How stupid it may sound, the main problem I see with steemit.com is the fact it was the first application to be created on the steem blockchain. This means it was the only place where people could come to try the steem reward system, regardless if you were coming from youtube, Facebook or Instagram.
When I hear the word "blogging platform" I don't relate it to anything close to any of these three. Yet we often heard (more in the past) "steemit is going to kill facebook", yet I simply do not see the connection between these two at all.
When people join the steem blockchain, they start on steemit.com
Right now what we are seeing, would be the equivalent of facebook, youtube, Instagram and whatever ... All mixed together in one bag. People use Steemit for what they want, it's a lab rat. There is nothing wrong with that, but could it be more appropriate to separate them into more defined sectors? Let steepshot be on steepshot, dlive be on dlive and so on...
I know maybe our audience is not big enough to split up between these just yet, but I have a feeling the reason we see almost a million "dead accounts" could be partly because of this. Steemit.com is simply not just a blogging site, it is everything social media can offer and that creates somewhat a chaos and hard for people to find what they want to digest.
I don't hear many people coming and saying they joined through Dtube, Dlive, steepshot and the many other application we got floating out there.
Not only is steemit.com a mix of everything right now, but a lot of the new members don't really know any other applications might exist because you do have to make some research on this subject. It is not always obvious if anything else is out there that would fit your need better.
Steemit is the center of all other application and when someone post on Dtube, it pops up on steemit, if someone post on steepshot, it pops up on steemit.
This basically means that regardless of Steemit.com might have been intended to be a blogging site, it is now a big mixture of everything combined. Pretty much the central hub of everything and it creates a chaos if you ask me and it could prove difficult for many users.
Taking it from my perspective, I am really not interested in Instagram, I am interested in blogging. Yet if I surf around on Steemit.com I see so many "1 picture" posts from steepshot and it makes it difficult for me to find what I am in fact looking for.
To me, it makes a poor experience when going around on Steemit and usually I just stick with the few people I am following because it is much easier.
It would make sense to me that all these platforms on the steemblock chain should start "floating" a bit away from each other. Almost like a kid growing up.
Smart media tokens might start to push all these different uses of social media out a little more and make the separation more clear. But I wonder if steemit always will remain the place where everything produced on the steem blockchain will end up, or it will eventually change?
The moment we get these clear borders and Steemit.com is not the face of the steem blockchain and more people join through the other application, I think we could start to see a significantly more people staying around.
I actually do believe that steemit.com will die out eventually. Maybe taken over by something like steempeak or steempress in a couple of years. But for now everything is tired up with each other and to me, it creates sometimes an unpleasant experience that I can imagine might scare some people away when they already got fully working applications elsewhere.
What do you guys think?
-holm