The biggest barrier to cryptocurrencies for the average person is the huge learning curve in getting up to speed with how crypto works. Blockchain technology is a foreign concept. The volatility of the markets relative to traditional investment is unheard of. Yet, on the plus side these factors result in a technological Wild West where people can still make a fortune in a relatively short timeframe.
For those who do get acquainted, once you are up to date with key information, it takes a sizeable amount of time every week to keep on top of recent news and developments. Fortunately for us, there are writers on this platform who make this job a lot less time consuming and far more interesting (shoutout to @kingscrown - you should all follow him). Still, most people do not have the time or patience to familiarise themselves with blockchain technology.
This is where Steemit really shines, as it is the only blockchain based platform that has disguised itself so well you'd be forgiven for forgetting you are interfacing with a blockchain at all. If you pulled a random set of users of a similar social media platform such as Reddit, it is unlikely many would suspect the back-end of Steemit to be any different - and that is fantastic! As an aside, they would also most likely never return to Reddit...
Interfacing with the Graphene blockchain underneath Steemit is so easy that people with zero blockchain or crypto experience can not only use Steemit easily, but turn a significant profit. This is going to see huge numbers of people abandoning traditional social media in favour of the Steemit platform.
As crypto continues its fluctuating climb to larger market caps, the value of STEEM will also likely overtake many of its crypto competitors. This is due to the value proposition laws of connectivity platforms (such as social media), where platform value is roughly proportional to the square of its user base, instead of being linear. A fixed rewards pool and a growing user base will force the price up - a huge benefit for early adopters.
Steemit Is an Opportunity for Businesses and Investing
Despite all the current possibilities and users of the platform we are already seeing, catering to a huge variety of interests, Steemit has yet to see much attention from the advertising business. As the userbase of the platform grows, it is going to become increasingly attractive for businesses to set up shop on the blockchain and advertise their wares. The great thing about Steemit is that to get more of a voice, or more of a presence, you must be invested in the platform. Coca-cola wants to show up on the platform? Great - they will need to buy in so they can upvote themselves and get noticed. The price of STEEM goes up. On the other hand, advertising can never be too overbearing. If the userbase does not like a pushy account, they are flagged and disappear back into the depths.
The Steemit platform also offers an incredible safe store of value in its SBD - which is pegged to the USD through the value of STEEM. Forget about having to run a wallet to keep USDT, or worrying about your pegged assets sitting on an exchange! You can store value safely on the platform itself. That being said, and remembering that this is in no way investment advice, you're much better off converting those SBD to STEEM. Leveraging your Steem Power for the good of the platform is key to seeing the value of your investment increase.
Steemit and the Future
You are currently interfacing with the premier social media platform, on the fastest and most innovative blockchain (Graphene), and are doing so in the platform's infancy. People would kill to have this opportunity looking back 5 years from now, so make the most of it!
Find your niche, add value to the community, and the community will add value to you. Looking forward with great anticipation to see the wild journey this platform will take us on over the next few years!
Image credit:
Banner, Cointelegraph
I am surprised that other popular blogs haven't already plugged into STEEM. I'm especially surprised that sites like FEE or Lean Liberty haven't integrated a long time ago.
The pitch would appear to be pretty simple. "Your writers get an extra source of income, and your users do to. At no costs to your company"
Can anyone explain to me why already popular sites haven't integrated yet? Lack of tools?
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I would wager that the reason other blogs do not try and leverage Steemit is that they are worried of losing their userbase to the Steemit platform. Authors on another website can very easily set up shop on Steemit under their own tag and bring their entire following, even more so because the readers can be rewarded too (as you mentioned).
Trying to integrate Steemit with an existing platform would be very risky for the latter, as Steemit could dwindle their audience to zero.
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I'm not sure on that one. A lot of blogs already allow Facebook integration in the comment section. People still come to their site and share the content. A bigger portion of readers can actually interact with the website (assuming everyone already has facebook account) without needing to sign up to each little wordpress blog they stumble upon.
If what you say were the case: Authors on another website can very easily set up shop on Facebook under their own fan page and bring their entire following.
