Steemit's messaging to Mr. One Percent is dead wrong

The number of frustration venting posts on Steemit is only outdone by the number of justification posts about the way Steemit works. Back and forth, the exchange goes until it becomes an unending narrative of established members shedding light on good community practices, some users trying everything to game the system, a virtuoso group that is trying to uplift the platform by marketing its advantages, a small set that constantly express their ire, new users rapidly becoming disheartened, a few rising stars serving as poster boys (or girls), a tiny group of wise old owls who steer clear of controversy and a lofty set who watch the carnage below!

Steemit’s identity is being constantly misunderstood as it goes through a bunch of changes that have been decided by it stakeholders as crucial to the success of the platform. Initially the promise of being paid good money for creating good content was the reason most users came on to the platform. Of course I am discounting the original proponents or visionaries who saw its usefulness. I don’t know the exact nature of user influx into the system but it is clear that the following types of users eventually gained acceptance within the community:

1. Investors, Developers and Founders
2. Exploiters
3. Evangelists (not in 1,2 above)
4. Content creators (not in 1, 2, 3 above)

If a social media platform has to gain widespread acceptance in an era where there are many other competing platforms, then the messaging has to be clear. It has to feed on these three things:

• Strong dislike of other platforms or a corresponding feeling of alienation
• Promise of a niche platform that would rely on and foster member’s skills
• Strong and direct financial incentives

Steemit ticked all the boxes and hence its initial user aggregation was astonishing

When you put a lot of smart people together in one room, innovation and eventually exploitation becomes an existential reality. So it proved with collusion of individual accounts promote mutual content, wealth based voting, plagiarized posts from the external world, censorship attempts using down votes and devaluation of good content.

What needs to be understood is that this is nothing new as far as human beings are concerned. When life itself can be gamed then why not Steemit? Rules can be bent, bots can be created and the self can be promoted! We are all fully aware of this inequality because it exists in everything we do.

There has been a lot of discussion on how the attrition rate of users within the platform is high. I don’t have the evidence to support this, but let us quickly assume that there is truth in this. Many posts in the recent past have also detailed how people that have not purchased stake in this platform (investors), don’t matter. This is perfectly true in the broad scheme of things since it is a blockchain and economics takes precedence over everything else.

But Steemit’s message to the community members and to the world outside is quite confusing. It has been changing ever so gradually in different stages.

If you produce good content then you will be rewarded

In addition to good content you need to invest and promote yourself so that you can be rewarded

You must invest heavily and promote yourself so that you can earn more money from the rewards pool

Steemit is a social media community and hence you need to network, use discord to create relations, comment heavily to make connections and in addition be a good content creator

Steemit is not a cakewalk. You have to be able to understand the system, the people and rules and figure out how to make it on your own. It can be daunting but that is what it is

Steemit is going to open up its platform to other apps and hence if you are not invested then you are not that important in the grand scheme of things

If you are in the 1% of users who have not invested, then you deserve only 1% of the rewards. The other 99% will be shared among people who have financially invested in the platform

It gets very confusing to look at all these messages and then one starts wondering how we can explain it to users who are either new or those who are on the way out.

Mr. One Percent

But over time, Steemit has been fairly obvious on two fronts:

1. a majority of us are in that 1% of users who are not wealthy enough and have little or no investment
2. the 1% are of no consequence

Let us call these users as Mr. One Percent. Right now there is way too much time being spent on trying to explain to Mr. One Percent why he does not matter, never mattered and is never going to matter. People are not idiots, they get it. What you are seeing is a bunch of failed expectations, a lot of simmering discontent, a small percentage of justifications, an even smaller percentage of truly happy participants and a minute percentage of wealthy owners.

Does this not sound, feel and look like an actual corporation. a community based corporation but one never the less. A very small fraction is emotionally/physically/financially invested. A large percentage is trying to get to one of the above. A minor percentage is here to ride the gravy train.

The headline however is that if you are not financially invested, it does not matter what you do because unlike a company, we are not paying you a salary or giving stock options. In our business model, we can reward you sometimes but that is based on the work that you do and the amount of visibility we can afford to give to you.

Steemit has made a fantastic assumption about people who join it. They need to be shrewd investors, have good content creation skills, need great social networking acumen, produce great content several times a day and relentlessly promote themselves. This is a high barrier to entry and one that should be articulated properly to all its members.

Maybe the messaging to its members is wrong?

Come to steemit, write great content and get rewarded is definitely not true anymore.

Instead we can say write good content, make friends and if you want to get rich in the long term, bet your money on us. If you simply want to make money writing good original content, then try a content aggregator site instead.

It is a perfectly acceptable message but it just needs to be articulated clearly without constant justification. Endless articles of how blockchain will help distribute money based on your worth, is a little trying sometimes. When blockchain is constantly touted as the solution to manna from heaven, then unfair expectations arise. Money is a very relative expectation and I think the average user would do well trust more in his/her ability rather than anything else.

It is all the more critical to highlight that Steemit is focusing on its growth not in terms of direct memberships but through acquisition of existing content publishing communities like Medium or HackerNoon. These communities bring their own users and exploit the technology of the platform. In this situation, Mr. One Percent is actually an oddity.

Blockchain is not a solution for our weaknesses; instead it is an enabler for our strengths. So we must play to our strengths and disregard everything else.

Maybe we can send out a simpler message to Mr. One Percent:

Invest your money in Steemit and enjoy the platform

Note that it would be truly amusing and not to mention ironic, if this post was never read!