You're giving good answers for how to make a social media application more popular and used by more people. You're not giving answers on how to increase the value of a cryptocurrency token.
When you say things like
learn from SNAX
The disconnect becomes clear:
https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/snax-token
There's nothing there. No trading volume. No value.
Maybe it will come later, but maybe not. I've seen too many failed attempts at social media with financial rewards to think they will succeed. I see STEEM (and, importantly, Steemit.com and other front ends for the Steem blockchain) still here.
Talking about making things free, making guest options, etc highlights the fundamental disconnect within the Steem community which has been going on since the beginning. Nothing on a blockchain can be free or it will be exploited. That's a defining characteristic of blockchain technology that is unavoidable. No amount of wishing it to be different will change it. Someone always has to pay for resources on a blockchain.
I've been talking about these misunderstood expectations for over two years. I highly recommend giving this a read:
How Managing Expectations Can Grow the STEEM Ecosystem
If that product is not working, the whole concept is wrong and there is no value.
And yet we're still here, even with a flagship that has basically not improved much at all. This, I think, is due to a failure by Steemit, Inc to focus efforts on improving this interface. Maybe now that we have Steem Engine and a way to tokenize other projects like https://palnet.io we might see more innovation and improved user experiences coming.
I should have clarified that by rewards, I was just talking about financial rewards. I completely understand that if the experience was better here and all their friends wanted to move (like they did from MySpace), then hurray, we'd all be happy.
You have some good ideas here (such as contracting with massive brands or media companies). I'm hopeful the increased curation rewards with HF21 might improve trending ("might" is not even a positive feeling it will). I'll give you a nice vote mainly for clarifying the exact disconnect many people have when they think about the Steem ecosystem. They think about a website or about social media without realizing what they are really upset about is a low author or curator rewards payout which has everything to do with blockchain and cryptocurrency realities reflected in the token price and little to do with anything else.
"Someone always has to pay for resources on a blockchain." So delegating to projects that abandon steem, like dlive was a better use of resources?
Dan finally has figured out guest accounts on 3speak, something steemit.com should have been doing years ago. Not everyone needs or wants to control their private keys. Delegate to a guest account that many users can use until they earn enough to pay for their own account. Simple enough and users don't have to wait weeks or sometimes never to get their account. I had a friend sign up and she never got hers.
I got tired of trying to make a difference, so I stared cashing out 6 weeks ago, another 6 weeks and i'll be fully out on all my accounts.
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Imagine the situation, you found out something that triggered you and you want to comment.
Normal approach: write, submit, end
Steemit vision 3025:
Hey, people are not that patient while waiting for their iSomething products
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Agreed, it's not at all ideal. Again though, someone has to pay. Nothing can be fully "free" or it will be an attack vector for the chain which could destroy everything.
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My g-d you are disillusion. Someone has to pay... lol...
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Do you talk to people like this in real life or just online?
Yes, blockchains have real constraints because the data lives forever. Every single blockchain project on the planet has hard costs which have to be paid for. Witnesses on Steem pay for storage in exchange for part of the rewards pool. If we're misunderstanding each other, please clarify so we can have a productive discussion.
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You wrote,
No, you have to pay, and you can forget about passing the bill to me...
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Obviously delegating to a project that never intended to stick with Steem long-term while while pretending it did is a disappointment for us all. Has nothing to do with "free" resources on a blockchain though.
I agree that not everyone needs to manage private keys. Most people don't want that responsibility. That's why much of the cryptocurrency space (including Steem) is ahead of its time. The delegation model is what Steemit, Inc was doing for quite some time. As to their sign up process taking so long or not responding, I don't have an answer to that other than to use a competing sign up service or start your own. Again though, someone has to pay.
I understand not wanting to try anymore and moving on. Many have and many more will. It's unfortunate that Steem hasn't yet lived up to the expectations that were created by it.
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I agree someone has to pay. Who do you think pays for google's servers? The advertisers that run on their platform. These advertisers pay a lot because they have a lot of users. Do you think steemit's witnesses could run google's servers with the income that they make?
Increasing the amount of users is critical to keeping steem as a cryptocurrency afloat for many years to come. So far it's mostly survived off of speculators, but the speculators, are getting smarter and the days of people throwing crypto money at anything with a blockchain developer are over imo.
I see two main options for bringing money in. 1) bring in more users, then you have more traffic, which means more advertising moeny. 2) bring in more users to dapp games, these people pay for in app game coins or other things that brings in money. Dapps are always a risk because as we've seen with dlive, they can jump ship to another chain overnight.
In either case users are important, and they need to be increasing. The alexa ranking of steemit.com is steadily declining. Do you think speculators are going to buy in if the user base is shrinking?
Unfortunately, building UI's with aesthetic design and user friendliness are not steemit inc's strong suit. These detract from users wanting to join and stay. Along with other things like opinion flagging and excessive use of bidbots rather rewarding content with POB.
My main point is that until these fundamental issues are addressed, the userbase and revenue will potentially decline, putting the steem blockchain at risk of fading away, or at a minimum, just existing with only a few diehard fanboys. Not a lot of revenue will come in if the traffic keeps going down. The speculators and investors will be looking at growth, as they should with any social network as a way to judge it's value.
Who is going to pay the witnesses and blockchain developers when the investors and speculators leave due to declining users?
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