Signing up to Steemit
Well done for joining Steemit. Here you can blog, reading interesting stories and views from all over the world, and meet people. While Steemit is still in Beta, there is a lot of effort on the go to improve the platform, and the community is becoming more vibrant. Having joined in July 2016, I have not always been as active in blogging or writing as I should. This is not a Steemit issue, but rather me just being very busy. I do spend more time here than on that other social media site ... :)
The Steemit Community
While the community is growing, it is still relatively small. While there are meetups all over the world, and events like Steemfest is well attended, Steem has in the year in existence not yet gotten to the 1 million user mark. But growth is increasing steadily and there is a chance this mark can be reached in 2017.
As a social media site it does not quite compare to Facebook. Facebook was far more focussed on storing personal detail, your life storyline, pictures and connecting with friends. These are all things that Steemit does not do or do badly. But what Steemit does well is the social experiment around the "attention economy". And of course you can earn a little on the side. Essentially it focuses on creating a self regulating community where content is "discovered" and "valued" through it's voting mechanism. And for this you are rewarded in a combination of Steem Dollar, Steem Power and Steem.
Where to from here
For Steemit to keep growing and keep the advent of competitors at bay, it will need to step up on two fronts. Firstly it is not mobile, and there is a huge need to make a mobile phone and tablet app available. Secondly it has to resolve the grouping issue.
What is this, well simple, people's content is lost to easily in the twitter like storm of posts. If you do not know or are not watched the road to being rewarded is long. Building a followership and connecting with friends is very difficult, and there are now clear mechanisms to do this. Just searching for someone you KNOW is on Steemit is near impossible. This may be by design, but it is slowing growth.
There may well be work at foot solving both of these, but it needs to be brought to bear fast, to grow this snowball to the 10-20 million users it can be in a few years.
Revenue model
So how does Steemit makes money. Besides using community members the founders and a team of people are working to build the platform and the Steem Blockchain that @dan and @ned amongst others started about two years ago. They have lots of Steem in hand for that, as they were well rewarded out of the start of the project, as they should be. Steem never did and ICO (initial coin offering) but through creating value in the coin they could fund the project by selling Steem.
But printing money is not enough. They need to find other ways to create value for both them and the community. Advertising is an option. With a community growing to the 1 million plus mark, will they go there. And if they do, will this be shared with the community and how? Time will tell my friends, but for now have fun, blog, vote and put in the diligence to build your following and audience.