Why Steemit needs to evolve as soon as possible

Steemit has two main hurdles preventing it from main stream adoption at this stage. On a top level that is, there are many more if I went into more details.

Now I'm not saying it doesn't have a future, just that it's at a point where it needs structural change, at least in one way.

1.) Delivering on its core promise of generating income for content creators/curators

Today most new users to Steemit are coming in as they've heard from friends or read somewhere online that you can make money by generating or curating content. And hey, who wouldn't love that! The "we are constantly creating free content on Facebook, Instagram and similar platforms, only to benefit large corporations" line is fairly easy to sell to people, thus convincing them to come join or at least check out Steemit.

Now in the trending topics, a new user can see seriously lucrative money waiting to be dispersed. You check the content and often see there's nothing about it that would strike you as exceptional. You think to yourself, hey I'm capable of producing something similar, better, worse, whatever it is. The thought is that if that post "deserves" to make a few hundred bucks or a thousand, then your content should get something as well (and not talking about 0.04$).

Now, perhaps you're lucky and it does ramp up some "money". That's great, you're most likely converted and instantaneously a firm proponent of the platform. However the more content a new user produces and the more time is spent on that content production, the higher the expectation of being rewarded will be. If the reward doesn't follow, a sense of resentment and of being wronged will follow.

In that case the user will eventually give up on content production - at least a long form one, unless there is a second factor to keep him on the platform. That second factor is the same as on any other social media platform - content quality and user experience.

2.) Providing quality content that is easily discovered

Although the community here is pretty much in full time praise of the content, there is nothing in particular that sets Steemit apart from other social media platforms, forums, blogs, when it comes to quality...

On the contrary, it is often inferior and it's hard to find what you like or who you would want to follow. The incentive based nature of the platform does give a reason to the user to stick around longer and try harder, but the thing is, it's not a good model. People should be instantaneously attracted to a social media platform, not try hard to like it.

Steemit's user interface feels much like Reddit, except that it is more chaotic and not neatly compartmentalized. Unlike Reddit the "channels" or in this case "topics" of course don't have admins to moderate them. Now all this freedom from moderation and censorship sounds great, but again in reality it doesn't make for a rewarding user experience.

The undemocratic nature of Steemit's voting system can prevent content, which masses would normally make viral in other channels to find its way to the top. The result of this voting system is that what is trending is what a group of influential users chose to endorse with their votes.

Further on unlike Reddit, Steemit's "topic" tags assign the content to be displayed in all the maximum 5 streams the user designates. Switching between them, a user often finds a lot of repeated posts there, which defeats the purpose of having different channels.

I understand this is a smart way to populate streams in the early days of the platform, when there is not much content produced yet, but I would argue that the feasibility of this model has already starting to become obsolete now.

The most widely used "topics" could use a restriction in the near future, where if a user chooses to assign content under it, that would be it and it would only appear there. Meaning a topic with a high volume of newly created posts would only allow the user to post there and not simultaneously appear in 4 extra topics.

Reddit's moderators are generally not some malicious bastards, they make sure the channels/subreddits keep to what they were created for and hence remove content that doesn't belong there. Meaning that when you go to one of the subreddits you'll actually get to read stuff about the topic.

Basically, content wise and structure wise, it doesn't translate to a better experience, if it did, we would have already seen a massive exodus from Reddit, considering Steemit feel similar.

The second part of the platform (the home tab) which is different to Reddit, is the same as can be found elsewhere, but mostly resembles the stream on Twitter. At the moment this is the most orderly and useful tab available to a user, but only if they stick around long enough to discover and follow users they genuinely like.

And that’s the second part where it fails in regards to content quality, it just isn’t as easy to find people to follow as it is elsewhere, in fact it’s plain hard and the only thing that keeps people at it is the smell of money.

On Facebook your feed will be a mash of actual people you know and whatever else you are into – be it news, celebrities, funny cats, religion…

On Instagram you’ll be following people you know and others that produce the highest quality in their respective field – from fitness, food, cars, nature to again celebrities.

Same with the other big shots, it’s just extremely easy to get to content you want, since there is such a big volume of users there and the competition is huge, meaning you get to follow seriously the best content producers.

Each of those platforms is technically designed to bring the best user experience for its dedicated use – photos, videos,… So are their discovery engines. Except Facebook, I think everybody can agree that search is absolute shit, always has been.

With the high interest in Steemit that is currently out there, the platform needs to evolve as soon as possible in order to retain new users. Users might let go of the money making part, but only if the second part of the equation is still there for them – high quality and easily discoverable content.

Other issues

Everything else is in one way or the other connected to the main two premises. Of course a major much discussed topic is the whale, dolphin, minnow environment. I mean seriously, like we don't have enough inequality in our day to day lives, this "groundbreaking" social media platform was designed from the get go to ensure huge inequalities. The white paper is basically one huge neocapitalist wet dream.

One great aspect of Steemit in my opinion is that it's a great social experiment to observe or study, both in sense of little guys as well as the big guys trying to mold the platform in one way or the other. Actually the part about the bots is a great experiment in its own right.

Somebody should start writing a Steemit book, highlighting its history and evolution. The splash of the whale and the cry of the minnow ;)

This post is prompted by my developing thoughts on the matter of Steemit's long term viability as a popular social media platform:

#1 - Why Steemit needs to evolve as soon as possible
#2 - Why earning 1USD a day on Steemit can mean a world of difference
#3 - The future of marketing on Steemit is one hell of a prospect