Something I'd been wondering ever since tribes were launched was, between the tribes that were more niche(LEO,STEM, etc) and the ones that are more general(PAL, NEOXIAN,) which ones would perform better financially over time.
My initial thoughts were that the niche ones would do better and at least in the case of LEO that seems to be the case. Almost all the tribe tokens are down and you can check their progress with a tool in their discord that produces charts with a command.
To get a chart for a specific coin you just type "^chart (the coin)" so for example if you wanted a chart for CCC you'd type ^chart CCC
Anyway, the reason I figured the niche's would do better is because they'll inflate slower since fewer rewards will be going out. When everyone is using a tag and everyone has a bit of a token staked, it's constantly getting distributed. Some will stake, some will sell as usual, but without some sort of positive cash flow coming into the economy it will just get continuously devalued.
I like the idea of having an ad program so I think that's a welcome feature that can offset this.
Overall I think the tribes experiment is an interesting one and I do think the idea of community ownership is one that has legs. I just think that owners will have more of a challenge than you typically would when starting for example a Facebook group. There the only concern is growing the community, but I think with a tribe you also have to think hard about the economics of your community because if your token isn't worth anything, even if people are interested in the content, they'll be less inclined to participate.
That's the whole thing with Steem that I feel changes the dynamic in the social media aspect. You can't ignore that there are a blend of incentives when you toss in a financial one.
I'm looking hard at LEO right now since it's been able to find a decent balance it seems. The tokens associated with Steem Monsters are doing really well, and I think that makes complete sense because they have a use case. It will be interesting to see who adapts and is able to figure out a way to succeed.
Are you all really into any tribes or have you gotten a bit jaded from the prices? I still feel like there's nothing stopping even the worst performers from turning things around, they just have to start addressing the issues of their particular community.
I made some LEO fan art for this post. Feel free to use it if it helps you with yours.