It should be about creative integration, not destruction. How a tiny steemit API can change global social media landscape

ORIGINAL CONCEPT PAPER CREATED FOR STEEMIT

Remember that only Steemit has figured out a way to use the "blockchain" for social interactions. Sites like Facebook and youtube has a long way to go as far as catching up with steemit. However, we don't need to destroy them. Just integrate with them! Work with them. Let's grow big working with them.

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Content

Introduction
Motivation
Application Integration
The Proposal
Advantages for Steemit/other blockchain services
Conclusion

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Introduction

After more than 10 years, facebook and youtube are tuned in by over 1.5 billion users worldwide. This can be seen in Fig 1.0 below. These two sites have user bases that represents 33% of the global population who have access to the internet. These are great social networking platforms that has allowed for the world to come together communicate and sometimes drive social changes. These platforms will continue to dominate the foreseeable future due to network affects associated with the platform. Once signed in, people are more likely to stick to that platform. Steemit as we all know is a new social media platform that is on a rise and is getting more and more popular with the advent of the blockchain technology. Censor free communication is a motto of many freedom loving people and the value “freedom of speech” is steadily being recognized by the world community at large. Steemit fulfills a very specific niche of the social media platform with an user interface (UI) that shares resemblance with reddit. As of now, Steemit is not designed for “grandma” in mind. This paper discusses a revolutionary approach towards integrating steemit upvote mechanisms in every fabric of social media platforms that currently exist and it will enable someone like Grandma to use steemit.

Fig 1.0 : Current adoption rates for some of the most popular cyberworld gathering. Not including YouTube.

Fig 2.0 : Adoption lifecycle of popular social media sites

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Motivation

The motivation behind this write-up is to champion a thought where Steemit development considers a focus on creative integration rather than creative destruction of status quo social media platforms. Essentially speaking, there is no need to reinvent the wheel in recruiting new users into the platform. While, new user accounts in current social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube covers over 33% of the internet faring global citizens, the platform inefficiently engage these participants. Engagement in this context refers to set of activities that results in value creation weather material or non-material. Proper engagement improves problem solving, creativity among other things. Current engagement is inefficient in conflict resolution or forming cooperation between rational decision makers. These behaviours are studied in highly popularized lingo known as the Game Theory. Steemit addresses the missing piece well. What remains to be done now is seamless integration into existing social media infrastructure.

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What is Application Integration?

Application integration is the process of bringing data or a function from one application program together with that of another application program. For example, if we are able to call, Steemit’s essential function (Up-voting function) while browsing through Facebook then we could say that Facebook and Steemit successfully integrated their applications to benefit the end user.

Fig 3.0 : Seemless potential for steemit to integrate it’s upvote system and the blockchain

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The proposal

It is probably becoming more obvious now that Facebook and Steemit collaborate to join user accounts. Each Facebook account holder, automatically gets a Steemit account in their name (if they don’t already have one). The two accounts will be connected in such a manner that the “like” button on Facebook will be the ‘upvote’ equivalent on Steemit. See Fig 4.0 below. For every ‘like’ on any content that a person posts on Facebook, they will be rewarded on Steemit just as is the case currently with the ‘upvote’ button.

It would be a win-win situation for both the platforms; Steemit can leverage on Facebook’s popularity and market size by partnering with the latter and in return, Steemit can add the incentivized charm to Facebook users by giving them the platform where they can be financially rewarded for their quality content.

Fig 4.0 : An example of how steemit API would replace facebook’s Like/Comment/Share menu

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Likely pathway

If steemit can achieve API integration with any of these partners, that would be a huge win for not just the steemit community but also the crypto community at large. Here is how I see the project milestones unfolding. This is also visually represented on Fig 5.0 below.

1. Steemit developers will demonstrate proof of concept API integration into one of the social media sites that deals with crypto news. These are easy partners to approach
2. Once proven, bugs should be squashed and bounty system should be created.
3. Approach Facebook/Youtube, Flipboard as potential partners for API integration (Steemit’s API integration would simply link the likes and comments to steemit blockchain) while the potential partners retain their own user interface.

Fig 5.0 : High level initiatives to achieve the stated objectives

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Bitcoin and benefits to the crypto-universe

Bitcoin and Ethereum currently are the major crypto-currencies with Fiat gateway. Steemit is seeing the highest use case presently. It is not surprising therefore, to see the positive impact Steemit would have in the cryptocurrency space. As crypto enthusiast therefore, we should all support the emergence of the new blogging paradigm.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, Steemit platform is a system that the blogging network has been missing for a long time. The system that is being implemented by Steemit has tremendous potential for enormous social good. Various different user interfaces have unique use cases and Steemit doesn’t need to fight the battle with these interfaces to destroy and replace them. Instead, Steemit can creatively integrate the up-vote API linked to Steemit Blockchain and make them available on various social networking sites. This is certainly one of the fastest way to get people into the Blockchain adopt Steemit and thereby gather enormous social mass towards the true freedom we so desire as human beings.

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References

"Vincos Blog - Il Blog Di Vincenzo Cosenza." Vincos Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 July 2016.