The meme community worldwide is huge. 9GAG, one of the most popular meme sites out there, has over 180 million monthly active users. There are many other popular meme websites like Reddit meme, Reddit funny, 4chan, Imgur, ...
In total the number of meme lovers out there is at least over 200 million. Maybe even between 300-500 million. Steemit has only about 80000 monthly active users at the moment( Source).
9gag.com monthly active users - Source www.similarweb.com
The growth of Steemit and Steem was phenomenal in the last year, but in comparison to the big players, it’s just a small fish. We have to do something about that. Let’s go mainstream and bring new users to the Steem ecosystem. If we could bring only a small percentage of those users to Steem, the value of Steem would multiply by a factor of 10 or even 100! Every user who has Steem coins or a Steem account would benefit from that. All apps on Steem like Steemit, @busy, @chainBB, @dtube, @dsound and @dmania would benefit from that.
dMania to the Rescue
Over a week ago I released a new app on the Steem blockchain called dMania. dMania is a website like 9GAG. You can post funny pics, gifs or memes. Like on Steemit, all upvotes, posts or comments are rewarded with Steem coins or Steem dollar. To get more information about dMania, check out the introduction post.
dMania is still in development and a lot of features are still missing. Some features are not even possible at the moment, like user friendly sign in and sign up or separating posts and user information completely between different Steem apps. I am confident that the Steem dev team will provide solutions to those problems in the upcoming months.
Steemit isn’t the same as Steem, dMania isn’t an app for Steemit
It is important that people understand the difference. Steemit is an app on the Steem blockchain. The Steem blockchain is the underlying technology and cryptocurrency that makes an app like Steemit possible.Steemit isn't the only app on the Steem blockchain. There are already others like @busy, @dtube, @dsound and @dmania. We need a lot more apps on Steem to make Steem successful. Steemit is a great, but not everyone wants to read blog posts. Not everyone likes the design.
We have to create a lot more apps like Instagram, Twitter, Tumbler on the Steem blockchain, in order to bring more people to Steem. Too many developers here focus only on Steemit, voting bots and add-ons. There are over a hundred Steem/Steemit apps, but only a few are standalone apps on the Steem blockchain.
Maybe I have to remind you guys about one of the most important goals of the Steem 2017 Roadmap
Simultaneously with user growth, it is essential that we provide support and resources to entrepreneurs and developers building upon the Steem Blockchain as a platform. We recognize that steemit.com will be only one of many killer apps built upon the Steem Blockchain, and it is our goal to empower as many as possible who wish to build upon our platform and incredible community.
Steem - The cryptocurrency underdog
Steem is the most underrated and undervalued cryptocurrency out there. It sits on rank 24 in the global cryptocurrency ranking. In my opinion it should be in the top 5. I am sure there are a lot of other Steemians who agree with me. The value of Steem won’t change if we don’t do something about it!
Source https://coinmarketcap.com
A lot of people here only care about their next rewards from Steem. They see an app like dMania and think those meme posts will take away their rewards. They do not understand that all rewards depend on the value of Steem. The value of Steem is directly connected to the number of users on Steem!
Every Steem user will benefit from more apps and more users on Steem. If Steem has the same market capitalization like Bitcoin, a single post could earn you over 50000 or 100000 SBD!!
What about Smart Media Tokens?
Just a while ago, Steem published a whitepaper about Smart Media Tokens(SMTs) and I think SMTs are great. Some people asked me why I didn’t create dMania with a SMT? The answer is easy: There are no SMTs yet. They are going to be released in 2018. There is no release date yet. At the moment there only exists a whitepaper, nothing else. Things like that take time to develop. It is going to take even more time until we see the first websites that use SMTs. Probably like six months, maybe even longer.
Maybe dMania will use a SMT in the future, maybe not. I will integrate a SMT only if the dMania community benefits from it.
There are still a lot of good reasons to create an app on Steem even without a SMT.
If you want to create a new app or website, it even makes more sense to create it on Steem. There is already a large user base and everyone with a Steem account can use your app. If you are fine with the Steem coin and the distribution of Steem, it doesn’t even make sense to create your own SMT.
Everything I need for a website like dMania is already possible with Steem.
Spam concerns
Some Steemians had concerns about the huge number of posts that apps like dMania are going to bring and that it would be bad for Steemit.
