Alright! We’re closing in on 400 users, 1800 SP, and on track for posting every day so far. It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve got so much value planned that I just can’t wait to add to the platform!
Steem has done some really great things in my life and I think that it’s important to share the effect that it’s having on each of us, personally.
For that reason I’ll be making a post soon about some of the things I’ve used Steem for and to thank the community as a whole and my followers and supporters individually for their wealth of involvement and support.
I’m going to talk a little bit about what’s been going on with payouts and engagement lately and then go into what I’d like to use this blog to do as time goes on. I think of my blog as a vision that’s becoming more and more clear to me, and I think of these posts as a way to open up that vision to my followers and allow for a discussion of the involved ideas.
A Steady Decline in Payouts and Activity
First of all I want to follow this with a disclaimer. This is not me putting down the platform or Steem or even the people who are participating in this grand experiment. Rather, I think it’s imperative that we speak candidly about our experiences and share them with others as much as possible, especially at this early stage in Steemit’s existence.
Payouts have been going down, down, down. We’ve all noticed it and we’ve all seen it before (well, those of us that have been here a while). There are a few theories as to why it’s happening now, but I think the thing that concerns me most at the moment is that not only have payouts gone down, but user involvement seems to have gone down, too.
Now, I fully acknowledge that this might just be a “trick of the light” so to speak. It might just be that more recent posts have had less time to get upvotes. Still, it’s got me worried since at this early stage of the platform there’s no reliable way that I know of to look up user stats and activity on the site (on a mass, whole, basis).
It might also be possible to explain this with the drop in rewards. I think there will always be ‘fair weather steemers’ who come only at high tide. I just have no idea how prevalent this is. The thing that worries me isn’t the declining payouts themselves so much as how much they correlate to user usage. Declining payouts seems to imply to me that more people are using Steemit, not less (more account creation and user activity could potentially mean less payouts – at least coming from how I understand things right now.
Vision for The @jenkinrocket Blog
Well, I think what I’m looking to create here is not only value in the form of a repository of knowledge, but also a way for Steemians themselves to become more educated about technology, the internet, blockchains, the Steemit platform, and policies effecting these things.
As I move in that direction it’s occurred to me that to get very far is going to require a solid knowledge in basic subjects. There’s only so far you can go with a general knowledge of the crypto, the internet, and tech. At some point to go further you are going to need to have a solid math and science foundation.
Period.
This much has become clear to me. It’s true that wide adoption of the platform is priority one, but I think high quality users (here defined not only as people who contribute high quality content, but who understand crypto and the internet and can actually contribute in ways that build the platform – if only in the form of informed input) will also be essential.
To that end I have to ask myself some very hard questions. Namely… were the hell do I begin? For example, if I decided to start a series of math articles, a sort of virtual course, on just how basic a level should I start? If I don’t start at a basic enough level, then every article from that point forward will be useless to some amount of people.
Also, how interesting and valuable would such articles be seen to be? It’s really hard to say without making at least a few. So I will.
Vision For Steemit
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I fucking hate the drudgery and soul crushing existential reality of traditional work and traditional work environments. I know from personal experience just how taboo and unpopular it is to feel this way in pretty much every advanced society on the planet.
But it is my belief that humans shouldn’t be working at a Walmart or Taco Bell. That’s inappropriate for a being with consciousness. All of that drudgery can be automated (and will!) and so we must find other ways to create a contributing, productive society.
For years I’ve wanted to tear this drudgery down, but I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to do it. I actually had an idea for a sort of social network that would tear down facebook and have value inscribed within the platform… but I had no idea how to implement it, of course. Then I discover Steemit and, perhaps more importantly, the Steem Blockchain (I capitalized and bolded it, so you know it’s important).
I don’t think even the creators have realized the full potential and implications of Steem blockchain. I see it as a tool that can utterly eradicate drudgery and advertising culture (the other mind-shutteringly awful thing about our society). For this reason I shudder whenever someone even mentions ads in the same sentence as Steem or Steemit. I feel that these individuals just don’t get it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, things are in kind of a rough spot for my individual blog and to a far less degree the platform in general, but things look pretty good. This is nothing any of us didn’t expect, and with an incredibly exciting new hardfork coming (hardfork 20 if memory serves) in the next few weeks or months, I feel that we have a lot to look forward to in terms of growth. Hang in there Steemians, exciting times are a’comin’.
