Steemit Updates: Hard Fork Coming

I will give Steemit Inc credit, they are much better with communications. Remember when we went months without hearing a peep out of them? My how times have changed.

A couple things appeared that are noteworthy and worth sharing.

To start, Steemit.com is out of beta. I know most people did not even notice but it was posted that they are out of beta (so I believe them).

There was also the announcement of the reformation of the team with some new heads appointed over different departments.

This is actually shaping up to look like an organization. Kudos to the team for this.

Check out this post for info on the team members and the positions they hold.

https://steempeak.com/steemit/@steemitblog/steemit-update-leaving-survive-mode-and-beta

Now for the nuts and bolts of what took place.

Eli Powell (@elipowerll) gave an interview to @andrarchy about the last 6 months and what took place.

As we all know, there was a fateful day in November when Steemit Inc announced they were going through reorganization. This included a large number of layoffs in a cost cutting move. I will have to state that they were not the only ones having to do this in the crypto space since the bear market affected many companies that were using their tokens to fund operations.

At that time, the AWS bill was, according to Eli, over $225,000 a month. There was also the cost of the office space in downtown area. These situations occurred under Ned's tenure. Part of the reorganization was Eli taking over as Managing Director of the company.

So far, the AWS bill was reduced to an estimated $37,000 while the move of the office saves $18,000 a month. The implementation of Hivemind along with MIRA created the AWS savings.. According to her interview, she feels there is another $8K-$10K possible through other changes.

The final component was getting some revenue coming into the company. Before January, there was zero revenue. This tends to be a business model that is not sustainable.

In January, ads appeared on Steemit.com. Ellis said they were simple AdSense to find out where things stood. It turns out that Steemit does have good SEO and was able to pull in $3K a month just from AdSense.

This is going to be rolled into their own customized advertising campaign where they target the advertisers they are going to use and set up agreements with them. This should help both entities since the advertisers will be targeted better.

The other part of the roadmap announced is the creation of communities and SMTs. The blockchain developers are working on the final details of a Hard Fork that will take place in MId-June. This is for the Steem proposal system and Steem DAO. After that they will be turning their attention to Communities and SMTs.

Let us hope this Hard Fork goes smoother than the last one.

Here is the YouTube video of the interview and the write up post.

https://steempeak.com/steemit/@steem.marketing/interview-with-the-managing-director-of-steemit-elizabeth-powell

This is all very good news. As I mentioned, Steemit Inc looks to be operating, finally, as a company with a direction and with purpose. It is wonderful to see the increase in communication along with the follow-through of the team. After suffering through a couple years of over promising and under delivering, it is good to have a shift.

I believe that the Steem community has the ability to make this place great even without the assistance of Steemit Inc. Now, that they are moving in a direction that is helping the community, it makes things start to move a lot easier.

Good times are ahead.

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