few with thousands of accounts, but I don't know many who only have one.

While the churn in the fall looks bad, I wonder what happens when price increases to 50 cents, a dollar or 5 dollars. How many accounts become active, how many accounts with 10 Steem sitting in them make a transfer, start a powerdown or start curating. It is going to be interesting to see and it is going to be interesting to observe the feeds as people return with some explanation (but of course not price) as to why they have been away.

One of the observable things pre-fork was that a lot of the naysayers who predicted things like "nobody will downvote" and that "the bidbots will make more" have fallen silent as their predictions were well off base. I only remember reading @edicted acknowledge that their predictions of how the changes would affect Steem were incorrect. The blockchain remembers it all of course though.

One of the complaints on Steem is that people do not see the content here, that discovery is not good, but I wonder, is it any different on other platforms, or do the algorithms make it appear that more content is visible?

Oh, this was an interesting view of the internet: https://www.internetlivestats.com/

And in that view I found this a funny metric.

That works out to a blog to person ratio of about 1:1000 total internet users in the world. How many didn't read a blog today?

So, that is what is happening on Steem where the ratio for post to active account is around 1:4, which is a very high ratio if all of those posts are expecting to get read by someone. I read between 10-20 a day myself, but I wouldn't expect that most users are doing that. While automation comes into play, what is interesting is that there are still about 3 comments per post, even though most of those posts will never be read. Have a look at the posts in @arcange's Hit parade and see what is happening there.

The competition for eyes on content is enormously high on Steem, but many expect to be plucked out and "discovered" in those 8000+ posts each day without doing much in the way of self-promotion to attract eyes. Oh, you bought a bidbot vote and it didn't get you more followers even though you were in Trending? Such a surprise!

How would you fare on YouTube? Would you make it into their sorting algorithm of content discovery with the level of content you put out on Steem? Do you believe you would get monetized and, how long do you think it would take you?

Algorithms on the centralized platforms for content discovery are both a boon and a curse for content creators because while they will discover and promote some, they will ignore and hide others without the content creator having visibility on the process at all. I wonder what percentage of those 500 hours of content uploaded to Youtube per minute get monetized?

What I think is likely with SMTs though is that the niches they create will become the sorting algorithms that improve the chances of discovery. For example, rather than competing in a pool with 8000 posts, a trading post on SteemLeo will compete with other trading posts in a market of people looking for that kind of content.

While this improves the chances of discovery, it also means that there is a more direct competition between content with more discerning eyes making the evaluation of what gets supported, and what does not. In time, no matter the niche, there will be some contributors that will consistently outperform others for market attention because they bring perceived value to the audience.

I wonder if there should be a tribe made for "shitposts".

_{It would likely be the most populated interface.}

While I don't know where it will all lead, I would say that just like all of those people who frantically searched for their thrown away Bitcoin at the highs, those who have left Steem up until the point it takes off will do the same. There really aren't so many of them though, even if the percentage is high in regard to the current user base. If 5 years from now there aren't millions of actual users on Steem, then it is likely dead and there will be zero - or close enough to.

However, in those millions of users there are going to be a small minority of contributors that will be able to garner attention, and there will be millions of users who will not, no matter what they post. But, those users will also be able to earn tokens and distribute tokens on their consumption activities, rather than relying on algorithms alone to make the decisions of what gets seen, and what does not. This hybrid approach will hopefully mean that distribution of SMTs will go much wider than the distribution on centralized platforms, and with more sensitivity to localized conditions.

One of the problems many do not consider with the centralized platforms is that unless the market is large or valuable enough, support and monetization is just not there. However, through owned communities and SMTs, local experiences can be designed and built (hopefully with easy to use tools) to support a community of a million, a thousand, or a few hundred. Through this ability to ditribute experience and tailor at a granular level, the Steem blockchain can become the support backbone for a highly diverse and decentralized user base, without having to encroach or step on each other's toes.

I am looking forward to what is to come and all the people who will have opportunity that was not available to them earlier.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]