To those of you going to steemfest, this is important

Checklist of what NEEDS to be gone over at Steemfest

I am no crypto expert, I am new-ish to steem... I won't pretend to have all the knowledge you might, on all of this. BUT what I DO have a lot of knowledge in is how to build something from scratch and to fight and win against larger, and better financed entities.

I publish an independent comic called Arsenic Lullaby. I started it, that means no one every heard of it when I began. It has since been seen in Mad Magazine, and on Comedy Central and published in three languages, and distributed on four continents. I managed this, all while being in direct competition with every other comic book publisher including Marvel, DC, and Image.

You need to keep the BIG picture in mind in order to win such a fight.

You with me so far? Good. Because my perspective is going to be worth reading. Because time is short, and I want to make sure my points are clear, I may come across like a jerk. But I assure you I wouldn't be spending my precious time writing this if I didn't think it was useful info, and I wasn't genuinely on broad with steemit and wanting it to grow.

Below is a list of things that NEED to be understood and focused on for all of our benefit.

THE CONNECTION

Steem is connected to Steemit. It is the currency of a social media site. It gives you a certain amount of priority and influence on that site. That is VALUABLE in 2018 and going forward. IT IS WHAT SEPARATES STEEM FROM THE OTHER CRYPTO CURRENCIES. It is was separates it from the countless other symbols and abbreviations on the list on the crypto market. As goes Steemit so goes steem. Growing Steemit should be the no.1 priority. period., the end. You can pump money into steem all day long and it's not going to affect the market like 10 million new users would.

Read that last line again, it's important. Any other crypto currency can get some giant influx of investing, and have that neutered by a rival currency also getting an influx...but Steem can create a stir by becoming a household name by it's connection to this social media site. You think 10 million new users would cause a stir in the market? Send the price of steem upward? Make Steem standout to investors as they scroll through a list of crypto currencies? hmm? of course it would.

THE USER-ABILITY FOR NEW PEOPLE

It is a good platform but it has it's problems in being user friendly and easily understandable to new users. I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH THAT "NEW USERS" INCLUDE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT KNOW OR GAF ABOUT THE INNER WORKINGS OF CRYPOCURRENCY OR BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY.

We want Steemit to get users in the tens of millions, hundreds of millions...that means we need the regular people who JUST WANT A COOL SITE TO USE AND HAVE FUN ON. and Steemit needs to keep that in mind...in EVERYTHING IT DOES AND EVERY CHANGE IT MAKES. You would do yourselves, the rest of us and STEEM and huge favor by grabbing handful of people off the street, sticking them in front a of a computer/steemit profile and letting them try to use it. AND SIMPLIFYING EVERYTHING THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND, in the next Hardfork. I couldn't make heads or tails out what the last hardfork did, but I can tell you that from the perspective of AN AVERAGE USER OF SOCIAL MEDIA...it doesn't seem LESS complicated.

Steemit needs to cull users from twitter, FB, instagram, ect....those people aren't on those sites to learn about crypto...they are on those sites to have fun, shitpost, show off pics, blog, see cool new stuff. THE MORE SOMEONE HAS TO LEARN OR UNDERSTAND IN ORDER TO HAVE FUN RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX ON STEEMIT, THE HARDER IT IS GOING TO BE TO GROW STEEMIT. GET IT?

The generations that make or break social media sites are still in high school and college...and you're ( we're) going to get about 5 minutes of their time once they click on here before they decide "this is cool" or "fck this place". And every "this is cool" or "fck this place" is either helping build steem up or tear it down.

THERE NEEDS TO BE IMPROVEMENTS AND CHANGES AND ATTENTION PAID TO GAINING USERS WHO DON'T WANT TO SPEND TWO DAYS LEARNING HOW A SOCIAL MEDIA SITE TICKS.

CONTENT -

People need to be able to jump on...see cool stuff.

Trending, new, hot, ...I have been on here for nearly 6 months and I couldn't tell you the difference between these. None of them even need to be there. You just need a simple easy to use search engine.

Which brings us to a problem that could use some solving, the search engine sucks. Why...in the blue hell does the search engine START by giving you options that have you LEAVE STEEMIT??? W...T..F??