The thing is, dMania doesn’t post on Steemit, it posts to the Steem blockchain. Steemit just displays every post on the Steem blockchain. It is fine now and helps to promote apps on Steem, but Steemit has to filter posts at some point in the future.
dMania already does it. You can’t see a post that was posted on Steemit on dMania, even if you post it with a dmania tag. Steemit could filter posts from external apps at any point if they ever become a problem. I think the next update with Steemit Communities could also resolve that issue. Posts on dMania won’t be visible on Steemit in the future, or maybe only in a separate Steemit community.
There is no doubt about it, it is a lot easier to create a post on dMania than on Steemit. All you need is a title and a picture. But dMania won’t be the last app with a high post frequency. When someone creates a Twitter app or Instagram app on Steem, there will be even more posts. Steemit has to handle that. Other apps can’t control what Steemit displays. The Steem dev team has to make it easier to separate the posts from different apps.
Memes = Low quality posts?
Some people on Steemit called memes low quality posts or “shit posts”. They may be treated like that on a website like Steemit, but not on dMania. On dMania, memes are premium content.
The quality of a post does not depend only on the amount of time you are investing to create it. It depends on the platform and if people think it’s valuable.
For example if you start tweeting on Steemit, nobody is going to read your posts. But everyone knows how valuable and important a single Tweet on a website like Twitter can be.
dMania needs your support
For the last month I was working non stop on dMania and I won’t rest until it’s finished. I need the support of the Steem community to finish dMania and together we can introduce dMania and Steem to the rest of the world.
There are already a lot of posts, but not so many upvotes on dMania at the moment. Please upvote, post and comment on dMania to support this project. Every single upvote counts.
It is very important that people see that a single post on dMania can earn them good money. People won’t use it, if they see that the highest post on dMania only earns them a few dollars. I want to reward the dMania community with hundreds or even thousands of dollars with a single post!
You can contact me on steemit.chat if you find any bugs or if you have ideas for new features.
Please resteem and upvote this post to support this project. Follow @dmania and @zombee on Steemit, Facebook and Twitter.
Why did you install JS miner on your site?
I have always enjoyed making meme's done 200 meme since joining three weeks ago.. so yeah I think i need @dmania ! resteemed & upVoted bro bro!
just Promoted this article for you buddy .. courtesy of @cnts :} helping meme communities grow :}
Thanks for your support.
Meme lovers unite!
As much as I love memes, and totally appreciate the amount of work you're putting into this project - it begs the question if memes should be monetarily rewarded from a content standpoint. The beauty of Steemit is that it encourages original content creation. Obviously on a decentralized platform there will be people abusing it - for example, if someone is just posting a music video from a popular band without any sort of original commentary or addition to accompany it, then that's essentially profiting off of someone else's work. They're not adding to the conversation or doing anything original. Does this happen on Steemit? Unfortunately yes, but at least there's an incentive to encourage original work by having the ability to downvote and flag.
So far what you're describing sounds like it's encouraging financial rewards for non-original content. Sorry, but I don't consider a screenshot from a tv show with some funny words typed on it as original content- in fact it's really profiting off of someone else's work in a similar way to what I described above in my example, which should not be encouraged.
By all means, go nuts making memes, but maybe it's worth considering that that sort of fandom should remain on non-rewarding platforms like 9gag so that the blockchain financially encourages more original work.
Just my two cents, and if I'm understanding what you're building incorrectly then please correct me. Ultimately the internet will be the internet and something like this will pop up eventually regardless of what I think, but for the record I disagree with the principle of it.
Like Steemit, dMania is a website and a community for sharing content. If that content is original depends and how you define original content. Most of the content on Steemit isn't original content either. It's some information or media that someone saw, heard or found somewhere on the internet. That's how social media or the whole internet works. If you change that content, is it really original content? Truly original content is rare or doesn't even exist. Every information, picture or video is based on the ideas and work of someone else.
If you post some news from a website or use a picture that you found somewhere for your post, you are essentially profiting off of someone else's work. It isn't possible to reward the original author. That's how the internet works. I think it's important that the creator is rewarded, but shouldn't be the one who shares that content be rewarded too. Too many people here claim that they create original content when all they do is take information and share it.
In my opinion the most important thing is that content is shared. If you create something unique and nobody sees it, it's the worst thing that can happen to the creator. Even worse than plagiarism.
I don't say that reposts or plagiarism are a good thing. But people have to differentiate between plagiarism and sharing. It's only plagiarism if you claim the work of somebody else as your own.
