The short answer:
Because it is a blockchain.
Make no mistake, blockchain is taking over the world. This technology is so powerful and revolutionary that mankind has never seen an advancement like we will over the next 5-7 years. Everything is going to be decentralized which will improve the lives of billions of people. This is not a hypothesis, it is a foregone conclusion.
The existing structures cannot stand up to blockchain. Compared to what we are already seeing, traditional entities are simply too slow and ineffective. Even the newer companies like Uber are at risk.
Blockchain is a decentralized, open-source ledger. Both of these adjectives are crucial. Decentralized means that no one entity or group controls it. The present world sees censorship along with collection of data on individuals as major problems. Both exist heavily especially in the social media realm where people are freely offering up the information. This does not happen on blockchain.
Open-source means that anyone can use it. This is crucial for the explosion society is about to see. Traditional companies assembly teams of people to create apps for their ecosystem. This works to a point with Apple and Google approving people's work each day. The challenge with this is that the app needs their approval to begin with. Many apps get turned down. Secondly, both companies profit off the work of others. While creators can get some return, like with advertising, the lion's share goes to the platform.
I once came across a graph that charted the world's innovation for the last 100 years. When drawn out like this, we realize that over the last 15 years, mankind fell below the normal trajectory. We are lagging behind. There are many theories why this is including a shift away from the sciences, lack of funding, even that everything is invented. One theory that I ascribe to is that we went away from the DIY (Do-it-yourself) mentality in the electronics age. Back then, everyone was a "garage" inventor. People tinkered with stuff and, occasionally, someone came up with a breakthrough that a corporation was able to bring to market.
That slowed the last couple decades. With the advent of the Internet, a medium you would think ripe for this mindset, we saw the takeover by a few corporations. Over 80% of the web traffic, according to reports, is generated by Google and Facebook. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, FB, Alibaba, and Apple control most of what happens. Sadly, each is a separate entity which divides the Internet into their own ecosystems, isolated from the others. It is as if they are little countries.
So at a time when we should be seeing the greatest advancement of innovative breakthroughs, we are actually falling behind the historical norm. That is about to change and blockchain is the reason. Remember, this is open-source which is crucial.
Last night, I came across an article by @transisto venting about some of the issues with Steemit.com. According to his view, the site lacks the ability to properly find content. He compared it to Reddit which has a lot more features that breakdown and categorize content.
Here is the article:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@transisto/content-discovery-steemit-vs-reddit-just-a-rant
This is the most fascinating part and one that exemplifies what is occurring on blockchain:
The conclusion of this post is that I would really like to help support development of competing general use Steem front-end.
Have you ever heard "if you don't like it, do it yourself?"
That is exactly what blockchain is. Open-source means that all code is out there for everyone to see. Any coder, or group of coders, can take the raw code and create whatever they desire. If Steemit has flaws, a new interface can be created. Of course, ultimately the people on the system decide which they want to use.
This is innovation. @transisto is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of software developers on here. Many of them are "tinkering" with things that will/do become part of the blockchain. What gets really interesting is the motivation is not competition but improvement. This article states how unhappy he is with the present interface. The fact he wrote that the developers of Steemit basically turn a deaf ear exemplifies a lack of desire to compete (even though he used that term), rather improve. If they would have done it, none of this will be written.
People often ask me why I am so certain blockchain is going to destroy, at least in their present makeup, existing institutions. Some even state that banks, for example, will just create their own blockchain. Yes, they are doing that believing it will insulate them. The bottom line is that it will not.
Centralized, proprietary blockchains will have their place. However, mass destruction is going to come from the decentralized, open-source ones because of innovations. Controlling entities cannot innovate at a fast enough pace to keep up with the open-source people. Plus, the biggest motivator of these institutions is simply not to lose control. Banks, energy companies and social media sites have excelled under the present system. They have absolutely no desire to change.
In short, blockchain is about trust. Cryptocurrency got a lot of attention of late. This caused people to truly look at money and what it is. Money, when you strip it down, is nothing more than a unit of exchange that people trust. We use USD because billions of people trust it. Of course, we see this trust slipping a bit by both individuals and countries. The Bolivar is a prime example of what happens when trust in money goes. It becomes wall paper.
Facebook keeps getting itself in hot water. Between the Russia-Fake News-Election Cycle and the number of make believe accounts, people are starting to lose faith that company. Also, as time passes, the question about data and privacy online gets stronger. This is setting up an environment that is ripe for disruption.
Facebook, Reddit, and the others are no more capable of fending off blockchain than the electric companies and banks are. Decentralized is spreading like wildfire. A great deal of it is being adopted by larger corporations getting together to streamline their operations. These private networks add a great deal of investment into the arena. This only enhances because it opens people up to decentralization. While they are not public, they are decentralized among the member companies (for example the oil industry built a blockchain to record who owns the oil at each stage of transfer, moving ownership as it passes through each stage). This opens up people within those companies to decentralization.
The value in social media resides in the ecosystem. Facebook is so valuable because of the ecosystem it (actually its users) built. These people come back daily to interact and further add to the platform. That is where the value lies. On Steemit, the value is not in the site as much the blockchain. This is the major difference. The ecosystem is on the blockchain, that is where the value lies. If you do not like Steemit.com, use busy.org and you enter the same ecosystem.
Are Facebook and Reddit going to throw away billions of dollars in value by shifting their operations to a blockchain? Of course not. Instead they are going to dig in and fight. People think that they could just create their own token and crush everything else. Sure, they could create their own token. The challenge with that is since it is centralized, Facebook, which operates in the US, comes under the securities law as a currency creator. Does Zuckerberg really want the Feds auditing him and setting up regulations he has to comply with? GE sold off their leasing entity because they were tired of being treated like a bank. Also, the beauty of cryptocurrencies is nobody controls them. The second a currency is on one entities servers, ala Facebook, what is the value? At any time, that currency could be shut down. Finally, the innovation problem would still exist since the blockchain itself is controlled.
The banks are the most powerful institutions on this planet and I do not believe they have a chance against blockchain. Their reactions to bitcoin exemplify this. If the banks are powerless to stop it, then Zuckerberg and the other social media companies are cooked. They are minnows compared to the power of the banksters.
Each day, the steem blockchain gets stronger. With each new post, the blockchain gets bigger. Innovation is happening on a regular basis with developers creating all kinds of different code. Apps are starting to appear more frequently. Activity is increasing as evidenced by the transactions reports. And finally, more people are learning about this and signing on. 500K people is a remarkable increase from 4 months ago yet it is just the tip of the iceberg. Eventually, there will be tens of millions of people on the steem blockchain.
That simply is the power of blockchain and it is disrupting everything out there.
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