Hardfork-20.0 - What I Hope To See

Steem Hardfork-20.0 is just around the corner and with it comes the promise of some significant enhancements to the Steemit platform. Inprovements include SMTs (Smart Media Tokens), Communities, one vote per account, various improved APIs for third-party developers, just to name a few. The development team has also taken a more active role in communicating goals and progress made on existing projects to the community at large, a very positive move indeed. So it should go without saying, that I among others, am greatly looking forwarded to the official implementation of HF-20.0.

I really appreciate the arrival of this upgrade, there are however a number of concerns I have about the the future success of Steemit. The issues that concern me the most include: getting effective exposure to posted content, a lack of feedback/responses, the negative effects of voting-bots and Steemit's overall UI and user experience.

Getting Exposure for One's Content

Those who have been on Steemit for any significant length of time are I'm sure we'll aware of has difficult it can be to get people to view one's content. Unless you happen to be a whale or dolphin, getting any exposure for your posts can be daunting. The problem is that the post gets buried under the hundreds other posts that follow. And as a result, people have a very limited amount of time to see that content. This can be particularly frustrating after having put in a good degree of effort in crafting quality content. I do realize that the market will dictate what quality is, however, if that market is unaware of that content, then quality becomes a rather mute point.

With the introduction of communities, I hope that we minnows will gain the ability to build our own brands and distinguish ourselves with offerings that attract audiences and generate constructive interactions. This is, I believe, one of Steemit's core promises.

Why Feedback From The Community Is Important

Who is the target audience and how to best satisfy their expectations? Those are essential questions one needs to sort out when posting content. Of course, a good degree of experience is gained through trail and error when creating content, but feedback, i.e., comments, are essential in determining host one's posts resonate with in the audience. Feedback is an essential ingredient in fine-tuning content that keeps people engaged. This is why, for example, YouTube channels often have a pitch to comment, rate and subscribe.

With the current state of Steemit, comments to posts made by minnows remain rather scarce. This can prove very disheartening for most. Believe it or not, not all people on Steemit are just looking for a big payout on every post. Some people are truly here to build up healthy interactions with people who have similar interests, making some earning in the process is just some icing on the cake. But many people just like to receive recognition for their contributions. With that in mind, my hope is that Steemit will, under HF-20.0, develop more effective schemes to incentivize people to comment on posts other than just those from dolphins or whales.

Voting-Bots Seem to Undermine The Orginal Intent of Steemit

Voting-Bots and the buying and selling of upvotes, seem for me personally, to fly in the face of the spirit of what Steemit should represent. Steemit should be a place where content creators rise based on talent and merit. The current situation seems to overwhelmingly attract speculators (pump and dump types) and too many other who offer dubious schemes with the promise of making quick and easy money. Hopefully, the new fork will discourage the use bots and make the myriad of money making schemes and unattractive proposition for those contemplating such a thing. I wish Steemit to live up to its full potential which is based on top-notch content.

UI Design and User Experience: Why Non-Paying Platforms Seem To Attract So Many Users

Why do Facebook, Twitter and Instagram manage to gain such large followings, even though they provide their members with no direct financial rewards? It comes down to having attractive and easy to use Interfaces as well as offering a compelling user experience. I believe that Steemit, unfortunately, has suffered somewhat in this respect. The are two particular points friction that should be addressed. Firstly, the process of joining the community is just too cumbersome for the average everyday person; and second, there appears to be few other incentives other than making money that keep users engage on the site. Currently, there are just too many people chasing whales, a real shame.

Although, Steemit has made strides in upgrading and fine-tuning its technicals, the user facing elements have seen only minor cosmetic improvements. In his excellent post, @stephenkendal has made a good case as to why it is so important that Steemit not let work being performed on the technical side of things overshadow the overall user experience of the platform. I should hope that the development team is aware of this issue and will adjust its efforts accordingly because this will have a direct bearing on new user acquisition and retention.

Conclusion

I've a member of the community for a little over a year now and overall I have really liked being here. Steemit is still relatively new and is, to my knowledge, the first platform of its kind. Growing pains are to be expected and we should approach things with a longer-term perspective. However, we should as a community continue to provide the devs with constructive feedback in order to encourage the steps necessary towards improvements that benefit us all. Hopefully, HF-20.0 is a step in that direction.