Would Steem benefit from a Bitconnect style referral program?
Is referral marketing "effective fuel" for the "Steem Ship"?
If Steem is a space ship, and on this space ship we have different "gadgets", one of which is the SMT concept and the other of which is the multi-level referral concept, can you think of ways in which these "gadgets" can benefit the ship? The benefit of Steem is we know it's legitimate, but then the marketing of Steem is what raises the price of Steem and fuels the ship. It seems to me that the most effective marketing in the crypto space is referral marketing and it would seem Steemit has the advantages here. Steemit is a blogging platform, and has many video bloggers who are talented at marketing but who are not being encouraged to do so at the protocol level. Should the protocol be changed so as to encourage this or do the risks outweigh the benefits?
For those who do think the benefits outweigh the risks, do you think the SMT technology could be used to build the ultimate referral marketing engine for Steem? Steemit promised "decentralized marketing" over the summer and not much has come from it. So what can the community do with this?
Anything to push steem out there will be welcome.
I am not sure about the referral way of doing it.
As a crypto it will propel the platform higher.
We all believe in steem.
Let's see !
I beg to differ. Dash is one of the best crypto projects out there and it pioneered many things like self-funded treasury, governance, instant transactions, trustless privacy etc. But their instamine is still something that is still brought up.
Also we are having more and more serial spammers and plagiarists and low quality content creators on steemit. MLM attracts lots of people who'd just want to make a quick buck. Slow and steady is the way to go. The reason I joined steemit is the quality of the platform. Let the quality do the speaking and market steemit as a place to consume great content. Eventually the readers will end up making their own content.
That's how I started posting content and I know that it works. If we push the marketing with referrals we wouldn't be bringing more quality content creators. Instead we'll see this: https://steemit.com/steemit/@vimukthi/serial-spaming-your-way-into-a-reputation-of-56-how-did-this-happen
MLM is cancerous and annoying. I wouldn't want Steemit associated with it. I think there are much better ways to promote the platform to new users.
I think one of the biggest things slowing down new user adoption is the registration process. I have heard a lot of complaints of people waiting weeks for their account to get verified.
Do it. If there are better ways why is Bitconnect absorbing all the money in crypto space using MLM techniques? The MLM techniques are the most effective for marketing crypto based on the results we see, even if it's being applied to a possible scam. If Bitconnect is a scam how would that invalidate the marketing techniques?
Amen @cryptoindex. We are already seeing a whole influx of spammers and low quality shit posters (mostly from South Asia where I'm currently located in and has 1/4 of world's population.)
What got me into steemit is the quality. First I was only a reader and about a month ago I started posting because I felt like contributing. The best way IMHO to promote steemit is not to bring creators/users but readers. That's how I sold steemit to some of my friends. They were all productive people with better stuff to do than social media activities. They would have never have put their time to build a following and make a few bucks. I mean I write long posts and still only get few cents most of the time. They got in because they loved the content they consumed. They loved the intelligent comments.
That should be how we promote ourselves. Plus MLM is too much associated with ponzi projects.
I have a Bitconnect Account @dana-edwards and I would not try to encourage anyone to get involved with Bitconnect. I am old enough to remember Pyramid schemes back in the early 80's. That being said STEEMIT will be fine no matter what direction is taken. If Biconnect fails I would hate for STEEMIT to be associated in anyway to it.
My point is Steem is not a pyramid but then has no effective marketing. Why not use what works to add value to Steem?
@dana-edwards I agree if something is working it should be implemented. I am glad you are here and feel a passion that we both would like to come to marketing STEEMIT.
A pure Pyramid Scheme model is not necessary, since people are already incentivized to recruit their followers and acquaintants because these people are more likely to upvote, resteem and follow their posts.
Such a pure pyramid scheme will only make multiple accounts per user even more beneficial than now.
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Exactly. steemit should be promoted more like a hybrid between a New York Times and Instagram. It's quality+social media experience. Imagine what would happen if YouTube started MLM. YouTube will be infested with poor quality videos.
You replied to me, but few might comprehend your reply, and I am not among them.
"Exactly. steemit should be promoted more like a hybrid between a New York Times and Instagram. It's quality+social media experience. Imagine what would happen if YouTube started MLM. YouTube will be infested with poor quality videos."
Every sentence excepting the first word consists of assumptions or facts I can not guess.
I'll take this slow. What's the primary value of steemit? What function does it serve? IMHO it's about producing and sharing quality content like a well established magazine but done in a decentralized fashion that cannot be censored. There is the added benefit of social interaction.
