With the world press pouncing on revelations of obvious corruption, censoring and moulding of the well-established social networks such as Facebook and Reddit, there is no doubt that individuals with a keen eye for opportunity see a chance to disrupt this business.
Why keep using Facebook or Reddit? These places that have absolute control over content and then make profit from your hard work and great content, why not switch to a new social media platform? And what better way to power such a new system than the distributed ledger – blockchain.
We have seen a few new companies eyeing up this space, such as Synereo, but today one attempt is jumping further and higher like the Olympic athletes competing in Rio. Steemit launched its real payments system which is generating quite a positive buzz.
Unlike Synereo, that has more of a focus on leveraging blockchain for privacy, Steemit uses the technology to pay back users for their content and curating other peoples posts, which is the method of monetizing this type of site. By actually sending Steem to individuals who use the platform, based on the number of likes they achieve and how much of a stir they create in the way of comments. It’s creating an added incentive to pull users away from other sites that are enjoying huge network effects such as Medium.
Steemit was created by the cryptocurrency pioneers Ned Scott and Daniel Larimer, the founder of BitShares. Steem is available for trading on the US-based Bittrex and on BitShares’ OpenLedger. The news of the payments being received as promised has led to higher prices and the market cap of Steemit skyrocket over the last few weeks.
If Facebook wants to survive this onslaught of diversification by the crypto community, it had better adapt, and fast. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook and Reddit have their guinea pigs working on a new form of monetization in the way of their own currency as I write this post. If not, as people begin to wake up to the opportunities available by decentralizing they’re portfolios, Facebook will surely die, and who knows what or who could follow.
How do you think Steemit should improve to stay ahead of the pack?
While I think Facebook will not be dead any time soon. I do think that Steemit will continue to grow and add users from all over the globe. People who want to share ideas and ideals. Not just what they had for lunch.
I think that just the information sharing aspect and monetising and incentivising people to produce original content is only the tip of the iceberg. I personally see already and expect a lot more of the use of this platform as a marketing system. The word 'forum' is from the latin and means marketplace, and the ancient forums included both vendors of all kinds of goods and services as well as ranters on soapboxes talking about their favourite subject. This aspect is something that I can see advancing quite quickly with Steem, since it would just take a secondary blockchain focused on tracking orders, payments and fulfillment of orders, integrated into the system. All the necessities for marketing are already here.
I agree, hopefully sites like Steemit will force some kind of reform and give the sheeple a bit of a wake up call
@lchow14
I don't see how Steemit is any better right now than Facebook.
Here you can see that it is actually worse
Steemit could get bigger than Facebook or another platform might be the one to undo FB.
For anyone who doesn't buy the soylent green kool-aid that FB have been caught out promoting and suppressing opposition against, FB has been an internet ghetto now for at least a year. We may not make up the larger proportion of those who made FB the thing it is now, but it is leaking users like us very fast now, and with a credible platform to jump onto, I anticipate that this is going to accelerate. The rate of development of secondary services that hook into Steemit are growing at a very rapid rate. Systems like Maidsafe and other distributed file hosting systems will start to be integrated more, meaning media content as well as text will start to become censorship resistant. People are setting up businesses that build upon what Steemit offers as well.
I'd LOVE your thoughts on this topic guys.
If you want Steemit to grow and become a trend setting agency then I would suggest fair and equal distribution of both information and currency. Concerning FB, it is useless for distributing information except within one's own circles and with approved propaganda memes.