On dMania you are rewarded for sharing, because it is not possible to find out if you are actually the original creator.
For memes plagiarism just doesn't exist. A meme is a joke in form of a picture. Like in real life, you can't claim a joke as your own work. Nobody knows who actually created it. Nobody even cares. The important thing is that the joke is shared and brings fun and joy for everybody else.
The flaw in your logic is that sharing something does not equate to compulsory monetary compensation. There is a difference between a sale and sharing. I'm not necessarily talking about plagiarism.
If I share my lunch with you, do I ask you to pay for half? Maybe. But that's a contract agreed upon by both parties, verbal, informal, or otherwise.
Yeah, sharing is great, but I don't agree that people should be financially compensated for sharing work that isn't created by themselves. At least not without having explicit permission from the original content creator.
For example, you can promote this practice on Steemit by only upvoting posts where the author is also the artist or creator of that content. If there's great content already made and you want to share it, resteem it.
The fact that people are abusing Steemit in this way already is irrelevant to my initial point: Steemit already has a mechanism in place to devalue posts like this, which is an incentive for people to use it. Whether or not people do, is another conversation.
To rephrase my initial point in the form of a question: How does creating a whole platform for people to make money off of memes benefit society? What kind of a culture are you promoting? Even if you don't know who made the meme, what gives you the right to make money off of it instead?
...If the point is just to have fun as you say, then leave it on 9Gag and let everyone have fun - that's not the problem here. The problem is that the second you introduce monetary (or other) compensation for fun that relies on other people's work it becomes a whole new ball game and is asking for trouble in the long run.
I can't stop the internet obviously (and nor do I want to) - I'm only bringing up this argument for the sake of food for thought.
Whilst I respectfully agree with some things you are saying , it can also be easily argued that many steem users are posting videos and writing content that is borrowed , edited , altered and claimed as original . whilst steem posting original stuff is awesome , I can see so much stuff here that is just useless !!! ( with respect ) . People post pics of their dogs sleeping , their cats , checking in at airports ... that's my gripe with steem . The fact that a steem user with great , great voting power can earn you a lot of money with 1 vote .. is at not fair .. the content may be of poor quality but a fat , influential voter can make you more money . Steemit in that sense is not fair .. i have also seen many people ask for steem ( money ) so that they can upvote your posts as they have huge steem power .. I think for now steem is not fair from that point of view and IMO a vote is a vote .., your vote shouldn't wield greater power than another person ..... just like any voting system !! Thanks
yeah, totally - it sounds like you're saying exactly what I'm saying. My point however is that Steemit has a mechanism to combat that behaviour (downvotes, flagging), whilst dMedia seems to be only for promoting that behaviour - the nature of memes is inherently unoriginal. That's the point.
Programmers can choose to not create additional apps and platforms which encourage rewarding unoriginal content. This is why I bring this opinion up.
I think posting memes is perfectly OK, most people add there own captions to images provided on a site to create memes, or even upload their own images to caption and share. I think this is perfectly fair to do, and is a more simple way to reward those who love making/ viewing memes. It's kind of similar to music in that a lot of music contains samples and is intact based upon music rhythms from years ago...is it still original, it's debatable of course.
@zombee quite an impressive profile you have, with a lot of knowledge to learn... Upvoted and Following you...
Steemit will go wild very soon. Am introducing my friends n siblings Asap. Some have already signed up. Right now am working on a presentation to present at our developers meet up on campus. I believe it ll be great. Great work on dmania. I like all u r doing just dat ur name scares me @zombee
Hi @zombee, I'm very interesting with your post. And I want to support with translate this post to my language Bahasa Indonesia.
Can I?
Sure, no problem
i like your post plz like my post
Up voted please do the same for me . Thanks
Shout out to #cryptomemes they're much funnier! If this is not a thing, we should make one!
Red Pill
This post has received a 54.19 % upvote from @buildawhale thanks to: @zombee. Send at least 0.50 SBD to @buildawhale with a post link in the memo field for a portion of the next vote.
To support our curation initiative, please vote on my owner, @themarkymark, as a Steem Witness
Thanks, I'll go ahead and Follow you
@minnowpond1 has voted on behalf of @minnowpond. If you would like to recieve upvotes from minnowponds team on all your posts, simply FOLLOW @minnowpond.
