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Yesterday was the first State of Steem forum. There were many topics covered in discussing where things are and how to move them forward.
In listening, one point that was brought up was value. Basically, how do we add value to the blockchain? What is going to bring that value in?
The question is do people want that? Does anyone on here want the blockchain to moon? Do we want to see the value increase substantially?
If we do, why do we work against that?
Do people even know what value is?
Here is value: $12.3 billion as of June 2017.
Do you know what else is value? $2 billion as of a month later.
Both of these are the estimated values of Pinterest and Reddit.
https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-funding-valuation-2017-7
These sites are where people post links and upload pics. That is it. Yet between the two of them, they were worth $14B a year and a half ago.
What is interesting is we have an application on Steem that does what those two do. @dlike allows people to post links along with uploading pics or memes.
Part of the discussion on the call was how to get more people to Steem. Here is the solution: promote the hell out of dlike. Why? It is easy to use. Anyone can do it. Simply choose post link or upload photo. If a link is chosen, the URL is entered, a category typed in along with the taglines, and the title and first couple sentences are usually automatically inserted. The user can change the text in the body if he or she so chooses.
Then press the button and it is done.
It is an application that is idiot proof and hundreds of millions of people are already doing it on the other social media sites.
And do you know is done on Steem? People who do what I described regularly are flagged by steemcleaners for spamming and plagiarizing. What is that? And people support this and believe it is a good thing?
Is it any wonder that people leave the blockchain?
Here is the deal: do we want value or do we want quality? It is one or the other.
We can no longer stick our heads in the sand and say we want both. The blockchain spent 2.5 years seeking both. People complained about the sh*t posts and how we needed to get rid of them. Well, posts are down, how happy is everyone about that?
Personally, I want STEEM to moon so I am in the value camp.
Someone on the call talked about seeing a 25 second video posted on @dtube and how that always upset her because it wasn't "quality" (I am paraphrasing here). Do you know what? That 25 second video will have a lot more value than one 20 minutes that talks about the day's crypto pricing. Do you know why? In 48 hours the later means nothing while the 25 second yoga move is still of value to anyone who is interested in that stuff.
Have you noticed that we often talk about Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram on here in a comparative way? We discuss these sites wishing to take a portion of their users.
Why do we do that? Because these entities have value...very high value in some instances.
Do you know what they are not? Quality posting sites. Most of the stuff on each of those sites is borderline crap. @pennsif mentioned going to YouTube to look up a how to video and how valuable that is. When was the last time you saw a how to video go viral? Probably never. It is always the fat kid who gets caught trying to go through the cat door that gets the hits.
YouTube became the world's largest video content provider in the world basically through low quality clips that people found interesting/funny (cat videos) and copyrighted content. Hell, until they released their Google Red, they had full length films on there.
Watch any financial show that discusses Google and see how all the analysts talk about YouTube. This is especially true during earnings season. YouTube is estimated to be worth over $100B and provides billions each year in revenue.
Do you know what is not mentioned? Blogger.
Obviously, Blogger has a greater amount of quality content as a percentage of the total than YouTube. Those who post on there are serious about the different topics they cover. Yet it has little value to Google as a company.
We seriously have to decide what we want.
Steem was designed to tokenize the Internet. The simple fact of the matter is most of what is on the Internet is absurd, asinine, moronic, and senseless. Sure there is a lot of quality content but it is in the minority especially when focusing upon social media.
In 2017, there was an estimated 1.2 TRILLION photos taken. Where do you think a large percentage of them ended up? On the Internet of course. And does anyone really believe most of these were high quality content? I bet more than half were dopey selfies.
People work hard, often long hours. They take care of their homes and raise their families. At the end of the day, most people are not going to shoot a 20 minute video or write a 1,200 word blog post. Instead, they are going to film the dog walking around with the cat on it's back for 10 seconds and post that. Then all their friends comment how cute it is and good thing the baby wasn't in the way.
That is simply how people are. The Internet is not serious to them because they are looking to escape serious.
The Smithsonian has a lot of quality stuff but everyone goes to Disneyland. Why? Because it is freaking fun.
Value online is not in quality. Therefore, we need to decide what we are about. Marketers operate by targeting their market. Do we want the sliver of the online world that is concerned about quality? If that is the case, we can have a nice, little blockchain that is specialized by catering to that crowd.
If, however, we want to attract the masses and, in turn, have something of extreme value, then we ought to appeal to a much larger segment. Chastising, downvoting, or putting people on blacklists because they post a link that does not meet the standard of quality is completely foolish. It is also the path to failure.
Yet this is what we are doing on a daily basis.
We are seeing a new form of posting start to take place on here. It is called "Proof of Activity". @actifit uses this. The posts are simply a means for people to show they did a particular activity. Certainly, these posts are not quality.
But you want to know something? In all likelihood, Actifit will be a lot more valuable than any of the blogging applications on the Steem blockchain. There will be over 100M wearables sold a year which is more than all the Wordpress sites ever created. This does not include phones which also can use the application. IPhones alone are over 40M sold per quarter.
https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/wearables-statistics-2017/
The sheer numbers dwarf blogging. This is where the value is. Is this a target market that Steemians want on this blockchain?
We need to admit the quest for quality if a failed experiment. This is not what the people online are into. It is time to focus upon value and how to monetize the applications that are being created.
It seems everyone wants the next Instagram to be on Steem yet we are not willing to allow it to develop. Instead, we will sabotage it because people posting foolish pictures and getting paid for it must be stopped. That is the mindset anyway.
I am sorry to say, this needs to change and quickly. The longer we allow this to persist, the more people we will drive away. Like it or not, the value of social media applications and ecosystems is based upon MAUs, times spent, and activity taking place. If Steem is going to have value, MAUs need to be present. Yes, the applications need to figure out how to monetize things but without the users, they will be cooked.
And to do that, the apps have to give people what they want: a place to go to have fun or do something that interests them.
It is time we stop sabotaging ourselves.
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