The month of July in 2016 may go down in Internetland history as the month that marked the beginning of the end of Reddit, Facebook, and other mainstream social media platforms. The old model of content producers posting their materials for free on platforms that that don’t reward the producers is about to die. As we all know, Steemit is the facilitator of this revolution.
The first target of this Revolution will be Reddit. Reddit was founded in 2005 and promoted itself as being “The front page of the Internet”. Reddit is organized as a bulletin board system where registered community members can submit content such as text posts or direct links. Different topics of discussion are organized into “Subreddits”. In other words, there is nothing that Reddit does that Steemit doesn’t do just as well or better.
However, Reddit does not reward its registered users for their content. Instead the owners of Reddit profit from their users by selling advertising which they promote to their readers. Steemit turns this entire model on its head. Instead, Steemit leverages blockchain based cryptocurrency to reward content creators and readers for their contributions to the platform. Participants are rewarded a unit of cryptocurrency called Steem Dollars. These dollars can be converted into Steem, Bitcoin, or other currencies. Yes, you can pay your rent with Steem if you convert to the right currency first!
In short, social media platforms that do not incorporate blockchain based cryptocurrency payments to their participants are going to die. They simply will not be able to compete over the long term. While it is certainly possible that Reddit could try overhauling their website to incorporate such a payment system, it is likely that by the time they do, Steemit will have too large of a market share for Reddit to compete. In other words, Reddit has just become the next Myspace.
So go to sleep tonight happy my friends! Revel in the fact that we are on the ground floor of the next social media revolution. There are exciting times ahead for us all!
