I was thinking about my Steem birthday late next month, and what I would write about my first year on Steem... obviously it lead me to some hardcore reminiscing about the good old days...
WHAT? ARE YOU A HUNDRED? WHO HAS TIME FOR THINKING?!?
Rude.... before I talk about that, I kind of wanted to go over what I see at the moment. The Steem blockchain seems to have a renewed energy about it after the two hardforks. Even without DLive everyone is creating greatness on the daily.
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I can see why, with whales like @kpine, lots of people are collecting between $15-$60 per post... and given that @kpine hasn't made any comments in 8 months, I'd guess that he found the people who were getting regular Dtube/DLive upvotes and set/forget everyone to autovote.
Psst, he's still rocking in at 29 minutes - if you want to up your curation game and get in before...shhhhh.
The comparison that I wanted to make, between now and the olden days, is that when I started, people seemed to be working on their fanbase and making friends... conversations were flowing and I got a trillion dollars more in upvoted comments than I ever could with posts.
Now it looks like content is king, and comments are a chore... we're not building a community or a new friendship group as much as padding out platforms.
To what end though? Does anyone benefit from the huge amount of content created here?
Steemit's Alexa/Google ranking has been slowly slipping backwards, so the information we're all pumping onto the internet isn't necessarily helping people.
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Every time I've been on Facebook or Instagram I've rolled my eyes at the huge amount of content everyone is giving to Facey... but I forget that everyone gets something out of that exchange. They feel heard... heard by their friends and family, and heard by strangers... the posts and comments they make, feel like they matter.
People say that Steem has a terrible retention rate because newbies don't make the money they were promised and leave, but I personally think it's because they saw us all shouting into the wind, and felt ignored.
At this point, I'd definitely like to shout out to the work that @abh12345 is doing, and the community he's created with his Engagement League. The work he has done is amazing, and if whales did actually want to protect their investment long-term, then he'd be the one they're supporting.
This all brings me to the realization that like with traditional social media.. we are the product.
YOU'RE SO WRONG! WE CAME HERE TO GET AWAY FROM THAT MALARKY!
If we're not the product... then who is paying for the content we create?
Our upvotes mostly stem from delegations from Steemit Inc or investors hoping to profit off delegations from Steemit Inc... Once SMTs are in, and businesses arrive, we are the resources that will create their content, we are the eyeballs their investment will chase.
I'd argue what while the @kpine's and @dtube's have changed the lives of the creators they support, they've also changed the focus of those creators from 'Content for Engagement' to just 'Continual Content Creation'.
My guess is that once SMTs do come in, our feeds will be more hunts and less vlogs, more business-y content and less games/photos/opinions... if you want Steem to remain social and fun, then you really should be spending half or more of your Steem-time on your community.
Source The real value of Steem?
We all know that the whales that are currently maximising their curation to vote regular dtube/utopian contributors will move their votes quick sticks to a Nike or Coca Cola... and we'll be left to either create ads for Green Protein Tea, or we'll be insulated by the friends and community we've created for ourselves now.
It's crazy to me to see so many posts with 60ish comments that are still upvoted to less than a dollar, while other posts making 30 times that are barely read or viewed... luckily I do think these community builders are the people who'll do really well in the future because of the fun/conversations they foster, even if that community is kinda new and SP-poor at the moment.
TL DR; Worky change is coming... make friends now!
P.S) I am aware of the irony that the creators I'm trying to warn will never see this post because they're too busy creating.
P.P.S) I'd absolutely love it if you could see your way into throwing Asher's Engagement League post an upvote. It's very possible he's doing the most important work on the blockchain.