Think YouTube. YouTubers create content that the rest of the world would consider valueble. But unlike an old magazine, they can interact with the fans. Steemit takes this to the nest level. YouTube comments are simple minded and rarely has depth. But steemit can take these audience interaction to a college level debate.
Each steemian is like their own news site/magazine just like Dash try to make every user their own bank. Steemit has the added benefit of creating and interacting with the fanbase like say..... Instagram. So combine a publisher and a social media influencer and you get the perfect steemian.
For the last bit: Just think YouTube rewarded people to get other people to post stuff on YouTube. That'll be a disaster.
Hopefully I made myself clear :-)
Feel free to ask further questions and check out my blog if you like.
This comment has received a 16.67 % upvote from @kittybot thanks to: @stimialiti.
I am still torn on if Bitconnect is a scam or not. I have seen a multiple videos arguing for and against it.
For steem, I don't think a referral program would be a bad thing necessarily, but I think there are some improvements that should be done first. I cannot remember who the user was (I can go back and try to find it), but he said there were some serious scalability problems with the platforms. Not sure if there was any incredibility to this whatsoever, but if so, these would need to be addressed prior to creating a system which could bring in a ton of new users!
The only thing I know is their marketing is the most effective that crypto has ever seen. Can we all admit that they've perfected marketing? Something Steem and Bitshares always couldn't figure out how to do?
You are absolutely correct about that! They have done a masterful job! They have put some of the best MLM's to shame with their marketing efforts!
Nice post! I think there is definite benefits in referral bonus programs to increase popularity and gain audiences, but only if its done right and not in a 'get rich quick' scheme format. There is a lot of unknowns about bitconnect and in particular the lending component that it does smell of a scam. Ultimately where it is or not, the doubt remains which will hamper its ability to meet potential.
It would, greatly but not yet. Steemit has a lot of issues it needs to fix before going mainstream.
Steem is losing active users, this trend cannot continue.
I noticed, it's feeling like a ghost city lately. Also the thing that we can't separate the good content from the bad is a real issue. I'm getting tired of seing the same people on trending / hot all the time.
Wee need a way to incentivize voting on good quality content and rewarding minnows.
Wee need a user retention mechanism of some sort. I got an idea or two that might work, will write about them soon for utopian-io and hopefully someone actually listens and they implement it.
Also the progress seems to be really slow considering the amount of money that's on the table and that's a bit dissapointing.
But with all this considered I think steem doesnt depend that much on Steemit, because we will get a huge influx of new cash from SMTs. It's just the matter of time people start harnessing the superpowers of the steem blockchain. Because who else can provide speed of light transactions with no fees ? :)
Value is subjective so it is going to be very hard to separate good content from bad. On Reddit popular content (not good content) is upvoted. So that goal is a much harder goal in my opinion than to merely grow the size and connectivity of the network. I would prefer we focus on growth and connectivity.
I think the quality of content improves with growth. More users means more everything good. But we need more than just more users, we also need more activities because the range of contribution is way to narrow. If people can only add value by curating or blogging then Steem is doomed because most people will never be great at either.
The more ways we let people contribute to adding value, the more connectivity there is, the more wealth there is. This based on Metcalfes law is how the wealth of a network is measured. And no, do not assume we will get a huge influx of new cash from SMTs.
First why should anyone care about SMTs? VCs might care but ordinary people? So either SMTs will be marketed to ordinary people or to VCs. And that is my point with these posts, you can have the SMTs but if you cannot explain to the normal person what an SMT even is then good luck.
And then if you want people to hold it, they need the incentive to do so. The APR or yield are just one way. In other words you have to make the SMTs sexy. This is something which requires people to actively do, it will not happen just because the tech exists.
I know but we can all generally agree on what can be considered good and what is bad.
We need a way for discovering things like contests and "activities" you can do on steemit and improve the whole concept of browsing through the feed because now it's really hard to find anything.
Also the fact you can't browse posts that are older than 7 days....
Why should anyone care about SMTs? Well look at it from a bussines perspective. If you were the owner of reddit wouldn't you want to increase your userbase and reward them for contributing, thus increasing your revenue and maybe even going add-free in the process improving user experience even more?
There are a lot of projects that could benefit greatly from SMTs. Also the ordinary Joe using a site that has SMTs doesn't even need to know what they are or that it's running on the blockchain. The only thing he needs to know is that he earns them by contributing to the site and that he can exchange them for BTC/cash if he wants.
Also check this out if you still haven't seen it.
I can imagine them getting 100m+ users in a year, easy.And can also imagine this dwarfing and taking over Instagram for good. And when they get a big userbase whales will come who want to market there increasing their value even more.
And every token they have needs to go through steem first so when they grow we grow.