image: @stellabelle
If Steemit had sex with Medium, their love child could become the killer blogging platform no one could touch.
Throw away your logic and your ten thousand reasons this could never happen before you read my post. This is an extension of the concept of idea sex as popularized by James Altucher.
I realize this is a slightly selfish, utopian ideal that probably doesn't have a chance in hell at becoming a reality but I was struck with this idea last night. I know that corporate interests of both Steemit and Medium, attachment based on greed and short-sightedness will most likely prevent this idea from happening, but I still want to reveal it. I think each platform contains what the other is lacking and I think if Steemit just broke down and had sex with Medium, I’d be a much happier person. I might have to get Ned Scott and Ev Williams to go on a blind date in order to forge this affair, but I think it would be totally fucking awesome if they did. They can just do a one-time gene swap in a highly sterilized laboratory if they want, not a corporate merger long-term affair.
Let’s look at the strengths and weakness of each platform:
STEEMIT
Strengths:
First mover status in the “decentralized” social media space.
Founders are experienced and knowledgeable in economic models and cryptocurrency.
Innovative and scalable Graphene technology.
Payment algorithms and mathematical design is innovative and well-designed.
Has a blockchain.
Excellent monetary system including wallet, money transfer abilities and savings accounts built-in.
Ability to earn interest on Steem.
Certain bloggers are able to be paid.
Curators can be paid.
Censorship resistant.
Ability to scale.
Tons of digital apps, website and Steem tools have been developed.
Provides home for niche communities in crypto, devs, anarchy circles.
Has introduced cryptocurrency to wide audience of newbies.
Weaknesses
Lack of diversity at the top of the food chain.
Centralization of power.
Newbie unfriendly.
LIttle to no thought goes into basics of human psychology.
The “fun” element doesn’t seem to exist as a priority.
Inability of founders to communicate to users in a thoughtful manner.
Miners who lack experience curating, writing and reading are largely influencing blogger’s payouts.
Gaming of the system from certain whales degrades reputation of platform.
Marketing slogan, “anyone can get paid to blog” is misleading message. Actually it’s a lie. Only the strongest, fiercest, greediest, most talented and most stubborn will see any modicum of success. The rest leave fast.
Voting has become politicized: whose ass you kiss the deepest largely determines your payout.
Investigative journalism is shunned.
Whale-shilled bad writers are getting huge rewards that make the platform look like a joke.
Controversial and engaging writers are not being rewarded. See my post that generated 239 comments for example
Organic curators are not being recognized.
Social energy is not being used as a metric for rewards.
Reputation is tarnished because reward system is flawed.
Reputation is low because of whale-shilled account voting and overuse of bots to upvote shitposts that no one actually reads.
Reputation is sinking because Steemit Inc. is supporting conmen.
MEDIUM
Strengths
Currently ad-free.
Very clean reputation.
Ability to block users.
No censorship that I’m aware of.
Writing editor is the best out of any blogging platform.
Newbie friendly.
Professional writers make up a huge percentage of users.
Big publications are migrating here.
UI is clean, and simple.
Culture in Medium is diverse.
Abundance of niche publications that are professionally designed and maintained.
Controversial content is regularly featured by Medium staff
Controversial articles tend to trend and gain massive exposure.
The ones at the top of Medium’s food chain are writers and intellectuals.
Communication to Medium community is a high priority by Medium staff and CEO.
CEO is a good communicator, well-established also founded Twitter.
Medium staff listens to users and responds to them.
Medium’s front page lists most popular articles, based on organic social energy.
Front page also contains a section which includes Staff Picks.
Medium staff contains diversity: many women, LBGTQ, non-whites, minorities.
Here’s a selection of some of the most thought-provoking Medium writers, many of whom write for VICE, NYT and WSJ: Henry Wismayer, Holly Wood, Alana Massey
Weaknesses
No monetizing strategy yet.
No blockchain technology.
No clear path to integrate advertising money.
No usage of digital currency.
Image Source: pixabay
As you can see each platform’s strengths are in opposite areas. Steemit’s strongest attributes are completely lacking in Medium. If you combined the strengths of each, you’d have a killer blogging platform. Medium has already done all the work in migrating the vast intellectual minds and has created well-unified niche communities within it. The only thing it really lacks is a monetization strategy.
Steemit is trying to recreate too many wheels all at once and I think it’s quite overwhelming.