No?
I think we are still missing something. Or at least I am!
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You're right - when you look at it in the context of a well established site like Facebook my logic falls over.
Indeed we are still missing something! =)
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At least we know that we don't know!
Anyone else reading this that has this figured out? (:
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@dutch I totally agree, but there needs to be some strong development on the GUI and query/filtering capabilities. Steemit can provide anything, but it should be easy to customize to provide only what people want.
For example, posts about making thousands a week on Steemit may not interest Joe, but Joe may love cars. It would be great to give Joe the ability to consume, just as it is easy to create.
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I'm not sure why Steemit has not cloned Reddit yet; the lack of development in the past six months is really concerning. Steemit is great but it is a hot mess to use if you are looking for specific content. I really have no idea what the devs are doing.
Give people a Facebook page for their profile, give them a Wordpress-like blog, and then organize the whole thing with a Reddit like categorization. Seems very straightforward?
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Agreed. I am sure they are navigating a minefield of social media patents, so there is that, but there is little evidence of improvements here and there (as in an agile environment).
Steem can be the basis for many different concepts around content publishing/consumption, but it just feels as if Steemit is being "doubled down" on.
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I'm surprised no ones built a sort of shell by which steemit can use other websites like youtube. You find plenty of Youtube clones that just link back to Youtube for the content, if Steemit did that sort of thing it could be put over everything and the skies the limit.
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I like how you're thinking;
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Seeing a feature like that would be fantastic. To clarify, do you mean a feed where you can follow several tags, as opposed to only being able to filter by a single tag at a time?
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Yes, but different from the hot/new/trending options that presently available. Having it customizable based on tags/keywords would allow for more flexibility, and not require following individual accounts if it is not wanted.
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IMO Steemit should be able to place itself over other websites like reddit and youtube so that people can use their services but kind of piggy back on it.
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I think the dual nature of Steemit is what has me so excited about the potential @dutch. A business and an investment.
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And don't forget its native pegged asset! It's great to have somewhere to store value on platform that does not suffer from the volatility that crypto as a whole experiences.
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How companies advertising on Steemit will be perceived by the community is a huge question.
If they are flagged down, then theyll leave and everyone will lose because the value of STEEM will fall with them.
But if they stay, it could turn into one big ad.
How companies can post and advertise organically is going to be key. It has to not look like an ad but as we already see on social media, people see through a company's fakeness pretty easily.
Questions questions...
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Very good point. I would envision any advertising to not be classical ads, but instead centred around competitions and giveaways. This way they are actively engaging with - and giving back to - the community while also promoting their product as intended.
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Yea Steemit is interesting to me partly by how much it naturally leads to changing dynamics
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Steemit is going up like way way up ..ever had a feeling that you were so sure about something no one could change your mind thats how i feel about steem
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After a couple of weeks here I'm still amazed by this platform. It's a matter of time, Steemit will be the #1 social platform. So glad to be here now ^^
Thank you for sharing @dutch :)
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I think Steemit will do extremely well in the future. And remember we are still in beta so there's so much more to come for this platform. I think we'll be at 600,000 users by the end of this year.
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GREAT POST...I AGREE 100%.....PEOPLE FORGET THAT STEEM IS ABOUT 16 MONTH OLD AND ALREADY HAS A MARKET CAP OF OVER 300 MILLION. THAT'S INSANE!!!! EVERY GREAT COMPANY WAS ONCE AT THIS STAGE....STEEM IS GROWING. WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENS IN 2-5 YEARS. CONGRATULATIONS FOR BEING HERE IN THE BEGINNING.
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I am trying to move to a new level of experience with Steemit, so I am learning how to programme in Python. Programmers have a privileged position in blockchain based applications, I believe.
Here´s a question. I have never bought any cryptos, and I want to buy some steemit, as investment and to increase my voting power. I really do not know how to do that. If you could give me any hint or reccomendation, I would very much appreciate it.
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You will need to sign up with an exchange, where you can then buy STEEM. After transferring the STEEM to your Steemit account, you can power up your account by turning the STEEM into Steem Power (SP) which gives your votes more weight.
