Looking back at the rise and fall of Steem and also crypto in general, there are a huge number of factors involved - so many that it is easy to get lost when looking for ways to improve the situation. I feel that community is a huge part of the success or failure of Steem, let's look at how we can work with that understanding...
As @starkerz, myself and others have pointed out and agreed for a long time, Steem's sustainability depends on it having a function/utility. The price of the token WILL continually drop without some motivation for people to buy into it, as unlike other tokens, Steem's inflationary rewards model means constant redistribution of tokens occurs whether you like it or not. This redistribution is a problem if you want to use crypto just to store your wealth - BUT, it's GREAT if you want/need to achieve change in life and create social change/effects of virtually any kind.
@oracle-d and numerous other projects have gone some way to demonstrating this by finding clients who invest in Steem in order to receive promotional services in exchange. There are also large regional groups around the world who use Steem for their own needs too. What we are lacking though, is proper development of the system specifically for communities. Community features are said to be coming, but as yet I don't know anything about the form they will take. If you have any info then definitely let us know - thanks!
Community building is not necessarily a simple thing. People are often wary of other people and tend to mainly only come together in a lasting and powerful way in relation so specific interests and topics - such as sports teams, political parties, religions and activist issues. All of these have their own challenges and chances for inner conflicts and stress that put many people off. The more successful social sites online tackle these issues in different ways, but generally they provide tools for people to choose who they associate with while on the site - such as blocking and other admin tools.
To build lasting community takes continual engagement and the ability to add value to people's lives in tangible ways. Communities need to offer the services and 'things' that we need in better (or possibly cheaper) ways than is available commercially. In many cases this is simple since commerce tends to lower the quality of what it produces in order to 'make a buck' - but in other cases, people's busy lives make it difficult for them to offer much for free online and therefore commercial options win out.
The possibility of combining Steem's financial rewards system with tools to specifically build communities is exciting to me and is part of why I am currently integrating Steem into a social network that I run called Ureka.org. In fact, since Ureka already supports groups and sub communities, it is poised to be one of the first sites on the web to combine Steem with community features.
So what is it that communities need online? What are the specific needs in relation to money?
Well each group's needs are slightly different, but generally, they might need a collective money pot and a way of allotting it to tasks and other things that they agree they want to achieve. They might also want their own rewards pool and unique ways of using the basics of Steem's underlying concepts. They would also need ways of being discovered, to attract new members. Essentially, groups need most of the things that entire social networks need - they are micro versions of the larger 'parent' network that contains them. Perhaps the 'worker proposal' system could be mirrored for each group/community, so that they can all 'get things done' for money? That would be great!
It would also be great to know exactly what Steemit inc. and other developers are intending to deliver in order to support this. Why would a particular group/community choose steem over Facebook, for it's online home - for example?
The ability to accurately assess and define the needs of people as we build community is paramount in the future success of Steem - I'd like to see more discussion on this and I think this needs to be a high priority since it affects onboarding and so many other pertinent issues here.
What do you think?
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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Absolutely. We are working with @blewitt to onboard the comic community (he is very well connected there) we have created a simple qr scan instant onboard system with a welcome vote to each new member of the comic community. @blewitt will bring in new members using flyers from his very popular comic shop and will attend comic events. TRhe comic community ian getting pushed out of its current habitats on google plus and this is about avoid chance to establish a community’s on Steem and eventually bring in a sponsor via @blewitts contacts.
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Excellent, yes - that side of things in the physical world is just as important. What do you do with the feedback and requests you receive from communities and their oganisers? Does it get passed on in any way to Steemit.inc or the dApp creators?
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To be honest @blewitt is the first of this kind with a credible community behind him so far :) so we will see how this one goes initially before we make much noise
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Your are absolutely right. We are setting up a community of individuals, engaging for the Global Goals. The main reasons for choosing Steem-blockchain have been
Part of setting up a community will be implementing a marketplace for services to create a utility for the token apart from vesting it for voting-power.
Btw - I assume you are aware, that @shredz7 has already created a beta-version of a community software, which is just being tested within Steempeak!?
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Oh, no, I wasn't aware of that - I haven't been able to keep up with everything on Steem lately. I knew that Steempeak were working on community things, but that's as much as I knew.
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Absolutely. We are working with @blewitt to onboard the comic community (he is very well connected there) we have created a simple qr scan instant onboard system with a welcome vote to each new member of the comic community. @blewitt will bring in new members using flyers from his very popular comic shop and will attend comic events. TRhe comic community ian getting pushed out of its current habitats on google plus and this is about avoid chance to establish a community’s on Steem and eventually bring in a sponsor via @blewitts contacts.
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I do think building up strong communities that draw people in is a very good thing for the platform I help run the Steemusa community and it had stalled for a bit we now have a campaign between myself and the other leader to get it up and running stronger again
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Hi @ura-soul!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 5.555 which ranks you at #605 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 34 places in the last three days (old rank 571).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 237 contributions, your post is ranked at #32.
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