So what does the future of Steem look like from the perspective of a guy who's been here for 2 years? What do I see brewing in the underbelly that will change the way you and I will interact with the Steem blockchain?
2 Years and still in beta...
Lots of water under the bridge and yet, we are still in beta. One side of me feels discouraged that Steem hasn't made as much headway as we would have imagined two years ago. By now, I imagined that we would have communities and a better way to organize ourselves than tags...or a way to chat directly on the website itself.
But like I said in my previous article, running an incentivized social media blockchain is very tricky and Steem had to solve the scaling issue in order to be poised for growth. That meant sacrificing development in order areas.
Dont' get me wrong, incredible things happened too! The amount of devs and projects that are actually useful is through the roof! Steemit.com is ranked among the top 1500 most traffic website in the world and d.tube among the top 10,000. That's a great achievement and to be honest, even with all of its flaws, the Steem blockchain remains the #1 most used blockchain in the world! (with over 40% of all blockchain transactions every single day - source here)
The Future Looks Good...But Maybe Not For Me
If Steemit Inc can deliver on their one-person-one-vote oracle system that doesn't get corrupted by people creating millions of accounts, the game will change radically. If it works, I believe that this is a core Steem 1.0 feature (along with communities and SMTs).
From there, the Steem experience will resemble what most people expect from social media. What I mean by that is that the most popular and trendy content will make it to the top rather than the one with the most stake-weighted votes.
The stake weighted voting is what keeps many big names out of the game because there isn't a direct correlation between the number of followers and $$$. But when this change, watch out. People with millions of fans & subscribers on youtube, facebook, twitter, instagram will migrate to one of Steem apps in order to monetize their users and THEY WILL dominate the game.
As a CONTENT CREATOR on Steem, it's almost the end of my run...unless I go full-time professional content creator.
But, the INVESTOR side of me would definitely win big time. Steem would become the #1 way for content creator to monetize their audience. Steepshot, would be bigger than Steemit.com is today just with the cheer amount of instagramers migrating....d.tube would eat Youtube's lunch, etc.
The value of Steem, the value of all SMT's, the amount of ICOs of people launching their own apps will burst through the seam and we will be looking at a situation where Steem is where it is supposed to be...among the top 5 crypto by marketcap with a price per Steem above the $100 mark.
Getting Ready For The Future
If you want to make some serious dough in the future as a Content Creator on the steem blockchain, start building your social media presence. That means finding a niche, buying a nice mic and camera and start posting your content across ALL platforms (Youtube, FB, Twitter, Instagram). Build an audience that you will be able to migrate here down the road.
This is a very tough game...your content needs to be more social, entertaining or informative than millions of other people competing for attention...but the rewards will be great for those who plow the field and plant the seeds.
If that's not you, you might want to consider buying as much STEEM as you can right now while it's on discount. Of course, this is not financial advice and I'm just stating my opinion.
Conclusion
I would like your thoughts on this. Let me know what you think, please consider sharing this article on Reddit, Twitter or Facebook and let's get the people engaged in that discussion.
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