As reported by @furion in this Steem Analysis it seems we have a churn problem. Personally I was getting my own sense that the user interaction was down and even felt a little less inclined to use the website myself in the last while. There are a number of issues that I have personally witnessed from people I encouraged to check out the website.
The first of these problems is registering. I don’t really have a solution to this problem as I understand that there needs to be a way to verify users. People I have spoken to who tried registering on the website, decide against it when faced with having to log-in through Facebook. I can try to assure them that Steemit doesn’t use any of your details from Facebook but that doesn’t change their minds.
The second problem arises immediately after registering, when facing the log-in page. I didn’t have a problem myself with this because I registered before the new 32 character generated password came along, but I did come across it when helping my mother register. I have a lot of friends who tell me that they registered an account but they simply cannot log in.
To a techy, this seems like they shouldn’t be having a problem. You should simply just save your password somewhere and copy and paste it in. What’s the issue? The issue is, this isn’t user friendly. People are used to using their not-so-secure passwords. But of course, when money is involved it needs to be secure.
So how do we combine extra high security with user friendliness?
I suggest we use keys. And I mean physical keys that you hold in your hand!
The third problem we have is content. As I write this here is the front page of steemit and the first thing we see when we successfully log in.
Put yourself in the shoes of a newbie for a moment. You just heard about this platform where people are making money to blog. You’ve been writing your own blog for some time, and you decide to check out this website to see if it would be worth using as a platform. You get onto the homepage and you’re faced with the words ‘SteemMag’, ‘SteemDrive’ and ‘Crypto Currencies’.
What language is this?!
Depending on the type of person you are, you could respond in 2 ways.
You could:
- Spend a couple days researching bitcoin, cryptocurrency, steem and all that jazz
- Assume that the userbase of this community wouldn’t be interested in your blog
“I knew it was too good to be true!”
Perhaps if this newbie just happens to write their blog on one of the following tags we can still hold their interest.
I try to focus my votes on some of the less popular tags because I think they will attract more users if they do well, but I’m a minnow. My vote isn’t worth much. I would personally like to think that a fitness blogger would come to see steemit as a great place to share their knowledge, but alas, this isn’t looking so promising.
I haven’t even mentioned the fact that if your tag doesn’t exist in the search bar, you’re even less likely to be seen.
Conclusion
The solution to this I would assume is on its way. I presume Ned and Dan are working on filters for our tags. There is still a problem with tag abuse which could be solved with a better tagging system.
Filters should be a priority
If I were able to filter content, instead of looking at one particular tag, I could simply filter out #steemit related content and get a much better user experience. I personally only read the steemit posts for research purposes. I think that the current visual impact of the steemit homepage is turning users away from steemit, as it makes it look like we are a ‘clique’ community. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more non-steemit related content on the homepage if people had the option to filter them out.