A Comparison of Steem/Steemit Clones and Competitors and Why They Made Me Invest More Here

There was quite a stir this week with the news of Synereo going for a second round of funding and a series of controversial posts about Synereo kicked off by @stellabelle. This caused me to look further into what I soon learned was a plethora of crypto-currency backed social/content networks springing up. Some appear to have been in the works already for quite some time and others appear to be completely inspired by the rise of Steemit.

One thing most of these projects have in common is that they don't even exist yet, they are vapour so far. I went in search of signing up accounts for social networks or blockchain mining, instead what I ended up doing was signing up for a bunch of email lists promissing to send me info very very soon on an upcoming alpha launch.

Here is a list of the Steemit clones / competitors popping up with my brief thoughts on each:

AdzBuzz.com

This is pretty much the only one that is actually a functioning social network and crypto-currency. It shares many similarities with some of the mechanics of using a crypto-currency to give value to social network content. Honestly the whole site feels shitty. Every criticism of Steem being a Ponzi scheme AdzBuzz seems to wear as a badge of honour. The whole thing is treated as an investment oppourtunity where passive income from reinvesting in the platform is everyones goal not using the platform at all.

I thought the use of ads would add value but it seems the ads are the social network content and aren't third party ad dollars feeding into the system. I had a very hard time finding anything resembling content and it was all just status updates announcing how much money they made on adzbuzz. The content felt fake. To me this thing seems like a house of cards with lessons for what Steemit can avoid doing.

(Full disclosure that's a referal link I used.)

Synereo.com

So this is project that @stellabelle wrote about in her article 2 Problems Plaguing Steemit That Synereo Could Potentially Solve. This caused quite the backlash with posts criticizing her for biting the hand that feeds. The drama unfolded in a trending category.

This project does seem interesting. There does seem to be more of a focus dealing with privacy and harassment issues but could that also translate into censorship? We'll have to wait and see because for the time being this project isn't even launched.

Yours.network

This project seems to be focused around the creator owning their work. It's YOURS. They use the bitcoin blockchain and have their smart contract oracle technology. Once again there is nothing working yet. Just another email list to signup to and wait for an announcement.

Akasha.world

This project looks slick and uses the Ethereum coin. Can we look forward to a Akasha and Akasha classic in the future? I had a little chuckle at buzz wordy this sounded "Powered by the Ethereum world computer Embedded into the Inter-Planetary File System" but again there is only an email signup to be notified of an upcoming alpha.

Postbase.co

This project is apparently an outright steem/steemit clone but with a focus more to a reddit style social bookmarking site. The project was discussed in this post First Steemit Clone is an ICO where @dantheman commented that they are breaking the licensing rules. We'll see how far this project can go if their source code is in legal jeopardy.

Wayguide.club

This project looks to be focusing in on the travel review and blogging ecosystem. The restriction to travel content will obviously make the platform more restrictive for content producers but maybe it will give some legs commercially. Could this displace travel review sites?

So what do I think of all these competitors?

To me I see this as a market validation of the underlying concepts of Steem. The fact that so many others are copying Steem only goes to prove that there is something game changing about it. I also see a lot of projects announcing big things but not much actually being released. Steemit isn't perfect but it's here now and working. Everyday I see changes in an effort to continously improve the platform. When I think about Steem right now these are my main points:

• Current Steem prices are low
• There is external validation of high volumes of traffic to the site
• There is a flood of copycats rushing to market and validating the concepts
• More and more unique content is being published daily further entrenching the first mover
• The developers are moving at a rapid pace already

I think these new projects are going to have a hell of time playing catchup. I'm going to bet my money on Steem/Steemit, literally, I'm going to bet my money. That's what I just did:

I still think we are on the ground floor of something that will be very big and all this "competition" will only help increase the value of Steemit.