It feels like it's official, the market is turning around. When I look around on Steemit, if you left when the market turned bearish and you came back today what would you see that was different?
A downvote button and a few little charts on your main feed. Behind the scenes we had some good work done, but it's the exact same user experience as it was when I started over a year ago. So I've been thinking about what would be some nice (maybe easy) upgrades to Steemit specifically. Whether we like it or not, Steemit is the hub of the Steem blockchain. It's where people are going to land first, so how can we improve the experience here to break people into Steem. I've got a few ideas. Before I get into those, lets define a few user scenarios.
I'm a new user and I want to learn more about Steem. I've just arrived at Steemit.com
As a Steem user I'd like to know what other applications are on the Steem Blockchain.
As a Steem user, I'd like to write a commentary on the post I just resteemed
As a Steem user, I'd like to communicate my appreciation of a post or comment via donation instead of upvote.
I could go on like this for quite a while, but let's just deal with these four.
So the first one. You're a brand new user, and you're on Steemit.com. You look around, Trending has some ads and random stuff, Hot it a little better, but not by much. You're wondering what the deal is with this place and how things work. You leave the site to go to youtube to find videos of peoples experience.
Fail!
So the first feature suggestion
The "Learn" Page
The learn page is just an internal version of the Steem Onboarding site. Steem Onboarding project is a great idea, but a new user has no way of knowing it exists in the first place, so we need video tutorials broken into manageable chunks that explain everything Steem ON STEEMIT. I shouldn't have to leave the site to learn about it. I know we have a huge encyclopedia of a FAQ, but I don't think realistically the masses will read all that.
Next up
The Explore Page
So another useful site for Steem is https://steemapps.com/ It has lots of different apps that are on Steem with some stats on those sites. This information needs to be available on Steemit. Again, a new user has no way of knowing this site exists. I'm sure there are plenty of active users on Steem that have no idea this site exists. Ideally I'd like Steemit to create their own version of this site that matches the look and feel of Steemit, but I think just linking to Steem Apps would still be better than nothing.
There are plenty of active users that still don't really get it that Steemit is not Steem, and I think Steemit needs to be the leader in communicating that since it's the frontend with the most traffic.
Resteem + Commentary
Courtesy of @bryan-imhoff I have a new feature I'll add to the list of things I won't shut up about. My last post I created what I called a bootleg resteem + Commentary post, where basically I wanted to resteem a post but also talk about it. We currently don't have a flow that allows for this, but it's something a few users brought up as something they wanted. Then Bryan mentioned that this could also be financially incentivised through beneficiary rewards.
So imagine you create a post, it makes $1, then someone resteems it and leaves commentary. This counts as their post, but you are already set as a 75% beneficiary on that post(you get 75% of the payout). Then someone upvotes that post $20, you'd get $15 of the reward for that post as well.
This would also help with the problem that posts only have a potential payout for a week, then they're worthless.
Last but not least my OG most wanted feature
Donations associated with Posts and Comments
I've talked about this extensively in previous posts. It seems like a no brainer to me. Patreon, Youtube Live, Twitch, Kickstarter, all these platforms are built around donations or something like that. The centralized service providers take anywhere from 30-50%. They are multimillion dollar businesses. We have the technology to offer these services better than all these platforms minus the ease of them using paypal as a payment processor, but in exchange, for every follower that a content creator converts to Steem they get a 30-50% raise on that follower.
In my ideal design for this feature you'd be able to donate on Steem using the crypto of your choice or fiat. This would squash the this blockchain vs that blockchain nonsense an poise Steem as THE social blockchain for the world, for all of crypto, for everyone. This could start as a very simple feature, but I could see it enabling a whole new set of dapps built around it.
I'll stop there, and not bother with obvious features that other frontends already have like notifications, but yes please, that too, and a private off chain direct messages. Let's catch up to the early 2000's thank you very much.
Anyway, what do you all think? Would you like to see these features on Steemit?
