I've been asked to write a BlockChain article for a tech news website with an audience of 25,000 daily visitors. I couldn't resist choosing to write about Steemit. (I have written a lot about other BlockChain projects for Steemit). As it's such a vibrant and helpful community, I thought it would be good opportunity to give everyone a chance to chip in.
All comments will be considered. (However please be aware that A) the article has a maximum length of around 600 words, (this paragraph excluded) B), I can offer no guarantee that any or all edits will be included in the final article and C) this is not intended to be a tech heavy article. Thanks for your contributions in advance. I will mention that the Steemit community helped edit and suggest ideas, if you would like a credit please say so in your comment :)
STEEMIT - BlockChain Social Media
Back in the early 2000's when Bitcoin was just a twinkle in Satoshi Nakamoto's eye, Facebook was busy helping along a millennial revolution in the way we interact online. It rapidly became a household name and went on to capture over 2billion users, becoming one of the Internet's most influential and widely used networks with immense power. (Even though most people using it were and still are using it to keep in touch with remotely located friends and family, sharing funny cat videos and birthday photos of their kids / Grandmas and other pets. It's been widely criticised by internet users in recent years for tailoring users content, deploying tracking to present ads and like most successful corporate ventures, making billions of dollars for a centralised corporation, while the users do all the work with zero reward.
Social Media V2.0
It was only a matter of time before someone came up with a new approach to build Social Media V2.0, based on the ever popular blogging format and using BlockChain to create a decentralised and incentivised system. No ads, no tracking and a share of the pie. Ned Scott and Bitshares founder, Dan Larimer came up with an answer many people had been asking for years. How do you encourage and reward quality content creation with micro-payments? The answer lay in crytptocurrencies and the master stroke was to develop the currency of STEEM and the Steemit Network. Because it's a decentralised BlockChain network, users (witnesses who host the network) run it themselves on a series of nodes. Users pay for their own equipment and connection, they are rewarded for their work. Witnesses form an important element of the network, which incidentally is the most active (or largest) BlockChain in the world. Steemit is based on Graphene and has no transaction fees. It can process 180,000 transactions per second, which makes it almost real-time. It has capacity for potentially millions. It makes Bitcoin's several transactions per second look tawdry.
Professional Crypto-Blogging
The platform's currencies; Steem & Steem Dollars have become highly traded coins and valuable currency in their own right, making Steemit incentives for valuable. Some high profile members are making a good living from it and a few are full time Steemians as their day job. It has a reputation based system which means trolling is pretty much non existent. You can't say that about most online forums. Because money is involved, albeit digital coins, it's more like a work environment. Employees are generally self regulating because they don't want to be fired. In the same way, trolls don't get paid on Steemit and users with a higher rep can downvote users who spam, plagiarise or otherwise try to cheat the system. Spammers end up with a negative rep which means they don't get any airtime at all. It's a clever way to encourage good etiquette. Growth of one's own user rep and in turn voting power and potential rewards by other users, is also dictated by user visibility, the quality and consistency of content and the amount of interaction, curation and conversation being generated with other users. Being a constructive critic is important element of the Steemit experience.
Community Interests
Niche interest communities have grown rapidly throughout Steemit using Discord chat servers and Steemitchat. Photography, the ubiquitous form of self documentation is very popular and lots of photo competitions offer good exposure & valuable prizes. Contests are popular as a way for hosts to increase their own visibility and for entrants to show off their skill and be rewarded. Creative writing has well developed sub communities of professionals, helping novice writers sharpen their pencils and of course.. all things Crypto are covered in depth by reams of dedicated writers, analysts and developers. For the uninitiated, Steemit is an excellent place to learn all about cryptocurrencies, wallet technology, trading, staking, airdrops, ICO's and TGE's.
Answers ?
Blockchain technology has potential answers for a host of age old problems afflicting many industries and organisations; like perfect accounting, trust ability and open access to information. If you want to know more about the BlockChain revolution, head over to Steemit and explore it http://steemit.com/pick_account It's easy to join and you can look me up @outerground
This article will be published on IrishTechNews.ie
(The article is now finished, thanks for the input), especially to @fraenk (the editor)
Hi, i made this comment so i can upvote myself. Of course i will give you a tip. Thanks for reading. Have a nice day. ps im not a bot
that's the hip thing to do lately I guess :/
This is great.
Steemit will be a larger community
Good work 😃😃 If You want check my blog also have an good night
Nicely done and it's really good to mention that trolling isn't untreated in steemit like in other social media platforms cause trolling and social bullying is a very much of a crime but other famous social media doesn't do enough but in steemit if anyone tries to do that everyone can downvote and stop them from having airtime. This very point will attract many people along with the fact that steemit is a platform where one can share Thoughts ’n’ All and get paid for it.
Overall your writing is good...
thanks :) the non trolling aspect of steemit is perhaps one of it's finest and inadvertently brilliant aspects !
There's some spelling and sentence fragmentation... but it's just a draft, so yeah. Content structure makes sense with the assumption that the audience isn't technology illiterate. Presentation is lacking, but yeah, again, it's a draft... I really don't have much to contribute... why am I even writing this comment?!
Guess I just wanted to say "Hi" :P
thanks @googlyeyes. I intentionally put a jumbly draft up in the hope that it would inspire some input. you are of course correct. There's always some spelling / typos and sentence fragmentation.. I tend to write almost as a stream of conscious and edit later. it is for a tech website (but not a crypto focused one). what would you suggest to improve the presentation. ? thanks for the input btw
now look... somebody forgot to switch accounts there... hehehe
improve the presentation, like removing the typos and structuring sentences, lol. I found it hard to contribute something valuable at that stage and just felt like goofing around :D
vague advice taken ! I have to finish and submit it this week so I will edit this draft and present it for you for final sign off. It's nice having an editor !