Facebook Pages - the horse-drawn carriage
Like most people who were internet-savvy at the time, I joined Facebook around ten years ago, when it started hitting the mainstream and overtaking MySpace as the leading social network online. As a musician and business owner, I was initially thrilled at how much more traction and attention the Pages (or were they groups back then?) I set up for these endeavours initially gained, and how much more interactive, user-friendly and plain old useful these pages were for connecting with fans than the messy ones I had set up on MySpace. It was suddenly easy for me to create a well-presented profile of what my band (for instance) was all about, present our music and attract people who were interested in it to follow the page. Even better, I could send out updates to my entire subscribed audience at will, allowing me to have a relationship with fans and communicate with them on all the new and exciting things we were getting up to. By also enabling me to invite all my fans to events at once, or announce a new release, it even proved profitable, as I was communicating directly with my target market and seeing results in the form of product sales as well as a growing audience.
Lamentably, as Facebook began its inevitable rise toward becoming the profit-making machine that it is today, Pages started to become less useful, and even less likeable. 'Fans', a term which at the very least made people feel as though they were actively getting involved in the thing they were choosing to follow, have now been reduced to 'likes' - the same things that we use to flippantly indicate a passing regard for any mundane Facebook post with one click of a button before scrolling away. As many page managers today know, it's now impossible to send out an update to all these followers at once - even though they've expressly indicated their wish to be updated by liking the page in the first place - unless, that is, you're prepared to pay through the nose to have your post or page 'promoted'. Effectively, this means that Pages have become just another profit-making mechanism for Facebook, and have lost most of their power to do the same for the people who manage them.
Steem Engines - the way of the future
With Steemit, however, we have a different kind of animal. As the network grows and develops, new features are bound to be added. Personally, I think the introduction of a kind of official page for an artist, business, or similar endeavour (which I have only half-jokingly dubbed "Steem Engines") could be a great platform for such enterprises to share their content with others - and actually reap the rewards of doing so in the form of Steem Power and Dollars. Even better, if the ability to follow or subscribe (or stoke?) these Engines were added, this could allow actual fans of the band/artist/business/public figure in question not only to receive regular updates, but actively support their chosen artist or business each and every step of the way by upvoting their posts, increasing their visibility on the overall network while simultaneously providing them with tangible rewards.
On a psychological level, this kind of creator-consumer interaction could provide an important means of engagement that connects entrepreneurs and creatives to their target market or audience in a direct and tangible way that has not been fully realized on social media anywhere else. On a financial level, Engines could also providing an important revenue stream for the creators themselves through the power of the Steem blockchain. Just as the introduction of the original steam engines helped to move conventional industry forward, perhaps these new Steem Engines could do something similar for modern industries - think of the possibilities!
Overall, I think that Steem Engines (or whatever we decide to call them) could have the potential to benefit everyone on the Steem network, as well as the network itself, by creating a new and valuable way to use social media that hasn't really been seen before, which will inevitably attract more users and more investment. It could also breathe some fresh life into creative industries that are struggling to make a profit under current social media conditions, while also providing them with much-needed support, exposure, and profit.
I, for one, would love to see this kind of thing happen. Let me (and the rest of Steemit) know if you agree!