To receive an upvote send 0.25 SBD to @minnowpond with your posts url as the memo To receive an reSteem send 0.75 SBD to @minnowpond with your posts url as the memo To receive an upvote and a reSteem send 1.00SBD to @minnowpond with your posts url as the memoThis wonderful post has received a bellyrub 34.72 % upvote from @bellyrub thanks to this cool cat: @zombee. My pops @zeartul is one of your top steemit witness, if you like my bellyrubs please go vote for him, if you love what he is doing vote for this comment as well.
Oh yes baby, lets get Steem straight to the moon for all hodlers ;)
This is terrific news. Well done!
I, for one, respect and support the power of memes.
You have my vote.
This is going to replace Imgur. Get on board now. Thank you for making this.
Hmmm, you know what, I'm impressed. Bring it on, man! I'm here eating popcorn. ;)
I love you project! We need more projects like this!! If all steemians introduced Steemit and dMania to their closest friends/family, we would grow much faster!
Hey do you have an API for Dmania? Id be interested in implementing it in my app
Sry, there is no API
I like your thinking 👍 Steem so needs an app! It's a little like Facebook 5 years ago at the moment
That's a really smart idea ... you should be a steem board member !!!
Nice share
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Really interesting! Hope dMania make it possible!
Thank you
Thanks, I'll go ahead and Follow you
Ah yes @gigafart and steemspeak.com people like @dreamm and @sargento and @fyrstikken and @thejohalfiles and many many other steemspeak.com people will love to hear about this!
I will resteem!
I think youy deserve some more rewards for this pot, because it is important you really Milk Dmania for everything that it is worth in the social economy of steemit Because it was a monumental project that you built pretty fast on your own and proved that this sort of thing can be done and you deserve at least another few hundred dollars in rewards if at LEAST to simply pay your rent for a Month to allow you to have that month to continue working on this project and others and to call in the big guns and build simple Clubs and Groups that invite programmers developers coders all sorts of web development people who are unemployed or just too young to be able to get a job, ell, we use those and invite them to steemit to see if we can have our own pool of cheap to free labor of people who will be interns and getting an education in exchange for helping us do some actual work, and this will really be no different than Internships today, except we can PAY our people with Steem! We can actually pay people based on how well they do their work also!
You should put together a system of attracting web developers to come to steemit and make extra features an giveaway LIST of possible steemit features and steem gateway that could be done but which haven't been made yet and just let them lose! see how many features we could get into steemit if we let teams of developers compete with each other online to see who can bring in the MOST useful features to steemits main UI or if they can make their own like Busy.org but better, the sky is the limit with steemit! But we need a bigger network of developers!
lets get some Big time marketing going for Dmania tho,, yeah man YEAH Dmania.lol ads on 4chan and reddit! do it man! go on google and go to reddit Ads and purchase $12 or 24 hrs of a small Ad on reddit for Dmania make it say like 'get paid to post memes" and "Earn Money Upvoting on the best memes" (which is TRUE even if the average person isnt gonna get that much in curation unless they invest a lot into the system, but it is still true! we shpoudl put ads up man!
Anyway good jobman!
👌🏼
Please give my vote,comment & follow me
https://steemit.com/@skcbappy/
The meek shall inherit the earth
Sounds fun. I used to go on funnyjunk a lot and really like the sort of energy that humor brings out in a community.
your post is very interesting, I am waiting for your next post. hopefully there are new things that i read
lovely post.
Is there an api, we can implement dmania into some of our apps?
https://github.com/steemit/steem-js
Actually i meant an api for dmania.
Great job @zombee with giving us the proper nomenclature of DMANIA. It can be a little rough for folks here to actually understand the difference between frontends, applications, STEEM, SBD, blockchain, ad nauseum.
In response to your request...
You have been resteemed (sorry about no upvote, but this little fish has been upvoting a little too much and I am building up back to 100%.)
Followed on @zombee on SteemIt
Followed on @dmania on SteemIt
Followed on Facebook
Followed on Twitter
And just because @sargento thinks our STEEM's sister, GOLOS, would enjoy this excellent post, I have made a link on my golos account to this post. You may find it here:
https://golos.io/en/@sargento/bolshaya-novaya-kompyuternaya-pronozhka-kotoraya-zhivet-na-steem-blockchain-dmania
I hope this helps a little. STEEM ON my friends,STEEM ON!
Have a great week.
I want to support this project. I like this.
I keep getting an error
My Post 1 Vote Please..