May 30 Days Writing Challenge - Day Eleven: What’s More Important For Steemit Right Now: Smart Media Tokens or Hivemind?
We have all read, watched and discussed how Smart Media Tokens will open Steem to over 1000 entrepreneurs which are the target of @ned. We have read the updates from @steemitblog and the white paper how it will be smooth and automated so that people can easily make it for whatever organization, advocacy or use they might want for their token. I agree that it will be a gamechanger for Steem and might open the doors for more people to come.
Yet I am more inclined to believe that Hivemind is more important. I take it from the words of smarter and more technical people like you and other developers that I know that the Github on Hivemind has a lot of things going on and frankly I can't wait for its full deployment.
The number one reason why I think it is more important is because of being a community kind of Steemian. I have promoted, invited and personally mentored a number of talented Steemians and they were active for a couple of months and then they started dropping off.
One of the prevailing reasons was the general lack of engagement in their posts. Mind you these were not shit posters. They took the time to craft wonderful posts that tugged at the heart and showed their creativity. They networked and engaged with people and most important, they gave their time to do this. They were not casual users who posted, left a link in some Discord community and left. They were investing their time and yet engagement eluded them.
I have been in the platform for over 6 months now and I still have a lot of days that engagement is not proportional to the time I spend here. Frankly, it gets demotivating at times.
Case and point was an easy comment game that I did which I geeked out on my love for Avengers: Infinity War. I expected at least 30 comments because at that time the movie was already shown a couple of days already and although the prize pool was not in the hundreds of SBD, I think with the ease of the game it would garner more comments. I did not ask for upvotes, nor resteems or even to follow me just leave a genuine comment and yet I was disappointed with its turn out.
I literaly had to beg some people to enter just so that it would not be an utter failure. You may say that all actions may not have the appropriate response that I had in mind but I set the requirements low enough to get everyone a chance to enter. Anyway rant over that.
Hivemind and Communities need to work and be the solution that we as a platform need at this moment. I think we are at the tipping point so whatever is going to happen in the next six months will affect the future of Steem. Don't get me wrong I know that SMT is important for the platform but I, as a person who has heavily invested time, effort, creativity and some money want better engagement and retention of people.
The current system is just churning out more and more people. Sign ups have slowed down and Steem is bound to lose its First Mover Advantage as more Social Media Platforms and DApps will enter the market using a different blockchain.
How can we have a 1000 businessmen on the platform when we don't have an active audience. Most reports agree that we have about 60,000 active users on a daily basis out of the 950,000 sign-ups that we have gotten in the past two years.
All the promoting and inviting of Steemians will be in vain if we are not able to retain some of them. I may sound a bit disappointed but out of all the people that I have invited in the platform no one is active now. Sometimes I feel alone and a failure that I was not able to retain them. I am hard on myself but I invited them and I have a certain responsibility to see their success and I have failed.
My answer is in line with what I wrote in May 30 Days Writing Challenge - Day Seven: Name 3 Things That Must Be Done Immediately To Make Steemit.com A Better Experience and in Where Steemit Will Be In Five Years | A glimpse into the future. it is the community and people that will ultimately make Steem succeed in the coming years.
My best case scenario is Hivemind will pave the way for the awakening of Steemians that there is more to Steem than just upvotes and will genuinely build communities that will impact each other's lives.
Worst case scenario would be we all just become miners and posts, apps and condensers will just be placeholders for self-voting and bid bot conformation and that everything will be automated by algorithms, auto votes, curation trails and bids. It will be Skynet.
So I await for Hivemind and will fight for Steem to be successful because we are all in for Steem to take the next step.
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Maybe I have to read up on hivemind. I have heard it mentioned a few times but I do not really know what it is about. I don't know much about SMT either. Can you give me one or two links to update myself on it @maverickinvictus?
I too have onboarded several persons who left almost as soon as they came on. For them, the work was too much and they could not see the reward. I think my mistake was telling them about the reward and forgetting to mention the work and passion involved.
I hoe hivemind improves engagements. It would be good to see good posts get good rewards.
This is the latest from @steemitblog on Hivemind unless you want to go to the Github hahaha
https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/update-communities-hivemind
Early on when I started inviting people to Steemit I said that it was not going to be easy. You will get a lot of early heartaches and not a lot of engagement and its expected but you just have need to persevere and have the grit to continue on.
After 3 months of doing that and getting 2-4 comments. (One comment would be mine usually) They felt they were going nowhere.
That is my wish too that engagement will be better as you will be around more like-minded individuals who have passion and the will to make a difference in the platform.
Tipping point. That's an interesting observation. We may very well be. I also like how you put this:
In other words, neither can be a half baked attempt. They have to work as much as anything can straight out of the box. The glitches have to be small and easily fixed. Everything new will need to have a smaller learning curve than what's currently available. That doesn't mean no learning curve. It means less steep.
I guess we'll see. It would be far better if things weren't so crucial, if things hadn't been left to rundown for so long, that these things were dealt with as they came up, and at least moderated, rather than come to a head where it seems like there's one shot to get it right. I don't think that's the best way to go about things, to say the least.
I know technology is constantly changing and the emphasis therefore on what should be done is also changing. But is it ever likely to slow down? When will there ever be a good time? Won't you always be implementing tech that within weeks, days, hours, will be obsolete? I don't necessarily need latest and greatest. What I do need is serviceable and secure.
Yeah a lot of the problems were just swept under the rug and ignored as people were getting huge payouts and profits from their bid bot delegations that it was not important at the time.
Then the bearish market caught up and now everyone is scrambling and what was swept under is now being aired out and acknowledged as issues.
I hope that the next things that Steemit Inc will be doing will help things out.
That would be quite disappointing, it will imply quality investment without appropriate results. Well done, you really poured out the minds of many through this post, myself included.
Yes indeed! Ned is chasing after the money when the foundation and audience is not here
By offering SMT he is asking established as well as fledging entities, corporation and charities to take a leap of faith and trust the platform and yet people who are in the platform is not buying it. They "mine" and. "mine" and out of existence to teh world of fiat.
Beautiful thoughts, I also had to share my own thoughts on the subject matter on my blog. Thank you for the feedback
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