Why I'm bullish on Steem

Over the last few days there has been an explosion in people talking about Steem and using Steemit and its been reflected in the price which has shot up in the last 24 hours.

If you don’t believe me check out this site which shows a number of interesting charts related to the Steem platform: https://steemle.com

Chart of Posts, Replies, and Edits per day taken from steemle.com.

So why do I see a huge potential in Steem? It’s simple really, and it boils down to main things that I don’t believe we’ve seen in the crypto space yet: Ease of use, and viral growth.

Steemit is easy

First off Steemit is a platform that is relatively easy to use. It doesn’t require you to have a degree in CS to setup a node, or mess with a cli. Ordinary people can go to the site, sign up, and begin using it. In fact you don’t even really need to know anything about the monetary side of things if you don’t want to. It provides the infrastructure for you to write and share your writing without a user having to worry about any of that. I don't need to figure out how to host my blog or worry about whether it displays correctly on mobile, it just works.

Second off, Steemit is currently creating it’s own highly effective viral loop. 

What is a viral loop?

A viral loop is the holy grail for startup growth. Look at any of the mega successful social media platforms out there and you can see exactly what I mean. 

Lets take for example Instagram. People naturally want to share pictures that they are taking with others. Instagram is a platform that is easy to use. You simply open the app and take a picture, or open a picture you’ve already taken and post it. The platform allows the user to be creative and share, but it can’t come up with the content without a user. When a user shares the picture they’ve just created with other people. People open the website or app to view the content. Instagram was able to put itself right in the middle of a process that people already wanted to do, and since people naturally want to share their pictures, they have created a direct funnel for new users to discover the platform.

Heres another one, Youtube. People want to create videos about things they are interested in, and they want people to watch those videos. Youtube provides the infrastructure to host the video so that anyone can watch it, and they allow you to easily share it with others. So by you sharing your video, you are in effect sharing Youtube.

Essentially my definition of a viral loop is a scenario in which you have users who have a natural incentive to use a platform to create something, which in turn provides a natural incentive for them to share what they’ve created, which in turn spreads the platform to more users.

I think we're just starting to see this take place on Steemit and I'm excited to see where it goes!

Anyways these are just my thoughts, maybe some of you have different opinions. Anyone care to share?