When I woke up and checked Steemit this morning, my feed was pretty filled up with posts that celebrated the fact that we have hit one million user accounts, with @xmlvnx being the millionth user. Unfortunately the user has not made an #introduceyourself post, or made any comments, so we don't really know anything about the account. Anyway, this is a huge milestone to celebrate, but we are still a very long way from being a well-known community outside of the crypto space, but I believe we will get there.
I don't think it's such a big problem that we have taken two years to hit a million user, but I also had wished for the growth to be a bit quicker. However, I really like the technology behind the Steem blockchain, which I believe is what will bring us to hundreds of millions users in the future. Here's a few thing we got going for us, that I think will be a vital importance when we are going mainstream:
1) There are lots of promising projects built on the Steem blockchain!
Many people forget that Steem is so much more than just Steemit! Don't like to blog? Then no worries, there are lots of different interfaces for the Steem blockchain where you can earn Steem by participating in different ways.
@Utopian-io. This is most likely the biggest non-social media interface for Steem, and they give Steem to users who contribute with content to Open Source programming. You don't need to know a programming language, and you can even earn by translating projects, provide suggestions for improvements, help promote it, make tutorials, or even create photos or images for them to use.
@Steepshot: this is a "clone" of Instagram that only allows users to post photos to share with their followers, and gain upvotes on these. The interface does not allow for blog posts or any text-only posts, so this is a great app for only seeing photos.
@Zappl: Zappl wants to complete with Twitter, and let us earn Steem by typing short messages. I bet most of you know what Twitter is like, so I won't explain further.
@DTube: Uploading videos to the Steem blockchain, without the fear of being demonetized or censored.
Musing.io - @musing: Post questions or answers, and get paid to answer other users' questions. The released the app just yesterday, so there are currently a few problems (but they have assured me that they are working on it), so this is another new app that has a huge potential to gain new non-Steemit users. Who does not want to get paid crypto to help other people out with their questions?
@DLive: Stream yourself playing games or whatever, and gain upvotes. Twitch is the only big player is the streaming game, and there is a huge potential to get users to use DLive instead, because Twitch is not really all that good.
Parley.io: A Reddit-type interface. See below for some more info.
And many more!
2) Communities / Hivemind
People are beginning to be really fed up with Reddit these days, now that they are trying to change it from being a link-sharing site with content, and turn it into a type of social media. Right now people seem to hate all the changes that are going on, and I know that many Redditors are looking for a new home. While I would love to send them over here to the Steem blockchain, finding good content that you are actually interested in is an almost impossible task right now.
There's even a project that has created a Redditesque UI for the Steem blockchain, called Parley. I think this website has a huge potential to be the new home to some Redditors, but right now it needs more content, more users, and most importantly a lot more non-crypto content.
The frontpage of Parley.io. It sure reminds me of Reddit in some ways.
When we get the Hivemind feature for Steemit, then I believe that it will act as a natural place for users who are fed up with Reddit, and wants another place to hang out to discuss their favorite topics. We have been waiting for this update for a very long time, but according to the Github, it seems to be pretty close to being ready these days, so let's hope they are able to get it working in time for us to grab a lot of Reddit-refugees.
3) Smart Media Tokens.
We have also been waiting for these for the longest time, but as I said before, it's better to wait a bit longer to get a stable release. I think SMTs will be a game-changer if any big websites implement them to reward their users, and in the long-term I believe that we will even see lots of people that have a Steem account that interacts with the blockchain trough a third-party app, that have never even heard or used Steemit.
How will this work? Let us say that a popular newspaper create their own Smart Media Token. They will allow other users to upvote other comments below their articles, or maybe even let users reward the authors of the newspaper article. The reader of the newspaper will be able to receive and distribute this SMT, see their stats on the newpaper's website, and never really go to Steemit at all. However, if they wish to ever use one of the Steem apps, they can just login with their already existing account!
Once a few popular websites implement SMTs, a million users will only be a drop in the ocean!
Do you realize how much of an early adopter you are?
I see so many people here on the Steem blockchain that complain that they were "late adopters" just because they didn't buy Steem at 10cents a coin. But do you really think that people who were among the first million for a social network (with so much more going on) are really late adopters? Of course they are not!
The fact is that even Bitcoin is still in its early days, and most people have no idea what a blockchain even is. There's is no way that you are too late to the party, and we are still in the very early states of this technology. Just imagine how many users there will be once all the apps listed in the first bullet-point here begin to gain a momentum? It's not like all of them are going to be very successful, but I bet that some of them will grow pretty popular.
I have no idea how the price of Steem will be once the get a momentum and see real user growth, but I know for sure that I will hold onto as many Steem as I am able to!
Thanks for reading
How do you think the future of the Steem blockchain is going to be? Do you think we are at the top, or have we just got started?