As I revisited the potential ideas for today's blog post (wow, I actually had several!), I remembered a certain opinion one of Steemit guys had in rapport to early Steam adopters, which at first read, seems quite controversial.
The problem was I wasn't exactly sure where I read about it. That's when journaling everything can prove useful, but I don't practice it either. But luckily my memory isn't that bad, and I slowly remembered the details.
This is something I read about in a post by @lukestokes from two days ago.
Here's a relevant fragment about this topic from Luke's post:
I do understand and hear your frustration with Steemit, user retention, and more. When I first got to Lisbon for Steemfest2, I sat across from Sneak and grilled him about similar problems. His answer shocked me, and I didn't like it at all, but the more I thought about it, the more I understood it. He essentially said he doesn't care about the first million or two million users. He cares about the next 100 million users. From his perspective, once the blockchain itself is ready, along with the systems needed for mass adoption (HF20, Hivemind, Appbase, etc), then all those emails and contacts they collected will be contacted again and this time user retention will be the focus because they will be ready for growth.
Hmm, "He essentially said he doesn't care about the first million or two million users." doesn't sound very encouraging to early adopters, does it?
Despite his bluntness - although it is my impression it was shared privately, not as a public statement - , Luke Stokes explains very well further in the paragraph what Jeffrey Paul ( @sneak) meant.
Basically there are two ways to deal with growth of user base.
- you make all efforts right from the start that every new user feels welcome, the user experience is flawless and all concerns are met when they arise, and all bugs are fixed asap. This means a lot of the energy will be focused on these matters, in the detriment of growth and further development.
- you focus most of your energy to scalability and potential growth, even if the user experience of early adopters suffer. This way, after you reach a critical development stage, you make user experience a priority and start marketing intensively.
If we are talking about a mature market, customer retention is paramount even at the beginning of a business, because competition is fierce.
On a revolutionary technology like blockchain, competition on various niches is low or non-existent. This is why I think Steemit strategy to push hard on growth in detriment of user experience is well thought-out, even if, if it's said bluntly, it seems uncaring to the early adopters.
In fact, early adopters should expect a few bumps here and there. It's their trade-off. They trade comfort, certainty, easy-to-use interfaces for the advantages of being first when a movement starts. They also risk more (money, time, trust), in return for potentially higher rewards.
On Steem, many of the original adopters who stuck with the platform and remained active, even without an initial investment are at least dolphins now, if not orca or whales, depending on various factors.
So Steemit doesn't need to care about early adopters to the point they provide a flawless user experience now. All it's needed is a secure, top blockchain and an ecosystem which allows more developments, other than that being an early adopter is rewarding in itself.