I think it is a trend and a fad due to some current situations. As more people try to get into it, it will bring the profits down and distribute the reward pool.
I like economies and money we need smart people who create things. I want to find out who the smart people who create things are. Then I want to invest in them.
Have you considered thinking about it the other way around? What if the other issues such as self-voting and hardcore spamming are a direct consequence of locking down a huge portion of the rewards pool for sale. Then what if because even established authors have to resort to self-voting in order to be adequately rewarded for their time invested in Steemit, they then don't have enough power to vote for minnows. So, the whales stop voting for minnows or dolphins who won't pay for it, and a lot of the dolphins have to start using their power on themselves because of it, and then no one is feeding the little fish at all.
I consider traffic to be the most important indicator of how we are doing. Despite the internal battles we have from time to time the site is growing.
No formal marketing, crappy features, and wallets that are unstable and still we grow.
The people who want to come in and earn are not investors, many of them are not content creators either. Keeping everyone who wants to post memes in not on my agenda. (Neither is getting rid of them)
Your point is not lost on me, yet, the minnows at the bottom need to learn how to feed themselves (not saying we shouldn't help minnows) If they can't invest and they can't create, or write a bot or make attention grabbing posts.. I am okay with them churning.
My background is a technology company that thrived by ensuring we did not have churn, so that was a difficult place for me to come to.
I can get behind that. I have no problem with spammers and shitty authors making pennies. But, I have a massive problem with excellent content not getting deserving rewards.
I know that the lifetime of posts right now, in terms of visibility, is all but evanescent in the grand scheme of things. But, in the future, there may be entirely new tools for exploring the Steem blockchain, and all of that amazing content will be revived for a new generation to consume.
Clearly people who are filling the blockchain up with crap deserve no rewards. But was the whales' job not supposed to be, at least until there was a fair distribution and others could do it, to reward great content that is being added to the blockchain? I know it certainly wasn't their job to ransom the rewards pool..
Other than my videos that I have been putting some effort into, even I have started to get lazy with the presentation of my posts recently. Because, why work hard? I already know what it's going to earn, and it isn't worth going to the effort to make my post look amazing. How many others share this sentiment? And how long before the block chain becomes 99% horse shit?
Put simply, excellent content needs to be getting rewarded, to incentivize the continued production of excellent content. What is happening now is, people are coming to the realisation that it isn't about creating good content, and so soon there won't be any.
But perhaps that is the point. Perhaps the goal is to end up with something more akin to facebook. Memes and slutty selfies. If that's the case, then I wish someone would just tell me so I can fuck off right now.
Name a successful website with millions of users based on quality content.
Though I am sure there are some out there, that is a pointless request. We are talking about Steemit, not anything else. We were told this was different, the first of its kind, better. So, why is it surprising that many of would expect more from what we got from the places we left to come here?
Edit: In case you respond while I am gone, I will be afk for an hour or so. But, you raise some interesting points and I will be happy to continue the discussion when I return if you'd like to.
Okay, I agree it is a pointless request. I do that sometimes, what I meant to say, is there is no business model that I am aware of that holds much success that is based on Quality Content.
It is my belief that the way this will grow is by collecting enough eyes, we can not keep the investors from buying steem and using the platform to advertise by giving away free things or blogging about their products.
So, I am happy to have traffic, but I do agree we have to keep it manageable. Great conversation!