The tags list sucks. Look at the top tags on any social media site that is in the top ten....do ANY of those have a bunch of options that involve crypto currency? NO! But the steemit tags list is littered with them. I understand that when this place started it was a lot of crypto talk, and that gave those tags a head start...but it make this place look BORING AF. Perhaps...the coding for the tags list could have a sunset or expiration added so that "crypocurrency" isn't still on the top because it had a head start and #comics isn't on the list at all. That sounds self serving, but I'd like you to look ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE INTERNET, and pay attention to the ratio of talk about crypto vs talk about comic books.

The entire pop culture is talking about comic books, Deviant art was built on comic books, there are more people using the comic books hashtag on Instagram than every single hash tag on this platform. It's embarrassing, and costing you a lot of money. It is costing you money because every time someone from the generations that make or break social media site comes on here, gets bored and leaves...you and all of us have lost an opportunity for this place to grow.

Look at this, this is just me screen capturing the first section of the tags list. Look at this and pretend you are some random person checking to see what this Steemit place is all about.

I've take the liberty of marking the things that they would have NO IDEA about NOR GAF about.

BTW "blog" "dlive" Dtube"...those are not subjects...those are ways of communicating a subject. A tags list is supposed to be where you search for A SUBJECT YOU ARE INTERESTED IN.

It was just Halloween...do you see Halloween on the tags list? or Horror? or scifi? WHAT THE HELL GOOD IS A TAGS LIST IF THE SUBJECTS THAT NEW AVERAGE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO LOOK FOR IS NOT ON IT????

And I don't want to hear any bullshit about how this can't be fixed or modified or upgraded...you guys CREATED AN ENTIRE CURRENCY FFS. I have every confidence that you can figure out how to make a search engine and tags list that puts SUBJECTS PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAVE AN INTEREST IN, FRONT AND CENTER. Figure it out, this should be easy compared to all the other stuff that went into building this site, and there's plenty of examples out there of a proper tags list and search engine.

We are talking about regular people from other social media sites. You think some high school kid who reads manga comics saw anything in that first section that's going to make him/her want to look around? Or some guy who watches The Walking Dead? or loves MCU movies? or is super into a specific genera of music? Go to the largest social media sites...look at what people are interested in...find ways to put that front and f*cking center when we get them to give Steemit a try.

OUTREACH.

-AND if would help if everyone remembered that just circle jerking about how great steemit is ON steemit does ZERO good for getting new people onto steemit. WE...ALL...have to go onto the old social media sites and raise hell about this place ON THOSE SITES. You wanna know how I grew my book? I took fans from other books. I went onto the fan pages, message boards ect of other books...and showed off my work. I didn't just circle jerk on my own fan page...I went OFF my page onto OTHER pages where people who had NOT heard of my book ARE. That is what WE ( that includes YOU...YOU who are concerned about your Steem value...have a method of increasing it's value) have to show off the great content that is on steemit and show it off ON WEBSITES BESIDES STEEMIT.

FB , for example, has how many hundreds of millions of users? and it is steadily pissing all of them off. They like social media, and are currently unhappy with the social media site they are on. We need only go and get them.

It's not hard, I plug it about once a week on FB, regularly on Instagram, in my weekly mass emails, and have it on my homepage on my website. I've gotten more than a few people here, and I will keep getting people here.

DO LIKEWISE. The next time you look at the value of Steem and wish it were higher, spend about 20 minutes showing off some content somewhere. Just imagine...the next time it takes a hit, if instead of 1500 of you writing blogs about it taking a hit, 1500 of you went and posted a link to something cool here onto some other site. Think maybe that would be more productive? hhmmm? maybe? I think so.

Or maybe just do it once a week until we have 100 million users? How about "Share Steemit Saturday" or something...look, you're all going to be at steemfest, steemfesting. I assume those of you who are going to be there are big Steemit movers and shakers... you can go ahead and think I'm an a-hole, pretend you didn't even see this, pretend all of this was your idea, I don't care (I'm pragmatic that way...pragmatism is how things get accomplished)but for the sake of the site and all our benefit, and your benefit, mull these thing over.

Thanks in advance