Man is social by nature and always like to interact with others, like to form communities and exchange the ideas.
In modern world, the most of interaction is now happening in the digital form and social media is very strong medium to express and spread your ideas.
The strongest point of social media is that it's reach is widespread and very fast.
Blockchain and Distributed ledger technology has proved its usablity and social media integration with blockchain is already done in project like Steemit,Sapien and indorse and minds(https://www.minds.com)
Now the question arises is really we need blockchain based social media and exactly what problem blockchain based social media will be solving?
Blockchain based media is need of today.
1. Censorship of content
We have recently saw many examples in which these popular social media removed the content. Content in these media either censored by themselves or censored due to some external/government pressure. It does not matter whether views expressed are valid or not if they cause conflict of interest then they will be removed.
Blockchain media is somewhat impartial but still you can be downvoted in steem, banned in minds and sapien network handle with their help of algorithim and it is ok because every content is not worth of publication.
2.False sense of security
In today's world , most of the popular social media is collecting the details of their user, analyzing their habits and selling these details or using these details for their own benefits. In short, you have false sense of security that your data and details are safe but it is never the case.
3.Social media marketing.
Currently social media advertiser are paying a third party to get the data and still they are not sure of the data they receive, Since in blockchain information is available for all, I think they can analyse the information themselves and reach their target customer easily and removing the middlemen. Since the data is analysed by themselves so the data is 100% reliable and pertaining to the target audience.
4.Ease of Transaction.
Transaction are easier to perform with integrated cryptocurrency wallet in these site. Use of smart contract can easily remove the role of the middle man. You can now interact and transact in same site without any hurdle.
With so many positive over the other popular media, is really blockchain media is thriving /spreading at the rate it should be? I think below are the hurdles .
Hurdles in spread of blockchain media.
1.Attracting the userbase
I think we have lot of blockchain platform and they have created their own target audiences but still none of the platform is able to attract a very large user base. Lot of work need to be done to attract the user base.Actually for signing up in these platform you not only need to sign up in the platform but you need some cryto currency knowledge and few extra step to have that crypto/wallet associated with the media.
2.Rewarding the users.
Different blockchain media uses different techniques to rewards its author and readers , most of them use the upvote technique. I personally feel that these media are dominated by crypto currency enthusiast and a good author not writing in these field might not get the deserved attention in the article.
3.Age of Content.
This is the major problem in steem and other blockchain media that they do post payout in 7 days or "x" number of days and afterwards content creator is not able to earn anything from the content. But in reality, good and informative content seldom age and will be able to fetch traffic even after years. So I guess few author do not use these platform because there is not reward for them in bringing traffic to site and they have a very short window of 7 days to be get rewarded.
4.Government policies
Many government do not recognize crypto currencies and declared illegal,Even where crypto currency is not illegal there are not very clear policies as DLT and crypto currencies is very new field for government also. Business and organization cannot operate whey do not have any ideas on future events.
Conclusion
Future of these platform will depend upon how they are attract the userbase, government polices, users adoption to crypto currencies, reward mechanism for author on the basis of traffic too and attracting good author and content.
It is still early to say whether they are future or not because there future is somewhat tightly coupled with crypto currencies, if they are the future so do these platforms have future. If they were doomed and these platforms will be automatically doomed with them.
Posted via Steemleo