After a long day outside cutting firewood with my family, I find myself winding down for the day and thinking about our current situation. Stacie D (
When communities first rolled out I was surprised like everyone else. It was a quick sly comment from Justin Sun on the Ama with Ned that I caught. When he was answering what few questions he actually answered, he kinda just slid the comment about communities out. He was asked about communities and SMT and he just kinda was like Yeah lets just roll it out.
It may have been a quick answer, but I think he knew just what he was doing. Sure Steemit Inc had been working on this for sometime, but the roll out didn't seem like a Steemit Inc. move. I have talked to several users that seem pretty die hard Steemit fans and they say that everything that is happening is because it was already happening and Justin Sun didn't really play a roll in this. Here is what I noticed....
Steemit Inc's style of communication since we just started has been generally crap. When we first started it was really crap. It was a bunch of devs trying to make something happen, and the communication with everyone else on the blockchain wasn't good. When the time of Eli Powell came to be, communication greatly improved. We started seeing updates one what they had been working on, and she kept everyone pretty up to date. That's what made this roll out seem different. It wasn't Steemit's style.
Usually Steemit Inc. will talk about something. Then they will give updates. Then they will talk about it some more. Then they will give a release date. Then they will skip the date and give a reason. Then they will talk about it some more. Then they will hype it up. Then they will actually release it. Then they will communicate about it some more. That's not what happened here.
Steemit has been talking about it and giving updates, and even hyping everyone up...but they seemed to miss a few steps. They didn't schedule a release date. They didn't tell anyone when it was going to happen. They didn't hype everyone out. They just slid it out like it was no big deal. It was a bold move, but again, I don't think it was a pre Justin Sun kind of move.
Now all of this is just opinion. It is ok if we all have different opinions and even speculate about what is happening. I think that is what makes this all so exciting. I love the feeling of something moving forward. Even if something isn't going quite like everyone thought, forward is still progress.
So communities. My first impression...honestly...I'm not impressed.
I know that Steemit's goal is to be just like Reddit. Everything they do is because they want to do it like Reddit. That is the number one platform that they compare themselves with, and it is where they pull there ideas from. Just recently Eli Powell compared communities to sub reddits.
I'm personally not a reddit user. That isn't really my style of social media. I do know several people that love reddit though, and I can see the draw. There is just something about always trying to be like something else, I don't like it. If they are always trying to be like Reddit, how will they every be better?
I have found communities to be difficult and pointless. They are pretty much glorified tags. Instead of making a post about a topic and then using the most relevant tag, you just post it into the community. The issue is that your content stays just in the community unless you resteem yourself. Even then that says it puts it on your blog and allows others to see it.
I had a conversation with a very popular Steemit user lastnight and they were telling me that they didn't even know how to find their personal feed. So there are many users that are feeling displaced. Users that have been here since the beginning, and now they are having to completely relearn what used to be something that was second nature to them.
I am not impressed with the idea that if you don't like a community you can just start another one. That is the same mentality that actually pulls communities apart. You see that on discord all the time. Someone will have a great server filled with many different things, and then someone will feel they can do better so they start their own server. That's when people begin to leach out and then the servers begin to suffer do to inactivity.
So let's add SMTs to the mix as well. So you are telling me that it is actually encouraged for each community to potentially have their own SMT.... That is insane. That will be just like Steem Engine. There will be random useless tokens filling up our wallets and then being quickly sold for nothing. It is taking something that could be very amazing and then turning it into a real cluster cuss.
I can imagine that the idea is activity. Getting people to be more active, and actually feel like they are a part of something. I think that they took an idea that was already working and made it more challenging. Something that I have always see is that Steemit wants to be just like Reddit, and they want to target crypto and tech people. They are in no way building anything that even resembles something that can attract anyone that we may considered "the average user".
I think that this may be a great step in the direction they were heading though. I'm not super anti communities, I think they will have their ideal effect on their ideal audience just like anything else. I think this was a strong move for Justin Sun to buy Steemit Inc. I think this will be just one of many social medias on the Tron blockchain, because they just weren't built for the masses.
Before you blow me up in the comments lets remember that this is all just opinion. I love Steem. It just sucks that something that I put so much time effort and energy into is now something that I don't even recognize. Not to mention if you have an actual community that you are working hard to build up...like Inner Blocks.....now you have to convince people to make posts in your community. I think it is a terrible waste, especially when people could make a great post and be able to use the tags of all of the communities that they support.
Thanks for stopping by.
Be well
~The Yeti
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https://steemit.com/@freedompoint
