For a while I've been trying to convince people who share my niche hobby that Steemit could be a good place to discuss it. I've met with some limited success, but it hasn't really taken off in a huge way. I think part of the reason why is because I'm talking about the potential of what Steemit could be, but if they're tempted to check it out they see what Steemit is right now.

There's a lot of stuff on Steemit right now, and you probably don't care about most of it

If someone tries to get a sense of what Steemit is like by looking at the “main” pages they're going to see a lot of content they don't care about. Unfortunately they're going to see a lot of spam. And they're going to see a lot of people trying “grab eyeballs” like mini-Buzzfeeds. And they're going to see a lot of people talking about cryptocurrency (which I'm sure is all well and good for crypto enthusiasts, but if you're not a crypto enthusiast it can be more than a little off-putting). And, for any given niche hobby, 99.9%+ of the content isn't about that hobby. So from the perspective of a niche hobby enthusiast, Steemit as it exists today looks like a place for a lot of junk, not a place for the kind of stuff you care about.

It's not about what's here already, it's about what we can build here

If I was promising that Steemit was already a great place to find content related to a niche hobby it would be perfectly fair to conclude that I'm wrong. But the argument I'm making is about the potential that exists if people try it. There are two aspects that that vision: it will take some time, and it will take some people. As I said in the previous paragraph, if you just look at Steemit today it's probably not a great place for finding content related to your hobby – and if you project the Steemit of the future being a lot like the Steemit of the present then it's not a super-attractive place. Alternatively, people could hear just the part where I say it's going to take time for Steemit to be a great place for discussing their hobby and take a “wait and see” approach – the downside there is that if everybody waits and sees instead of diving into the pool then it never starts to get better because the hobby-related content doesn't get posted here.

But! I'm talking about two differences at once. If 1) People from the niche hobby make accounts here and start posting stuff, then 2) Over time this will look like a good place to engage with that hobby-related content.

If only a handful of people are on Steemit talking about the hobby it's probably going to take a long time, if ever, there there to be a lot of that hobby-related content here. If there's a critical mass of people, then it gets good eventually. If there's a huge swarm then it could get good really quickly. It's probably not smart to bet on the “huge swarm” happening, but I think “it gets good eventually” is within the realm of the realistic.

It's not guaranteed to work, but nothing is

Obviously I can't guarantee this vision will work. It could fail in any number of ways – maybe the value of the cryptocurrencies that underlie Steemit will crash, maybe the website will never get where it needs to be from a technical perspective, etc., etc. And maybe even if a bunch of hobbyists were here trying to talk about the same hobby it would fizzle for any of the reasons any other community can fizzle. But if it did work it would be great – people could talk about the niche hobby they love and have a way to make it more financially reasonable to engage in producing content related to it. It seems to me that the Steemit economic model might make a lot more sense for paying for “culture content” – the kinds of things that creative or intellectual communities produce – than the traditional economic model. And, other than some time learning a new website, it's not clear that there's anything to lose by trying Steemit. Given the big potential upside and the limited downside I think it's a worthwhile experiment to try Steemit.

But account creation is a bit of a problem right now...

Unfortunately it seems that the account-creation process can be painfully slow right now, taking several weeks from when you request your account creation to when you finally get it and can start using it. That's something that's pretty much in the hands of the powers-that-be, the only solution seems to be to wait (and they do claim to be working towards solutions). Having to wait a long time for your account to be approved is not a good user experience, there's no denying it. Hopefully it's not a deal-breaker for everyone, though.