There has been so much talk of the mistakes that have been made over the years by Steemit, Inc. It appears that things may be turning around for the elusive company on the Steem blockchain.
Over the past few years they have shown a lot of weaknesses:
- Miscommunication
- Lack of communication
- Over promising and under delivering (or not even delivering at all)
- Lack of proper budgeting
- Lack of development
- Layoffs
- Awkwardly timed guitar strumming
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Yes, there have been quite a few times in the past 2 years when I (and I’m sure many others) would’ve liked to walk into the expensive Steemit, Inc. headquarters and ask them (not so politely) “What the fuck is going on here?"
In the past few months, Elizabeth Powell has been handed the keys to the kingdom and Ned has stepped off into the background for the most part.
Who knows what kind of role he actually plays now. Some call him the visionary. If so, maybe that’s where he belongs. Maybe he’s good at being the visionary but god awful at running an organization.
Regardless of where Ned is hanging his guitar these days, something has clearly changed for the better at Steemit, Inc.
Communication has risen to a far better level and you can see that in a multitude of ways. The Steem twitter account is far more active in retweeting Steem news to the general public (although, I think their communication style could use some further work).
Additionally, Andrarchy has been a lot more active in his communications on Steem as well with the Steemit, Inc. podcast and the semi-regular update posts every week or so.
To be honest, this change is very refreshing and shows the value of open communication.
I think Steemit, Inc. has done a great job in turning this around and I think that they will continue to improve their communications and realize that we’re all better off for it.
Reducing Costs and Building a Healthier Company and Steem Ecosystem
So Steemit, Inc. released a podcast with Andrarchy and Eli Powell. In this podcast they talked about the recent reductions in costs and how Steemit has improved in a few different ways.
Steemit.com is out of beta which is something that many community members have talked about.
The most eye-popping figure mentioned by Eli is that the monthly AWS costs to run Steemit.com as of December were $220,000. What an insane figure!
Because of all the backend work - MIRA and Hivemind - done by Steemit, inc. the costs are now estimated to be 37,000 for May.
Additionally, with about 3 more weeks of work, the costs are likely to reduce by another $8,000 - $10,000.
Other ways that they’ve reduced costs are just operational things. Namely, the lease cost for their monthly rent has been cut by 18,000.
Generating Revenue
Prior to January, 2019 Steemit, inc. had never generated revenue and never focused on how they could generate revenue. Instead, they were just paying out of pocket for the monthly costs to run Steem blockchain nodes and the Steemit.com interface.
Many people in the community had said for years that Steemit could generate revenue in a multitude of ways.
One of those ways is advertising.
If Steemit had started doing ads on the site 2 years ago, they would have a very different story today. The eyeballs have dropped significantly since then, but Steemit still sees a very regular and healthy flow of traffic.
Over time, I expect this traffic to continually increase as Steemit evolves and they learn how to market themselves. The coming bull market in altcoins is also likely to help spike interest in Steemit once again and also in all the other wonderful DApps here on Steem.
Since the simple integration of Adsense, Steemit, inc. has been able to generate $3,000 per month in ad revenue.
This is a small figure but is meaningful in showing that Steemit is capable of generating a revenue. With this small step, they can now move forward and hopefully generate greater and greater forms of revenue through banner ads and Feed ads as well.
One day I hope to see Steemit create an ad revenue pool and give some kickback to the top content creators who generate eyeballs and traffic for Steemit.
Future Roadmap
From here, Steemit, Inc. plans to focus on cost cutting for about 3 more weeks and then they will move their attention to communities.
From there, ad sharing and SMTs will be on the docket and I believe that they could get those out by the end of the year. Before Eli took leadership of Steemit, I would’ve questioned whether SMTs would be released at all, but now I can see that things seem to be moving along much faster than before.
Regardless, SMTs are already here in a certain fashion with Steem Engine and their SCOT protocol.
Soon there will also be a hard fork of the Steem blockchain. This will be Steem’s 21st HF and will bring the SPS - Steem Proposal System, a.k.a. Steem.Dao - to life.
I’ve never had any major doubts about the future of the Steem blockchain. To me, even if Steemit, Inc. goes down, the Steem blockchain community is powerful and will continue to chug along with community run projects.
Projects like Steem Engine, Steem Monsters (Splinterlands), Steemhunt, Partiko, etc. have shown us that they have no plans on going anywhere and as long as these amazing dApps are run on Steem, I see a bright future here.
Having Steemit, Inc. get their act together and course correct their sinking ship is a huge bonus. Especially for people from outside of the Steem blockchain looking in. To many outsiders, Steemit, Inc. is in charge of the Steem blockchain. They don’t realize that Steemit is just a part of this immense blockchain community.
Standing together and making progress as a community is the best thing we can all do in these times. Steem’s future looks brighter to me now than ever before.