Creating 100,000 jobs - will this take Steem to the Moon?

How can Steem possibly create 100,000 jobs?

In my last post Go Local to Go Big - will this take Steem to the Moon? I discussed the idea of using the steem blockchain as a foundation for creating local community networks.

This has huge potential for promoting steem at a local level and recruiting an order of magnitude more users than are currently on the platform.

People love to access local information on the web. Events, jobs, road closures, items for sale, sports results, local news...

Originally this was provided by local websites like the one I ran in the Midlands that reached over a third of a million visitors a month at its peak. Then Facebook came along and rather took over the role of local information provider.

Users are not rewarded by Facebook for generating content. Nor do they have any say at all over who gets to see the content they produce. Facebook's algorithms are totally in control of all curation of content.

A better alternative .. Steem Powered Community Networks

For a new way of doing local community networks imagine how good the steem network could be.

Creators could post any information they wanted in any form or format, at any time of day, at any frequency they desire.

Those content creators will be rewarded in steem according to the quality and popularity of what they add to the network. Authoring rewards will encourage them to keep posting regularly to ensure that the information is kept up to date.

Once steem backed local networks start to appear, and people begin to understand how they work, the migration will begin on an epic scale.

With ever more content being created on the local networks curation will become increasingly important.

All the content won't just arrange itself in a nice tidy order it will need curators to aggregate, filter and give order to the content coming in.

That is why each local network will need to engage one or more curators to manage the content.

Potential mechanisms of how this might all be set up will be covered in a following post but the key point is that those curation roles will have significant earning potential.

Depending on the size of the community a network serves, and the activity on the network, the role of Town Curator could become a good part-time or even a full time job.

100,000 jobs...

So where does the 100,000 jobs come from?

Of course it is a wild guestimate, but it is based on some solid foundation numbers.

In the UK there are approximately 2000 towns, above those in size there are over 60 cities. Beneath the towns in size there are over 40,000 villages across the UK.

Let's say just 10% of villages, towns and cities established fully working, vibrant steem based community networks. That would be about 5,000 networks.

Some of these would be larger, some of these would be smaller. For the smaller villages one curator would be sufficient. For the bigger towns and cities several curators would be needed - for example for news, for what's on, for jobs etc.

Across the whole world there around 200 countries.

Even on current activity levels it is not hard to imagine steem becoming popular enough to general local community networks in at least 10%, or 20 countries on the planet.

Some countries will have many more villages, towns and cities than Britain, some less.

But if we take an average of 5,000 community networks in 20 countries averaging one curator per network there you have your 100,000 jobs.

Of course you can twist and turn these figures in any which way you fancy, but the potential for job creation on a very large scale remains.

How long will it be when people are asked that common question "What do you do for a living?" you will begin to hear the answer...

"I work for steem..."

Is this all a fanciful dream? Or could local community networks catapult steem and steemit into the big time?

I would welcome feedback, and a much needed reality check, on this idea.

Please don't do the numbers on this until it has been considered in more depth. They are scary!

I would particularly welcome the thoughts of the likes of @timcliff, @lukestokes and @aggroed who might cast their experienced eyes over the concept, of @transisto who I believe looks keenly for ideas that bring new users to the platform, and of @taskmaster4450 who has a future vision that seems to pinpoint quite clearly where steem could be heading.

This is just my big picture overview of the idea.

If people think it has merit I will expand further with more details of how I envisage taking this forward.

You might also be interested in some of my other posts :

[ graphics by @pennsif ]