This week I started studying again. I am studying what can probably best be described as a mix of media, design and it. There are different ways to “customize” the study program. If all goes well, I will focus extensively on video games. However, I am also learning more about designing digital as well as physical media and experiences (and the crossover of the two).
Beware, this is a stream of conscious kind of blog, so I might ramble a bit. I hope you stay with me.The last few days of schooling have inspired me to think about how Steemit can expand into the physical world. Right now, I think most of us are thinking of STEEM content as how it can be viewed and interacted with, and that is what I do too. Still, I ask myself how STEEM can branch into the “real” world.
We are already seeing Steemit and related meetups happen quite a few places in the world. I also know that people are working on Steemit payment systems, that could be used in retail. I am wondering though, if it is enough to reach mass adoption, and if Steemit really can be the place pushing cryptocurrency and blockchain to everyone. I do not think it will be in its current stage, but I think it has potential to be among the things that finally makes the mainstream jump on.
Anyway… As many of you probably know by now, I run Looking For Niche, where I try my best to help people get matched with others with similar interests. What if we with Steemit, Looking For Niche and other community project, trying to bring people together, could reach people outside of Steemit and even people in “the real world”. I am considering if the right way to bring those in and around my generation into crypto, is helping them bring their content to Steemit. Let us say, you meet a personal blogger, Instagramer or alike, maybe they would like to join Steemit too and post their content here.
But…! Instead of just bringing them onto Steemit, we could bring them onto community projects that try to help niches and small time ideas grow big – Looking For Niche as well as other projects. This way they start out by not feeling alone. Starting out here can be tough, especially if no one even knows you or your niche exists here. I really believe the best way to help Steemians is by helping them help themselves. This is why you will see me ask you to try out community creation tools instead of spamming everyone to checkout your content. Community creation enables personal relationships and organic growth in my opinion.
Returning to the Steemit real-world thing for a moment. I have been asked a couple of times, if I could add some location based thing to Looking For Niche, making it easier for users who live close to get together or share stories about their local communities. Right now, you can simply add yourself to a tag about your location. If you live in London for example, you could add that. I do, however, think that you should also be careful with what you share location-wise. This goes not just for Steemit, but everywhere. But if you wish to find people in your relatively local area, who you want to discuss your niche project with, you can do so by creating a city or country tag on the Looking For Niche Discord.
Furthermore, on the topic of Steemit real-world stuff. I had a Steemit augmented reality idea. A way to get rewarded for interesting writing about places you visit. Let us say you visit a museum. You could write about the place or maybe a story about what your visit to the museum inspired you to think about. Maybe you went to see a beautiful site, while writing a blog.
Going along the lines of AR games, these Steemit blogs could appear on a map when you were somewhat close to the area written about. Maybe the blogs could be “harvested” and places on the map by specific tags about the places you visit. This service could maybe be expanded to place reviews like the ones that show up on Google, but instead of just being a “4 star okay food” text, you would see upvoted posts, that would likely go more into detail about the experiences.
Going even further, a dinosaur museum, for example, could write about the different dinosaurs, and place these descriptions/stories on the AR map, where dino skeletons are. The posts would on their own or a multiple use STEEM integrated app, and visitors would be able to upvote the descriptions and stories about the dinosaurs, that they enjoyed, to support the museum and the writers.
There will of course need to be a lot of users, using such a service, for this to make any remote sense. Chicken and egg situation right there.
I am going off on a tangent, I know, but I felt like writing a post today about a few thoughts I have been having the last couple of days.
Image source: Wikipedia Commons