Steem is a blockchain-based social media platform that challenges the very concept of social networks. In the current world of social media, giants like facebook and twitter rake in billions of dollars from your data, each year. Money created from user-generated content that goes straight to the shareholders of the big corporations. Steem has set out to change that by providing a blockchain-based social network that rewards users for participation. The application can be seen live and functioning right now at Steemit.com.
Steemit is a social network where each individual contributor can earn STEEM by creating and posting interesting articles. Much like Reddit, the articles can be upvoted by other users for small amounts of STEEM, which goes to the content creator. This does not only incentivize contributors but also improves the quality of content ranking. Curators can also get rewarded by being the first to upvote a later to be popular content.
The steem blockchain distributes payouts as 50% Steem Power for voting and 50% Steem Dollars. Rewards are distributed by the blockchain, similar to how miners are paid by Bitcoin, and occur roughly 24 hours after content and votes have been submitted.