I introduced the other day my 'Big Dozen' - the 12 key indicator projects that for me will determine the state, and the fortunes, of steem in 2019.
I revealed numbers 1 through 6 in my part 1 post.
There was no great dissent generated from that first post so now I will move on to the second half dozen.
I look forward to reading your commentary on these six that may not be quite so obvious and upfront.
In case you missed the first post here it is again...
Here are projects 7 to 12...
7. Advertising
As part of the major restructuring of Steemit Inc that took place at the back end of 2018, the company realised it needed to develop new income streams.
With a high usage site like steemit.com being at hand advertising was an obvious source of new revenue for the company.
After some early usage of Google Adwords, Steemit Inc is now developing its own in-house advertising sales strategy.
Although usage of steemit.com would appear to have dropped significantly over the past year (according to its alexa.com ranking) Hype Stat still puts the unique visitors to the site at 254,988 per day or 7,649,640 per month.
Hype Stat calculates from these figures that the site should be able to earn $3,750 per day from advertising revenue.
Even half that projected figure would be able to make a very useful contribution to Steemit Inc's required income, and potentially allow them to reduce their programatic monthly steem sales which should in turn ease the pressure on the price of steem.
It will be interesting to hear from Managing Director Elizabeth Powell on how advertising sales are progressing.
8. SteemOnboarding
@SteemOnboarding is a major initiative announced by @anomadsoul and @coruscate shortly after Steemfest on 16 November last year.
The project was set up to develop a professional, comprehensive, multilingual, one-stop-shop welcoming platform to guide newcomers through their early life on steem.
It is hoped SteemOnboarding will be able to have a significant impact on the high drop-out rates amongst new steemians.
SteemOnboarding has received backing from most of the major organisations on steem including @oracle-d, @utopian-io, @steempress, @blocktrades, @dtube and @sndbox.
The original roadmap indicated that a beta version of the website would be up and running by 15 January. Unfortunately the project is experiencing delays.
Hopefully SteemOnboarding will be able to meet the wider roadmap target to be fully operational by the end of Q1 2019 (31 March).
Meanwhile a number of smaller scale onboarding / early stage mentoring projects like SteemSavvy and The Welcome Wagon are operational and continue to be developed.
9. Steem Business Alliance
The idea for the Steem Business Alliance was conceived at SteemFest 3 last November.
It is understood that the aim for the organisation is to present Steem to the outside business world to attract investment and development.
The Alliance is taking the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance as part of its model.
Matt @starkerz from Oracle-D has been the main spokesperson for the nascent organisation so far speaking about it on a number of the State of Steem Forums.
Alongside Oracle-D, it is believed there are four other major steem dApps as founding members.
There have been ongoing delays in finalising the Alliance's structure and ways of working but it is hoped it will be launched very soon.
10. DApps & Apps
Steem's visibility in the world of dApp and App development has made some major strides forward in the last couple of months.
It started to take off when @therealwolf and @soyrosa managed to get steem included on the StateoftheDapps.com website.
Steem has quickly made a very strong showing on the site claiming five of the top 10 spots, including number one...
Alongside this @therealwolf set up a site listing all steem dapps and apps...
Steem is now included on most of the other main dApp review and listing sites.
The question now is whether this increased visibility will attract more dApp developers and investment to the Steem platform?
11. Exchanges
STEEM is currently listed on just a handful of significant exchanges. CoinMarketCap.com only lists a total of 22 markets for STEEM...
Other better known cryptocurrencies have their markets measured in hundreds.
Getting on more markets means more exposure, more trading, more volume and hopefully a higher price.
The community regularly initiates campaigns to try to get STEEM on new exchanges. One recent example was the push to get Steem on Coinbase...
Unfortunately success has been limited so far.
Generally to get STEEM listed on an exchange it will require the direct involvement of Steemit Inc.
David Jefferys @birdinc, who is charge of Business Development at Steemit Inc, mentions on his LinkedIn profile that he is "Responsible for exchange relationships (both active and prospective) for a top cryptocurrency - Steem".
It would be very interesting to hear from David as to what the game plan is for getting STEEM listed on more exchanges this year.
12. Direct Fiat / Steem Conversion
Getting money in and out of steem has always been a bugbear.
I would go as far as citing it as one of the four technical barriers to the mass adoption of steem (along with signups, passwords and multiple 'currencies').
Unless you are lucky enough to have a peer-to-peer / steemian-to-steemian arrangement in place moving money in or out of steem inevitably involves movement through one or more exchanges, and conversion into one or more different cryptocurrencies.
This inevitably leads to unwanted fees, delays, complications and risks.
Being able to buy STEEM directly with your local fiat currency, and being able to convert STEEM directly into your local currency would be a massive advance, and 'demystification', for the platform.
There are already some regional facilities in place like @steemexchanger in west Africa that do at least one half of the process, but there are still no major worldwide players on the scene.
Canada based NetCoins who have recently added STEEM to their roster of cryptocurrencies are showing promise as an easily accessible way to buy STEEM directly with fiat.
There has also been a recent lobbying effort to get Bittrex to offer a STEEM/USD trading pair, but that hasn't borne fruit yet.
There are several other new systems in the pipeline such as a direct credit card purchase system from @oracle-d.
A new Peer to Peer Exchange for STEEM and SBD called @swapsteem is currently in development and has just launched a new Fundition campaign.
This is a definitely a 'watch this space' one.
These are the second six of my key indicator projects for the State of Steem.
You can see the first half dozen in my previous post...
Now you have read my Big Dozen what are the projects you are most closely watching to determine how Steem will fare this year...?
[ penguin image from unsplash.com ]