It is not easy to get from fiat onto an exchange. The most common method is either through Tether, or by buying Bitcoin from somewhere and moving that onto the exchange.
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I buy bitcoin on Coinbase so that I can use it in other places if need be; It lets you purchase BTC, ETH and LTC with USD which as @dutch pointed out is difficult in most places. Then you can use something like ShapeShift.io to send some "ETH" to your Steem wallet address; which you'll find in your wallet -- You'll find your steem wallet and can easily 'shape shift' money from your Coinbase wallet, to your Steem Wallet; you can also buy Steem from an Exchange as well; I use Bittrex but there are a few other trusted sources that people on here like to use as well.
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Thank you very much. So Coinbase it is. It looks to me that coinbase is not an exchange, and Bittrex is. What would be the difference?
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SBD needs to be more backed by the dollar if it wants to compete with Tether. no? USDT seems to be very stable.
I TOTALLY AGREE learning curve is something I'm still baffled no one has really delivered on dealing with apart from Shapeshift, Changelly and Blocktrades which have a lot of limitations. (and not sure why Shapeshift never has Steem available)
So many coins come out without a proper wallet, how is anyone meant to have the confidence in buying if they have no way to confidently safely store it?
Why doesn't Steem (for example, it would work very well) provide a way to specifically target the most ignorant and new? A Steem whale bot could simply ask to be fed with tasty XXXX coin (eg ETH) and in return it will then dispense steem tokens. The best part is you could do it much faster than with other swap services since it's whole purpose would be to simply dispense Steem. It could even undercut the other swap services.
For example. You could get a special deal depending on how many Steem you bought. More steem the better the price. You could get the BEST deal if you bought a lot of Steem power which gets deposited directly into your Steemit account. This is the best way for everyone to win since it's a commitment to the long term investment in Steem.
See? That sort of thing would allow all kinds of new people feel safer and easier buying Steem. It would also for the first time I'm aware actually allow people to save money if buying steem in bulk, this way you could actually potentially get a better deal than if you bought it on an exchange assuming the price wasn't going too crazy.
Oh and ps someone really needs to sort out a better way to explain and organise the private keys... i have a feeling that's really going to be an issue down the line if it's not taken care of...
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SBD is backed by the dollar through STEEM and Steemit, in the same way that USDT is backed by the dollar through Tether. If either platform fails, their pegged asset will be worthless. The big difference is that Tether could shut up shop tomorrow, while with Steemit that cannot happen.
You are right that SBD fluctuates significantly more often than USDT in general, but that is likely due to people trading it having no idea of what they are actually selling. Buying SBD below $1 is free money.
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I think the jury is still out on this. I don't see the value unless one day this platform gains advertising. Probably the price reflects that future expectation.
But one thing that must go is the bias towards whales. On Reddit you can be a newbie and still have and gain influence.
Whereas on Steem you must please the early adopters or join them by buying SP. I hope future changes will make it more democratic.
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the only possible challenge with advertising is, they need information to properly evaluate how much money to spend on advertising - on this platform; and we don't wanna give up our information if we can help it, in the decentralized space ....
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To the Moooonnn with Steem and SBD!!!
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Don't you think that by allowing big brand companies into Steemit we will disregard the small users that have had trouble growing and undoubtedly will continue to struggle while the big guys draw in more and more unsuspecting readers?
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Not at all. There is no difference between a user buying in now by getting a huge amount of STEEM off an exchange, and a company doing the same thing.
Realistically though, as the platform grows it will get harder and harder to get noticed. Now is the best time to add value to the platform and build a following.
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As it grows I do hope the inevitable loss of freedom won't ruin it too much. You know how it is, at the start everything is new and fresh and you can do what you want but then rules changes coming in from the internal and external start ruining it. Just like with crypto the government hasn't got to legislating it yet and so it's a wild a free west, just like drugs in the 60's where you could get all your favourites legally, just like with the internet.
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This Post was Added to the Steemit Social Media Queue.
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