This is the last Steemit related post I will submit for a very long time.
I'm annoyed, but not for the reasons you're likely thinking. I've done fairly well on my posts. I don't mind chatting about Steemit. I'm very much into crypto and love reading about it as well. I enjoy the development topics, the nerd discussions and the #circlejerk overall. It's just my cup of tea - truth be told.
However, 99.9999% of the world doesn't give two shits!
The reason I'm taking the time to write this post is because, not only am I powered up and vested in the success of Steemit, but primarily because I genuinely want to see it succeed for the sake of the entire crypto ecosystem. And so should you!
Quick story
I was able to get my girlfriend to sign up for Steemit the other day which took a lot of convincing. However, Steemit has not been successful in keeping her around. She may come back one day, but may not. That's unfortunate, not for me or for her, or any personal reasons; not even because she has the most amazing things to say and you'd be missing out. Although, I think that could be the case for some.
The real reason is,
"Steemit isn't for me. None of the posts appeal to me. It's mostly people that are only interested in stuff you like, computer, internet stuff."
I'm not too proud or disillusioned to admit that she's right! And that it's a real issue that needs to be addressed. It doesn't need to be met with, "give it time", "that's just how it is", "we're taking it slow", "it's just the core users, the diversity will come", or whatever other excuse can be conjured up. These are all self-serving excuses that do not do the community a service as a whole.
These excuses are hurting the value of any STEEM you have or will have.
Steem only has speculative value. That's it! Without speculative value and a strong supply/demand market, the community will not survive, your STEEM will be worthless.
Now, I think the economics of STEEM and Steemit are borderline genius. Hats off to @dan and @ned and the rest of the Steemit team on this. I've already mentioned to a number of people in my circles how well it was designed, before the launch and it did exactly what it was designed to do. So, please do not misunderstand me here.
The genius and the problem is that it's based on speculative value.
What that means is that if people aren't continuing to speculate value within STEEM, the overall marketcap would drop. This would have subsequent sell-offs, albeit minimized by the, well designed, vesting of Steem Power. However, over time, it could completely diminish value and overall interest in STEEM and the traction that's been generated thus far.
So, you may say that speculation has been great and the value has sky-rocketed lately. I'd be amiss if I didn't completely agree with you. It has, and again, that's attributable to the economics of STEEM - well done. However, there is nothing keeping this from fading at this point, just slowly and painfully. And this is not what anyone wants to happen!
In order for continued speculative value to be created with Steemit, there has to be more people interested in owning STEEM for personal/business and/or financial reasons. Now, it could be said that there are plenty of other people involved in crypto that could continue to provide value. But I'd argue that's a very limited number, the valuation has already jumped a lot, and the crypto community likes to hedge a lot. Simply put, it's not the future and shouldn't be the focus, even in the short term.
Now, you may be saying, "Okay great dude, just get to the point - what are you proposing."
Well, I'm glad you asked, because it's quite simple really. You see, the issue is perception. When someone comes to steemit.com, the first thing they see is a list of posts. If those posts do not peak their interest in any way, they're likely to leave. You could say, "that's okay, we need engaged people that will contribute not window shoppers", but you couldn't be any more incorrect.
Steemit needs to engage as many people across as many diverse lines as possible, ultimately. Now, initially, it's great to have really devoted and engaged people within smaller "steems" (like sub-reddits?), that's the best way to grow any community. But right now, we have people talking about STEEM, STEEM, Crypto, and STEEM. #circlejerk Sure, there are some other articles about travel and a token makeup tutorial, etc. But the majority of the articles are about STEEM.
To someone coming to Steemit for the first time, an introduction could be nice, but for the most part anything more than that is overkill. And if they want to read more than that, they can dig into it. People need to be greeted with topics and details that they actually care about, topics that engage them, let them know they're welcome here, there is a place for them, a happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes. Their Steemit!
And that finally leads me to my proposal
Every new account created on Steemit should be required to choose (say) 5 different tags/topics. From those topics, their home feed would be automatically populated with posts related to just those topics. That's it.
This solves a number of other issues addressed recently
Aside from displaying content that is relevant to everyone that becomes a steemer, this solves a number of other recent concerns:
- Unfairness with SP weighting
- Everything will be more dynamic. So the SP up-voting will be more distributed for one, but will also be more abstracted, since what you see is related to what you're interested in. Therefore, what you post will be compared to fellow posts in similar steems. Additionally, the SP votes within these steems will be more distributed as well.
- Same posts get all the upvotes
- The home feed would be custom per steemer. So the votes will naturally spread out more. This creates more people getting more rewards, improving churn, engagement, and creating Steemit ambassadors in the process.
- Everyone writing about the same topics #sheeple
- This one is pretty clear. Because everyone sees certain topics getting upvoted, they write similar topics. And because the topics getting the most upvotes are ones that speak to the SP elite, they're naturally falling within certain similarly held topics. This is also changed because people are seeing a more diverse set of topics, so what they choose to write about is likely to be something within those topics, not the same thing as everyone else.
I'm sure there are some others that I'm leaving out here, but those reasons alone are good enough! Additionally, what I've proposed is 1 day of development work tops. It's a simple change that can make all the world of difference now and improve the community as a whole, taking Steemit to new heights.
As of now, I will be flagging all topics on the home feed that are Steemit related and aren't considered important for people to read. I do hope that the Steemit team will implement this simple change. However, until that point, I hope you'll consider joining me so that we can curate content that appeals to a more diverse set of steemers and improves the diversity and overall value of Steemit. Thank you!