Play a game with me. Here are the rules:

“Steemit is a privately owned company, and I’m it’s CEO.”

This is the reality for the reminder of this post.

Our three major problems:

1. Retention strategy

We don’t really have one.

(subtext: please stay...)

We are expanding like crazy. Every day new users join from all over the world. However, if we don’t have a proper retention strategy, we shouldn’t have recruited those users in the first place, but rather waited until we had a proper strategy for motivating them to stay.

Users are continuously joining, writing a few posts, only to leave and never come back, because no one reads their posts, and because the incentive that brought them here was “Get paid to post online”.

When their first experience with Steemit is: No readers and mock payment, they leave, and even do so with a negative impression of the company. It is a stark contrast to the optimism and gumption so many people sign up with every day. One user that gets addicted to the product, is better than three, who leave within the first week.

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2. Most users aren’t investing.

They think they don’t have to.

Well, they really don’t HAVE TO, but it is fairly easier to do so. So why is it that the vast majority of new users never actually invest money?

The answer is obvious: we at the company have failed to make it attractive to do so. In a recent post, @fitinfun suggested that renting SP - even in small quota (and even as a minnow) - holds tremendous advantages.

In other words, the company has failed to provide a structure, in which it is more attractive for users to invest money, than renting it from entities that aren’t directly tied into the company ecosystem.

Imagine if most new users came to Steemit with the intention to actually buy Steem/STB. Imagine how the price of Steem would be affected, if the average user invested e.g. $1,000.

New users come here with the delusion, that they are going to be paid for creating content on Steemit, when in fact, we want them to invest.

3. The inherent hierarchical structure

It effects user behavior and interaction.

Although the reputation system is ingenious in it’s fundamental structure, there are gross disadvantages with a system in which a few affluent costumers, aka whales, hold tremendous power over the masses.

First of all, it makes it risky for minnows to post controversial content. In fact, it’s risky for even dolphins to do so, because upsetting a few whales, can lead to your demise, by you being downvoted, if whales take dislike of specific content.

Furthermore, most tutorials suggest that minnows follow whales, upvote their posts, comment on them, and try to make friends with them. While there’s nothing wrong with people seeking to befriend one another, it seems unfruitful for us to foster a culture of sucking up to the important ones.

This creates a culture of ‘important users’ and ‘less important users’. Now, if this served as a motivator for new users to invest in the platform, it could be justified. But in it’s current state it simply seems to be bad for business.

The only reason it's not a problem is, that there are no problems in the company, only exciting challenges.

Thoughts and comments are always welcome.