I recently read and replied to, a post by @joseph, asking why some early adopter, content creators were leaving the platform.
In his plea Joseph made a point , that has been bugging me these last few months, and his request for feedback about Steemit, finally jogged this thing loose.
We started as a reddit competitor and evolved into a medium competitor, then evolved into some sort of social media platform that I can not describe in words without being indecent. We need to protect the basics of social media. @joseph
There it is in a nutshell, the thing that's been bugging me, nagging away at a deep corner of my mind everytime I try to explain Steemit to somebody new.
Who Are We?!
Back in the misty days of a pre-payout Steemit; I wrote an article called; Steemit Will Not Be The New Facebook.
In the article, I basically lay out why I felt that Steemit shouldn't market itself as a new Facebook, because the financial incentive makes Steemit an entirely different proposition. I predicted that Facebook type posts would not gain any traction here for a number of reasons. One glaringly obvious one was that beyond your family and friends, nobody really wants to see pictures of your kids, food, or day out at the pub.
As I said, there were other reasons, but that isn't the point right now; the point isn't even the fact that I was right (although it's always nice). The real issue here is that Steemit is not like Facebook, nor is it like Reddit, as a fellow Steemian suggested when he released his article Steemit Will Be The New Reddit.
But why is this?
The welcome page says; *"Welcome to the Blockchain", then when you click on the learn more button, you are taken to a page which boldly declares:
Steem is a blockchain-based social media platform, where anyone can earn rewards.
This of course is a lie; not a malevolent one, but an unconscious one, one told in error rather than in malice. Because of course Steemit is not a social media site. It has none of the traits of any social media site today, and you may say; "but Cryptogee, Steemit is different, you can't compare it to other social media sites."
To that I would say; yes, you're right, however, in order for it to be classed as social media, it has to have social elements, let's look at them below.
- The ability to send a direct message to somebody you are following
- The ability to post to somebody's page you are following.
- The ability to tag somebody you are following into a conversation you're having with someone else
- The ability to set up groups and invite users, either by direct message or some other means.
- The ability to publicly post to a specific set of people
OK, number 5 could be argued to be a mishmash of points 2 and 4; however even if you add some of your own criteria, you have to agree, that every social media platform on the market, has the ability to do, some or all of these things.
In fact Whats App, is more of a social media tool than Steemit; but hey, wait!
I'm not negging on Steemit here; I love Steemit, it has fed me and my family for the last five months; no, no, no. I am simply saying, it is not a social media site; that is just a neutral fact, neither positive nor negative.
What we clearly are; is a blogging site.
Confusion And Cryptocurrency A Match Made In Heaven
I consider myself a crypton00b, I made my first purchase with Bitcoin over 2 years ago; however I wouldn't claim to have been "a part of the community", from that moment.
My cryptobaptism begun entirely with Steemit. As the weeks and months have passed, I have slowly learned new things about the cryptocommunity.
One thing I have learned, is that confusion is often something that comes hand in hand with cryptoprojects. As with the wider aspects of life, the source of confusion can come from any quarter. Be it confusion over an ICO launch, or motives of developers and miners. Cryptoveterans understand this, and wryly smile as they see n00bs like myself panic over sudden changes.
I think Steemit has been confused, however it's not the standard kind of cryptoconfusion, I think this is a confusion between the founders' dreams and the reality of Steemit.
Clearly Ned and Dan wanted to create a social network, like Facebook or Reddit, whereby instead of becoming a company asset, without benefit. You were rewarded for the minutes, hours, days and weeks you spent contributing to the site.
All very commendable, and I'll praise them till the day I die for implementing such an idea so effectively.
However somewhere along the line, the dream went from being a social media site that rewards people for their efforts. To a blogging site that rewards people for their efforts.
Both concepts are great! The key point here, is; without advertising, people are getting rewarded for something that nobody else is rewarding for.
So what's the problem? Why am I even bothering to say anything?
Well, we have to go back to @joseph's post for that; it just got me thinking, that maybe, just maybe, people come here for a social media site that rewards you, see that it's a blogging site, with no apparent plans to change, and they leave.
Just a thought, but one worth exploring.
Deciphering The Crypto Code
A rasa as Dr V.S. Ramachandran likes to call it. It is more than a feeling, it is everything that goes together with an experience.
So Twitter has a rasa, as does Facebook, Instagram and Google +. It is the functionality, feeling and emotion, all wrapped into one.
When you use sites that are connected to cryptocurrency, they too have a certain rasa, and to the new user, it is an intimidating one. Buttons are not where you expect, text is displayed too small and in unfamiliar fonts. The language used is technical and unwelcoming, as too are the associated web pages, a new user may click around a few crypto-related pages, and be none the wiser as to what he or she is reading.
It always amazed me how Reddit have the cheek to use the strapline "We're the front page of the internet." It surprised me for two reasons, the first being, I'm pretty sure Google have got a more valid claim to that line. Secondly, the rasa of Reddit, is very similar to that of the cryptocurrency.
The average person finds Reddit quite difficult to use and navigate; whereas somebody used to cryptocurrency, will find it just as easy as the average Joe does when using Facebook.
From what I can gather Ned and Dan are established in this community and therefore are used to dealing with sites with a certain rasa.
Add to this fact, that as with any cryptocurrency, the project is there to promote the coin, and not the other way around.
This means that a lot of their earlier efforts, were focused on getting the code to work; making sure that they had created a viable system, and then tweaking it from there.
Clearly there is nothing wrong with this, and it is what you'd expect, however if Steemit was being started with the kind of support and money it has had. With the one difference being, there was no cryptocurrency involved, then it would look very different, because it would have had a different set of people, thinking about a different set of problems, designing it.
The Expert Dilemma
There is a malaise that befalls certain human beings, when they become expert in something. The problem manifests itself, as an inability to explain their expertise, in anything less than expert terms.
So trying to get Albert Einstein to explain relativity in terms a ten year old could understand, would have been very difficult for him. Because he had long since forgotten the simplifications used to help learn the subject.
We can witness this when trying to read and understand the whitepaper, some people who are experts like, @hisnameisolllie, who is an oil trader, they perfectly understand the document. Whereas novices like myself, find that even after reading over and over, still don't understand it.
Unfortunately what I think has happened with Steemit, is that the expertise of the team has shone through brilliantly when it comes to the application of the code. However not so well when it comes to applying the rules of a social media site.
Is this a problem?
No, not in the short-term, as long as we recognise what has happened and move on from it.
Future Decisions
Let us now state what it is we want to be; if we want to be a blogging site, that's fine, let's put in the tools that will make this the best damned blogging site out there.
If we want to be a social media site, then let's do that, and put in those crucial social tools that every social media site has.
If we do go down the blogging site road, let's make sure we fix the tags and have them working like tags would work on any other blogging site. In other words, as a tool to find content, regardless of its age. And of course the big one, change that welcoming message to read blogging platform.
Conclusions
I am still optimistic about Steemit, I like to zoom out, and take a broader view, looking at 5 to 10 years down the line, when these times of turmoil, are looked back with great fondness; and I see a legacy that can shake things up and change the landscape, it just needs to define which landscape it wants to change.
Keep Steemin'
Cryptogee