Hi @ned. Looking forward to the livestream tomorrow.
My comment is going to be a combination of questions and feedback. Hopefully it won't get too long :)
While I am sure this is an unbelievably challenging time for many involved (especially those in the 70%), I am hopeful that this event can become a turning point where we all come together and align our priorities, and set ourselves on whatever track is going to give Steem the best chance for success going forward.
One of the biggest questions that I think everybody is wondering is: what are Steemit, Inc's priorities going to be in the next three months?
Before answering though, I will mention that it might be OK to say "we don't know yet". Figuring out the answer to that question is probably going to be one of the most important things that Steemit does as a result of what happened.
To offer some of my own suggestions, I will add the following:
- One thing that has not been good about the way Steemit has done things so far is that very little has been getting delivered on a regular basis to excite investors. I don't have the answer(s) to what specific things should be the focus, but I would make it a high priority to try and identify what is going to bring the most positive investor attention to Steem which the core team can accomplish in a short amount of time, and start going for lots of "quick wins".
- The relationship between Steemit, Inc. and the community is still in need of repair. It has been since the day I got here, unfortunately. While in my view things have gotten a LOT better over the past year, there is still a ways to go. I would highly suggest looking at ways that the company can shift their focus towards building and maintaining trust and confidence with the community. To me, this is the "biggest bang for the buck" in terms of where to focus efforts. Maximizing transparency and listening+responding to feedback from the community are two of the main ways this can be done.
- Marketing is one thing that needs to be a LOT higher priority (IMO). The message itself is also very important. Identifying what we want to "pitch" about Steem that will get potential investors excited is the first step. Then figuring out how to get that message all across the internet (especially in front of cryptocurrency investors) is the next.
- The work that was done on steem.com was a great improvement. Although I know the feedback has been mostly positive, I have also seen feedback that "While on the surface it looks like a real interesting website -- you can tell it was thrown together quickly. It wasn't proofread or checked properly... and there are lots of mistakes on it." (source) I hope continuing to update this website is not too big of a resource challenge, and I would suggest continuing to make steem.com improvements a priority.
- I hope that Destiny does not take too much of a back seat either. Having a sleek and user friendly UI as a "flagship" DApp (instead of the current steemit.com) would go a long way towards "selling" Steem.
Anyway, I've gone on long enough.. I will try to wrap it up.
My only other "question" is: Would Steemit, Inc. be willing to present the community with an overview of where the money over the past two years has gone? This would be really enlightening, and also go a long ways towards rebuilding trust with the community.
My last piece of advise is don't be afraid to reach out to the community and ask for help if/when you need it. We are all on the same team, and we all want the same thing (success of Steem).
Best of luck as you navigate through the tough waters ahead.
Quick wins FTW
Would Steemit, Inc. be willing to present the community with an overview of where the money over the past two years has gone?
An answer to this question would be highly appreciated.
100000000 percent this. You had to cut 70 percent of staff? No problem. There are TONS of talented people here in this community. If we leverage each other’s talents Steem can really take off again
true
Totally Agreed.
@ned
In my observation ( 1-10 scale) , we are almost at zero and there is a lot to show to the outside world ( Dtube/Musing/Actifit/Partiko/Sharetosteem/Steem community/so on..).
It wouldn't even take a whole lot of dev resources , so , can we atleast turn marketing up to 3 ?
+1 for prioritizing bringing in more investors. Without it the price declines making the whole platform potentially unstable due to layoffs etc.
My suggestion was to remove SBD which doesn't hold a peg anyway and complicates the experience and prioritize getting on more exchanges.
Perhaps they should go all in on marketing the blockchain and the benefits of the blockchain and the potential of the blockchain and the SMT idea.
They tried marketing a dApp with steemit.com you want them to try that again?
Maybe focus on the successful dApps to help market the blockchain.
Quick wins are short term thinking. It would excite investors for a while, but when it doesn't last Steem would risk being dismissed as another crypto scam. Ned is wise to go forward with a view toward the long term.
However, I would also like to know what Steemit Inc's priorities are going forward.
Focusing on quick wins does not mean that we just completely abandon long term vision.
When we focus too much on long term things though and never make any visible progress on improving the platform in ways that investors care about, then we continue to slide down in price.
I view quick wins as just smaller steps toward the same longer term vision.