Getting paid to create content on social media seems to have always been reserved for a small percentage of heavily-followed influencers and businesses capitalizing on brand power. For everyday users, however, making money through content has simply been out of reach.

Steemit is starting to change all that.

The new social media platform uses its own cryptocurrency and lets people earn money by creating content, as well as voting and commenting on it. Some are describing it as Medium meets Reddit, and it may actually mean the end of those sites someday.

Steemit does what both Medium and Reddit can do. With Medium, the goal is to provide content creators with a beautiful platform to produce high quality content and create a community that will appreciate it. Reddit’s goal is to gather content from across the web and allow users to vote and decide what content receives the most exposure on the site.

Is there an opportunity in 'Medium-izing' Steemit?

Medium does a great job at giving content creators a platform to publish content, but creating content that stands out has become very difficult. One person just can't produce enough signal to overcome all the noise. The same problem occurs on Reddit every day.

There may be an opportunity for Steemit in adopting some of what Medium has done to try and solve the "signal v. noise" problem. Medium has opened itself up to brands. Marketing teams have begun using Medium in a lot of ways that Steemit community members might want to consider. Companies and influencers use Medium to power their own blogs now, as well as reach a wider audience by posting to “publications” on the site. Entire communities form around individual publications, allowing authors to develop a following. On top of this, high-profile writers are adopting Medium to express their personal thoughts, as well as miscellaneous content.

I admit, that does leave little room for your average user to break through and receive exposure, even with content that’s extremely compelling. Like on Reddit, the community decides what’s worth promoting and what’s worth leaving behind. A lot of material that deserves to be seen does not. A lot of garbage material also gets both ignored and voted up. That’s just how platforms like this seem to work. However, the strong community of people here on Steemit may be the difference-maker. People are are always thinking about solutions to these issues here. That group effort may be what separates Steemit from Medium and others, allowing the "little guy" to really get a fair shot more often than in the past.

There are plenty of questions about the future of Steemit and the Steem currency, but it’s making a lot of noise in both social media and cryptocurrency communities. Our community would do well to consider methods that sites like Medium have implemented in order to help grow individual user "signals" so that they can be heard above the noise (and make money). Hopefully this is all just the beginning of a very long story.