I'm going to be super honest here and say that I read this post twice and some of it still goes over my head! But what I do think is important is for us to think of it like any other social / content platform, right? We're here to share amazing content that we out work into and in turn, we want real engagement.
At least, that's how see it right now. Although, I did just post some questions up on my recent blog post about how blockchain social and content platforms might change when a mass adoption takes place and brands start to permeate those platforms with true content marketing...
I haven't been on steemit long, but it's been a big learning curve understanding how it all works. So I super appreciate this beginners series you've been putting together, @ameliabartlett!
I appreciate your engagement on this subject, even though you may not feel confident in your understanding of every element. That's my main reason for this beginner's series so that the question I have become the source of inquiry for greater transparency. I've learned so much just going to people with higher reps or more posts or more experience, even Witnesses and whales, and just saying, "Hey, I'm new here and I want to know what's up with X, Y, Z" and everyone is generous with their knowledge.
I'm just getting into your post on Vero, which I hadn't heard of until you! I'm interested to explore their model further, but I'm also interested in what we could come up with if we didn't pigeonhole Steemit into a 'social network.' Like, is Wordpress.com a social network? Is Medium a social network? Are Reddit, Tumblr, and VSCO Journals considered 'social networks?' I'd argue some of them are, but they are all much more fringe than Facebook, Instagram, etc... Always curious. ☺️
Yes, yes yes! I was just thinking about this on my way to work. Like, what really is the difference between blogger, reddit, VSCO... all of them are so incredibly similar, but different in how they actually run as a business and generate revenue as the host of content. I just made a realization after thinking about @soyrosa's comment on my recent post about how content creators will always be paid to use a product... and then realizing that that's how Adsense works. You elect to have ads run on your content hosted by a google platform, and you get paid for those ads running on your site... I do think that Steemit is a content host platform, but the way people engage in shares, upvotes, comments etc is more of a social structure. So, for content creators like us, it's a happy middle!
Just to clarify, I don't think @soyrosa is speaking about the AdSense perspective, which is paying content creators to run ads on their space. If I'm understanding her correctly (and that she and I are on the same page), she's referring to folks like us who are consuming the content being paid for our consumption activities.
We generate data with every single thing we do, say, invest in, buy, sell, talk about, refer to, etc. That data is what advertisers purchase in order to better craft and place their ads. We are creating data (usage) that centralized organizations (advertising data firms) are profiting from. Sure, they did the due diligence to collect that data, but they didn't create it. We, the consumer, did. And we are not compensated for our creation.
Yes, that's part of it Amelia! But I'm going a bit further even than 'just' data: in the end all kinds of people / services / providers will pay us for our attention and/or making skills - did we watch a movie and 'like' it? We get paid. Did we make that movie and upload it? We get paid. Did we click on an ad? We get paid (instead of the website that put the add there).
It seems crazy, but:
There is money being paid for all above acts already. But either a middle man now receives that money (like Facebook/Google for being so kind to show that add to thei billions of users), or a 'services' that basically forces content makers to be on that service to be seen gets that money (for example Netflix/Spotify).
Why not the creator and the consumer themselves then?
I believe the blockchain(s) will create this world for us. It will take some time, of course, but on Steemit it's already partially happening.
For sure. I totally see where both of you are coming from. In my head I was just drawing a quick parallel (Adsense paying creators directly) of how that already works in our current age, and opening up the thought process to relate it back to blockchain, steemit and the future. Definitely would bring on a whole new data economy, persay.
Super interesting to think about. Do either of you think that will happen within our own generation?