What's up Steem! How's it going? Well, here we are again. Down in the dumps. Everybody scrambling with their two satoshis on what's wrong with Steem, what Steem is, what we need to do, what we want, what we should have, who's fault it is that we don't have nice things...you know the drill by now. You've been here long enough. You've seen this before. Everyone who hasn't is gone already.
But don't worry, old Midlet's got the answer, but before I tell you my super secret awesome solution lets ask ourselves a few questions. Not how do we attract investors, not how do we attract users, not how do we make the price go up, not how do we improve curation, not how do we improve rewards. I think there are questions that need to be asked before any of these things. Questions that, without an answer, make the rest of those questions meaningless.
What problem does Steem solve?
What value does Steem create?
Whose life can Steem improve and how?
Who NEEDS Steem and why?
What can Steem do better than anything else? Anything?
Before you read the rest of this post I really want you to think about those questions. What are your answers? If you don't have answers to those questions, but you're talking about any of the things I mentioned above, you're putting the cart before the horse. It doesn't matter how amazing the tech is if nobody wants to use it. Nobody gives a shit how the sausage is made. Nobody cares about our transaction time, or how many transactions we can process in a day. Nobody cares about ANY of the technical details. If they did, we'd be in the top 5 already because the tech IS badass.
So what's the answer?
EEENT! Wrong question! The right question is...What's YOUR answer? Steem is not a monolith. It's the wrong direction to try to come to some consensus on what it is or what it should be used for. I'm convinced that the path forward will be forged by individuals pushing THEIR vision of what Steem is and what it should be used for and the rest of this post is dedicated to laying out MY vision for Steem, and my answers to the questions posed above.
Steem currently has the best technology in the world for allowing people to financially support one another.
So how can one person support another on Steem?
- Upvotes
- Direct Transfers(Tips/Donations)
- Beneficiary System
- Delegation
Of these four methods, just about ALL of the UX and UI is focused on upvotes across all frontends, and of these four, upvotes are NOT the most effective. There are less than 2000 people in the entirety of the Steem platform that are capable of upvoting over $.25 USD. The top 50, the whales, are almost all are passive. As far as I know, about seven actively vote on authors.
This means that while Steem has THE BEST technology IN THE WORLD for one person financially supporting another, it's not reflected in any of the applications and this technological superiority is not utilized.
This way of thinking and designing is Steem V1.0. It's time to upgrade to Steem 2.0. Steem 2.0 should have donations at the head, then every other method made EASY and INTUITIVE, but seen as secondary to donations. So then we ask...
What problem does Steem solve?
For every person in the world creating content online, and looking for support via donations, or payments for a service, Steem offers a direct connection to your supporters. Steem cuts out the middle man that takes a huge percentage of the support your followers want to give you.
Also Steem is borderless allowing anyone in the world with an internet connection to support anyone else as easy as sending an instant message. No conversions, no banks, peer to peer.
Steem also provides novel methods for your followers to support you including giving you a percentage of their earnings on the Steem blockchain(beneficiaries) as well as transferring to you the power of their stake in the platform(delegation), which will increase the value of your upvote, and further empower you to develop your community.
What value does Steem create?
Attention is valuable. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a host of other social media platforms are generating billions of dollars annually by harnessing the value of their users attention. Unfortunately, even though the users are creating the bulk of the value, in most cases none of that value is transferred back to them. Steem decentralizes this current power structure and puts the value users generate where it belongs...with the users!
Whose life can Steem improve and how?
By leveraging this superior technology, that allows for value to be transferred fast, easy, and freely across the globe, Steem has the potential to completely revolutionize the world. Whether you're sending one thousandth of a Steem, or one million these transactions cost nothing and happen instantly across the world.
This breaks new ground for charities, crowdfunding, content creation support, e-commerce, the list goes on.
Who NEEDS Steem and why?
If you have a business that relies heavily on donations and support from third parties, you need Steem.
If you created content that people find valuable, but you have trouble selling directly, you need Steem.
If you'd like to reach out to the WORLD for aid for a charity or cause, you need Steem.
If you want to invest in the future, you need Steem.
What can Steem do better than anything else? Anything?
Currently there is NO SYSTEM OR PLATFORM IN THE WORLD, that offers as many, or as effective means of people supporting one another than Steem.
Through donations, upvotes, delegations, and the beneficiaries system, Steem is poised to be the worlds leader in servicing this market.
So what do we have to do?
First we need to design our interfaces and frontends with our strengths in mind. The things we should be racking our brains about is how to take these four things and make them RIDICULOUSLY easy, RIDICULOUSLY intuitive, how can we make it to where your grandma could understand it? What will it take? What does the UX need to be? What does the UI need to be?
This is a screenshot of a Youtube live chat. The arrow is pointing to the superchat button, which is the donation button basically. It doesn't need to be rocket science. A button with a money symbol, the end. Then when someone makes a donation, it shows who made the donation and for how much. I feel like this stuff should be obvious, but I'm the only one talking about it.
So to recap
Steem is not a monolith. Come up with YOUR vision and go for it. I'm currently researching and exlporing options, but if it comes down to it, I'm looking at launching a crowdfunding campaign to fund the development of the features I want. This is something I have experience with.
Don't put the cart before the horse. Create something that people want to use and that solves a problem/makes peoples lives better first then think about attracting investors, users, monetization etc.
We need to play to our strenghts, not try to reinvent the wheel of what Steem is. We already have a narritive out there, lets work with it and become great at it.(Rewarding content creators)
If you read through all this, thanks for hearing me out. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.