Steemit is trying to recreate from scratch: a new monetary system, new reward system, new power structure, new blogosphere, new bloggers, new currency, new blockchain technology, new culture. It’s trying to do too many things all at once. Remember, it was Facebook's status update that killed MySpace. Facebook didn't invent social media, it only refined the existing ones. Most people I know can only add one or two new things to their existing framework. They don’t have time or energy to recreate their entire existence from scratch.
The other option I could see is if Steemit is able to outsource its Steem currency monetization and blockchain technology to Medium so that it can finally become monetized. I could see that greatly boosting the demand for Steem which would have a very positive effect on the currency. This boost would enable Steemit to possibly focus on developing its identity moving forward. If both Steemit and Medium used the same currency, then there could develop cross-relationships between users of these very different platforms. I think mass adoption of digital currency could ensue and the competition, Akasha, Synereo and Yours would have two competitors not just one.
If Medium and Steemit both utilized the same currency, a cross-pollination would most likely occur because Medium writers could enter Steemit and already be familiar with how the currency and wallets worked.
This would greatly help to onboard professional writers and curators into Steemit. Steemit could develop into a unique kind of platform which is different from Medium.
As it is right now, I’m considering going back to Medium to read creative, high quality, thought-provoking articles, but my wallet and bank account are located in Steemit. I wish I could either move my wallet to Medium or move my reading materials to Steemit.
I’m sure I’ll be called out for being “self-righteous” or what the fuck ever. I so badly want to see Steem (for obvious reasons) thrive and I believe the technology is so good, it deserves as many creative ideas as possible for its continued growth. I don’t want to see it become the MySpace of next generation social media.
Let the gene swap begin!
Image Source: pixabay
ps- Use an inventor’s mindset when thinking about mainstream adoption of decentralized banking. Throw attachment, self-interest based on greed, and ego into the trashcan when reading this post.
UPDATE FOR SOLUTION TO SHITTY TRENDING PAGE: THANKS @radioactivities:
Yes! And then Steemit creates a section called, "WHALE PICKS" which is the same as Medium's "STAFF PICKS"!!!!!
THE WHALES ARE STEEMIT'S STAFF! They do not decide what trends, but rather, what the STEEMIT STAFF HAS PICKED OUT!!! It's a genius idea!!!
I have noticed your post was flagged by R4fken, well known steemit hater.
I am for justice and I am here with all my Steem Power to help you resist his hate downvotes and let your post be visible for steem users. Upvoted!
I am here to help with what Steem Power I have and have resteemed and upvoted.
thank you
If the trending page was influenced by
upvotes + resteems + comments/upvotes
moreso than
voter weight and payout
It would be a more genuine metric of a post trending. The comment aspect would have to take spam possibility into account.
Yes! And then they create a section called, "WHALE PICKS" which is the same as Medium's Staff Picks!!!!!
THE WHALES ARE STEEMIT'S STAFF! They do not decide what trends, but rather, what the STEEMIT STAFF HAS PICKED OUT!!! It's a genius idea!!!
Yes, and keep the whale name, because the ocean theme is actually pretty cute and creates the steemit culture
agreed
also factoring user rep into this would remove the spam factor. users over 5o rep aren't likely to post bullshit responses to get their posts viewed. Comments with a certain amount of unique words would be good. I don't know f-all about these types of algorithms and how other sites pik organic trending metrics. I think what we suggest here is entirely possible. I'm not sure how difficult or time-consuming it would be for devs.
edit: also adding more time to wait to post a comment could help. because people could add more by editing if needed, and editing would require a human.
Actually having rep factor into the rewards in some way in addition to SP would also be great if it could be done.
having a two-fold rep system that splits posts and comments could be used to discount spam in algorithms, upvotes on posts could show to us users as the numerical rep score, while upvotes/flags on comments could simply show as a coloured traffic light colour behind the post score.and as an added bonus it would also encourage commenting again.
I think that it would be better if the reputation system was only influenced by popularity of user's posts rather than the amount of Steem Power. Atm, you can "buy" Rep by buying SP.
Also, post count should be measured by the a amount of one's blog posts not comments. There should be different counter for the comments.
Yes!! How do we get this done??!?
THIS IS A GENIUS IDEA! @dantheman and @ned please consider implementing this as soon as possible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This would SOLVE A HUGE PROBLEM.
