On January 4th, 2018, in his annual personal challenge FB post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:
“With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.
There are important counter-trends to this --like encryption and cryptocurrency -- that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.” (emphasis add)
There has been a lot of speculation about what this means for Facebook moving forward. Many people think Facebook will look through the plethora of cryptocurrencies currently available and pick one or more than one that could used to fit its needs, like a digital payment system or even a social media token system like SteemIt. Wouldn’t that be great for our SteemIt accounts!
Others think that Mark Zuckerberg will use this “study” time to, in fact, develop a Facebook cryptocurrency that, like SteemIt, rewards users for producing and commenting on content. This makes the most to me. Facebook is loaded with cash, they have the IT support staff, they have the market cornered on Social Media. Why wouldn’t they adopt their own coin? If this is in fact what Facebook does…SteemIt will go down in flames instantly. SteemIt will have a very difficult time competing with Facebook.
Outside of having dedicated blogging, streaming, and video platforms, all of which you can do on Facebook by the way, Steem is lacking one HUGE aspect that Facebook currently corners the market in…friend and family group interaction. The only way I keep in touch with some of my old friends and family members I rarely see is through our Facebook interactions. People “value signal” on Facebook all the time so they can be recognized by their family and friends through the like button and comments. My wife will stalk all of her Facebook posts to see who has commented on her family photos, musings, etc… and respond back to every comment. And she loves it, because she loves the attention. She does this now for FREE (outside of her time) and hundreds of millions of other users do it too. She’ll do it even more when Facebook incentivizes it through their own cryptocurrency. All of her current WordPress blogging and YouTube videos with be funneled through Facebook. I’ve tried to get her to join SteemIt and she’s been dragging her feet…lol.
Unless SteemIt can gain enough market share now (come on Porn 😊)…or be able to compete financially with the Facebook coin (i.e., offer its users more in rewards than Facebook, which I highly doubt), it will fall by the wayside.
This post by Zuckerberg, in my opinion, marks the beginning of the end of SteemIt. When Facebook announces their own cryptocurrency, hundreds of thousands of users and hundreds of millions of dollars will go pouring into it and SteemIt will be left in the dust.
A good rule when trading is to take profits along the way. You have to pay yourself occasionally for the work you’ve put in. It’s prudent advice with Steem as well. Your time is valuable…remember that.
Good luck all.
God bless you and God bless Steem!
Chris
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