Steemit content discovery problem
Steemit has an imminent problem and that is content discovery. There are just too many articles and too few people reading them. The problem is especially with the content discovery for the new authors. Not many people are ready to spend time reading the posts of their friends and followers. It is a tedious job and not rewarding enough. You might find a good post by a friend or a follower. You might upvote it and hope to get some curation points in the process. But how often has this happened if you do not have more than 1000 followers? I am assuming the answer is never. When this happens multiple times people loose out the motivation to spend their energies in curating. Instead they take the easy route : They are constantly looking at the posts by whales so that they can upvote them in the hope of getting some curation rewards.
Turn the tables around
So we will need to turn the tables around and give more rewards for the discovery of content by authors whose average earnings are low. Since whales with large number of followers already get enough votes and rewards, the curation rewards for discovering their content should be reduced. Adding curation rewards for resteeming can solve this problem to a certain extent.
Remember that an upvote doesn't increase the visibility of a post, it only increases the rewards for the author of the post but it doesn't help in making the post reachable to others. If possible we should identify who are having a network effect in making content more popular and reward them accordingly. That will create a level playing field. Irrespective of whether you are a whale or a minnows you will be in the lookout for the good content and resteem them to make sure that it gets the visibility it deserves. Wildspark is already doing this successfully and may be steemit can learn from it.
Steem = Ghost city of China?
If we don't address this problem Steemit will turn out to be like the Ghost cities of China where there are lot of high-end skyscrapers that have no occupancy at all. Just that in steemit there will be lot of users writing posts but not enough people reading them even if they are worthy. I hope Steemit addresses this problem by the earliest :)
What are your thoughts?
I agree that content discovery is a huge problem, especially after HF-19! The problem stems from a mix of laziness, impatience, and selfishness. I feel that people in general are always looking for immediate gratification in whatever they do, which is why so many of us fail to really achieve anything great in our lives.
Steemit is a community and I believe that as minnows, we have to engage in the community and add value, before we expect anything in return. As a start, I believe we should focus on adding thought provoking comments to others content to supplement quality posts, and advertise our blogs through our thoughts.
I've gathered way more supporters though supporting others than posting content no matter the quality. So to sum it up, lets stop focusing on the end game, and enjoy the journey. Their is beauty in the struggle, which makes being a minnow on Steemit look like candy land haha great post gokulnk!
Nice post bro.i resteem your post bro
Excellent post! I was just feeling discouraged by this and splitting my time between author and curator to try and build. Sadly, I still have some really awesome unread posts that I worked really hard on and are beneficial to everyone.
I was thinking, what if the system could bump posts that get attention? An upvote or comment moves it up a bit. Or, some kind of shuffling system? I'm not to techie, so not sure how those ideas would work. resteeming this!
By bump posts, you mean on your profile where all the posts are listed? If you mean that then it might be good for a few but then post payouts are given in a week so it will be a logical mess.
In the newsfeed area, meaning they would cycle back up towards the top somehow. But yeah, I understand how this could be messy with the payout system. They just seem to get buried pretty quickly.
@gokulnk great post describing the issues I see as a major problem, especially content curation/consumption. Resteemed due to the great way in which this was articulated.
If you are a minnow and you have not bought in a considerable amount of steem, the best approach would be add meaningful comments on trending posts, upvote and resteem good posts until you cross 55 rep or have more than 1000 followers. This may not be always true but in most cases for minnows this is a better approach.
If you are not worried about the rewards and are writing for the sake of joy rewards are only an added benefit.
Good point but we must remember it takes time to build an audience.
It can't be done in five minutes of five months unless you have compelling posts that people want to read or watch.
Apart from the added problem of attention span these days. It's a battle to get seen anywhere.
Yep! we need to build an audience, a reader base but we tend to think of building followers. And building followers isn't easy unless we work hard on providing the much needed instant gratification to our readers.
Good post. I couldn't agree more. Sometimes I wonder why I bother writing my blog as it seems no one reads it (mostly) or it isn't visible long enough but I'll keep on blogging .
Haha... Even I wonder the same, once I wrote an interesting post and I got a lot of Upvotes but I got few comments and most of those comments were just, thank you and nice post type of comments. It almost broke my heart.
I think you are right here. I started a little writing on steemit; but especially in the beginning it takes a lot of time to put together a good thought provoking post. Then when you get very little money, (for example 7 cents) and there is a new post every 20 seconds, and you don't have a huge following. (I am an introvert and just going out to create this big following to create a big following is not what I do.) And then the eyeballs number shows something small (like seven) (Note: I know this is not completely accurate, but that is not something any other new user would understand.) It all boils down to: it is not worth it. That could also be translated: It does not appear to be worth it.
We all have people we follow that have some standout content. When the opportunity arises we should be promoting each other a little bit. An example of what I mean is :
I follow @neonartist because of the work he is doing on a children's indoor play area. This guy is from Kazakhstan, and his airbrush artwork is simply amazing.
I also follow @greenrun,(he is from Nigeria) he has a way of telling a real life story that just sucks you and provides the mind with a lucid reading. You can see, feel, hear, taste, and smell his stories in your mind as you read them. And that is a great writer that can do that.
So you see, your post, (the part I quoted) indicated you would not mind a plug for another steemian or two. So when I run across blogs that afford the opportunity to spread the work of others I do. I also give the Blog author an out.
"If I offended you by mentioning the two above I will edit my post and remove that part."
Or something similar. My small way of spreading the content that is real content around. Thank you for this nice Blog, and trying to make things better for all steemians.
Well, everyone wants to be a writer and share their stories, and Steemit gives the perfect platform to share our stories and earn a few dollars with our stories.
Moreover, most people go into the write more posts to earn more mode and forget to connect with fellow users and start thinking of everyone as a voter.
I have seen many interesting stories getting buried deep into the block chain and poorly written posts end up reaching the ‘hot’ page of steem.
Only a handful of people read our posts and most just look at the title and comment based on their thoughts about the title or just paraphrase comments that others have left.
I always make a point to read as many posts that I can and then leave a comment. And this little habit of mine has always helped me get a good amount of upvotes on my comments, and I plan to continue it irrespective of the votes that I get.