Being the prolific muser that I am, I was thinking of the possibility of an option to disable replies less than 100 words or so. This also allows authors who don't want to read 'Great post thanks' type comments won't get them and the ones who like them can. and it can be a way of filtering which posts would apply for a 'most comments' filter without penalizing people who want to have fun and post short quips and photos. If rep of user could factor in to the comments considered for upping post visibility that helps too. of course, this is all very easy for me to say. Those who can't do; think!
We humans work to shut down bot comments! All downvoted comments are not taken into account with the trending aspect.
It still has vulnerability to Sybil type attacks. If all it took to make it to the top of the trending page was a high volume of comments, you would start to see massive groups of people just generate a lot of relevant although not very helpful comments. Enough to not be considered spam, but still up the count.
One of the biggest differences between medium and Steemit is the money part. When you introduce the money part, you introduce all kinds of skewed incentives which corrupt a lot of the algorithms that work on a purely content driven site where all the users care about is content.
Good points @timcliff there is almost always a downside.
It wouldn't work just on comments alone, no. Also when something reaches the height of the trending page, more people will notice if people exploited functions to get there. If the rep of the user needs to be above 50 or 60 for comments to count could that work? theres the reputational risk if people see a user spamming basically. And if it makes the trending page, it will be seen, and maybe flagged
Reputation is a great feature, but not everyone who participates is going to have a high reputation score. Curators and investors who may not post and comment will have no say on what makes it on the trending page.
I see (and ty for explanation) At a certain point then trending will actually mean 'promoted'. As any curator who has a hefty weight is going to be someone who earned the SP from posting, but more likely a whale, or investor. The latter would basically pay to influece the trending page, sure, and that is great. But it woud be misleading to have that as 'trending' tab
I noticed that there's the active and hot sections which don't seem to reflect post activity very well. Further developing the tags in more specific and effective ways would help. Not necessary to shut-out other means of influencing content noticeability.
i can barely guess at how the 'hot' and 'active' tabs filter.
Replying to your lower comment
I don't know what active does but Hot is a pretty simple algorithm. The posts start in the same order as New (newest first), but each time a post gets an upvote, it gets a boost back toward the top of the list. How much of a boost is determined but the SP and weight of the upvote. Posts that don't get upvotes will slide down fast, while posts that continue to get upvotes will stay near the top, then eventually slide down as well.
I'm pretty sure active puts posts that were either just created, edited or had a comment added put at the top of the list, which then just continues to scroll until the next edit or comment, again just bumping to the top of the list.
Simply hitting edit and update post with no changes will put you to the top of active too.
could there be a cheetah bot that focuses on content under trending? it would catch copy pasta in comments that might otherwise look like a human response
It would become extremely complicated and political to police. It would also be very subjective. At what point is a comment a legitimate comment vs an attempt to game the system? Should 20 minnows who all say something like "I really like what you did. Great post!" be flagged?
I was musing about if comments with minimum word count and upvotes of comments could be factored in as well. not simply number of comments. So maybe it wouldnt be necessary to flag things like that. Rather, for example, if someone resonded to a post about philosophy from something they copypasta from a philosophy blog they didnt write, just to make comments. (but I realize it's still complicating and much work)
Any solutions dont make sense without steemit having a direction as either blogging or short-form (or split up as both with different guidlines). Posting guidines and expectations can mean implementing other features like minimum word count replies, which right now, would be limiting.
I think it's a brilliant idea to have a platform that merges the best of both worlds. I have personally not been to Medium since I've been active on Steemit, mainly because of the monetary potential. (haha. I'm kind of laughing at myself a little)
Just as a funny... When I was scrolling through my feed, I totally read your title as If Steemit had sex with A medium and the first thing that popped into my head was - oh, we're trying to bring good writers back from the dead. LOL Don't mind me. I'm tired and oftentimes an idiot. ;)
a great analogy lol!!!
ha ha
ha ha! maybe I am trying to do exactly that! The amazing writers from Medium I dragged here have ALL LEFT!
I thought the same thing :))
This is a great idea. (Liscence not merger)
I think steemit should never be like medium but a license model is brilliant! (Like golos)
I bet medium could use the voting software (maybe you don't logon to vote) the sbd payments and the wallet. Maybe they could run their own rewards algorithm based on views and votes and agree to send the payment to the writers steem wallet. This uses steels money transfer capabilities.
Medium could buy the sbd it needs on the open market. Creating the Long sought and ever elusive use for steem!
Yes, licensing the technology would be a really smart move for both platforms I think
Yes, there would be an entire ready-made market. Seems like a no brainer to me actually if I was a business owner....
I didn't even really know what Medium was until you mentioned it in another post. It looks interesting but since there is no payout features I'm not interested in spending my time there. I really felt like your strengths and weaknesses of Steemit was pretty spot on. It has all types of potential but I fear for it as well. I don't want it to become a part of Social Media history.
that's why idea sex is so important these days.
yes. The main lesson here is that since steemit has organically become more of a blogging (and art) platform than social media sharing, maybe that is the best direction for it, instead of spreading it too thin. "Niche Wins" as the marketers always say
If Medium had sex with Killary Clinton they would be in heaven.
https://steemit.com/conspiracy/@sift666/killary-caught-out-yet-again
Why do they have to merge when Steemit could do the same think better on its own ? I explained this in my article , Why Steemit Should be more like Medium . By the way, I wanted to resteem this article but the button is not there . What's happening ?
I definitely see some potential for Steemit to evolve in a Medium-like platform, mores so than reddit-like. There is more quantifiable value in long, educative or entertaining content, than in short news.
Twitter and reddit are the second generation of emotionally driven news services, where the trigger for watching is FOMO.
Medium is a quieter place, where the trigger for participating is consuming timeless content (as opposed to timely content).
As more content aggregates in Steemit, the platform will evolve. Truth is nobody knows the future. But I've read that one good way to predict the future is to create it.
Glad to see you're toning down a bit.
I'm not toning down a bit actually. This is only one article for today. I'm ramping up production again.
Everyone seems to forget that Facebook only refined what was in existence. They didn't create it all from scratch. I believe this is very very very important to learn and digest.
Also, I'm posting this on Medium too. I am curious what the different responses will be from each platform.
Unless you're posting on a "walled garden" - and choose a specific audience for your post - cross-posting may be detrimental for your posts, from a SEO point of view. Duplicate content is still a big issue.
i cross post everywhere. It has done no harm to me or any platform.
Oooh, yes! Please keep us updated on their reaction on Medium... or better yet, I should just revive myself over there and search for you. I'm gonna guess you're @stellabelle there too?
@grandpere from Steemit's councel of wise people voted. Listen to our elders :)
Yes, we need elders and diversity making decisions in here. Shitcoin miners are not cutting it.
I linked it on the Steemit reddit
thanks
Seeing as this post has made this many votes and 4$, I think that it reflects the opinion of steemits most dedicated users. Dolphins and upper-minnows.
I like this idea but like you say it is unlikely to happen.
I think this is a very interesting idea @stellabelle. I have to research medium further to make my own judgement, but I'm always interested in platforms that are trying to be innovative and push new types of content.
So many of your ideas are interesting and worthwhile to explore. I'm often led to thoughtful, well written Medium articles while wading through the depths of Reddit looking for cryptocurrency news. More than once I've caught myself thinking "man, I wish these guys would come post on Steemit instead, I bet they'd get good payouts". Maybe you should write an article on Medium encouraging their writers to come on over and try out Steemit.
I've already convinced many to come here. Some have, then all of them have left by now.
Which is quite a sad observation and must be disheartening considering how much effort you put in. I agree something needs to be done to keep up user retention. I'm sure this issue is on the radar of the Powers That Be, but it would be nice to know what they think of your ideas.
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thanks
Another brilliant post....very well written, with tons of valuable and intelligent content. As of 7:34 PM PST...253 votes and a total of $19.14.
I don't think it takes a "rocker scientist" to see what is going on here!!!
Many in the community say that Steem would be more cool if it were paid in Bitcoins! That would be cool, because with bitcoin you can buy anything you like! As well as outside of the steem platform are not necessary. The price fell through the floor. I'm so frustrated.
An interesting thought. But no matter what Steemians wish to think, Medium is out of reach of Steemit... I still hang around Steemit, but there is not much to read here. But there are tons of high quality posts in Medium. Everyone has only limited amount of time, and thus needs to wisely allocate time. It's totally rational that expectation of payout in Steemit is one of many factors in the equations to determine where to allocate limited resources. But in my equation, the higher probability to find a high quality posts in a certain limited time is of much higher value.
how to resteem this ?