The Future Of Steem For Bloggers/Vloggers: A Response To @exyle
@exyle has been writing some excellent content sharing his thoughts on the evolution of the Steem blockchain and what it means going forward. I agree with his assessment that things are changing on the blockchain meaning the future is going to be radically different from how things were in the past. Yet this is true for most technological innovations.
His main theory is that earning STEEM is going to get much harder as we move forward. With the applications becoming more powerful as they gain delegation and earn STEEM, it is getting more difficult for individuals to get noticed. This is going to be compounded by the fact that more accounts will dilute the reward pool.
The main question is blogging/vlogging on the Steem blockchain going to die as applications start to take off?
My answer is absolutely not. There will always be a place for blogging on the Steem blockchain. The difference is that, in the beginning, Steem was a blogging chain. Now, blogging is only a part of the activity that is taking place. Content creation is taking on many forms as we are seeing. Proof of Brain now also includes Proof of Contribution.
Essentially, what is being asked is what, in general terms, will the future of the Steem blockchain look like?
I agree with the assessment that it is all about the applications. That is what is going to propel us forward. The point that I think @exyle is missing is that blogging is done via applications. Steemit is an application as are busy and steempeak. To blog, one must utilize an application for that purpose just like one will use @APPICS, @steepshot, or @dlike for sharing pictures.
The challenge, at this point, is that Steem does not have a truly kick-ass application targeting bloggers only. There are many applications that enable one to blog and they will, in my estimation, continue to improve in the future. However, that is not to say someone is not working on a blogging only application right now. If not, perhaps that is something one will want to take a look at.
This brings us to the second overriding point that @exyle was referring to: STEEM is going to get harder to earn. Again, this point is well taken and I cannot argue against it. I believe simply division tells that story. The reward pool is fairly constant. Thus, it is a lot easier to earn STEEM with 50K daily active users as compared to 500K or 5M. In the later, there are more accounts vying for the same STEEM.
Does this mean newer accounts are screwed including those who want to blog? Actually, the exact opposite is true. We are seeing the evolution of STEEM present new opportunities.
To start, at this moment, there is not a shortage of STEEM.
According to steemd.com, there are 82M STEEM out on the open market. This means that smaller accounts have a fantastic opportunity to get their hands on STEEM and power up.
Naturally, right now this requires converting either fiat or another cryptocurrency to buy the STEEM. Hence, someone joining to blog is going to have to bring some money to the table to power up. This was always the case which leaves out the many who do not have any liquid resources for this purpose. Nevertheless, it is an option.
The situation changes once the SMT protocol is released. If one's goal is to acquire more STEEM, this presents another opportunity. People can participate in the different applications thus earning some STEEM but, more importantly, the native SMT created token. These tokens are all going to be paired with STEEM, hence instantly convertible. For those who lack the resources at this time to buy STEEM, using the SMT earned serves the same purpose.
Therefore, my assessment is that applications, because of the SMTs, offer a pathway for everyone to acquire STEEM if that is what they desire. Of course, as I wrote last evening, the question is does someone prefer STEEM or a SMT token? There is a chance that holding a SMT might be a better move depending upon the growth of that application. Either way, people are gong to be presented a choice, one of which is to acquire more STEEM.
So in closing, I would say the future for bloggers.vloggers is very bright, especially for those who want to make a full time living at it. As always, it will take work, effort, and a lot of time. However, there are more tools showing up each week that makes this easier. Over time, we are going to be able to find our target audience in a much more efficient way. Presently, Steemit is one big mess of streaming content flowing by. As communities come into play, it should be easier for bloggers to find their niche.
Here is the full article from @exyle.
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Thanks for sharing exyle's work, I haven't heard of him before.
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That is a cool service. I have to check it out!
Still in testing but should be fully working now :) I will make a post about it today/tomorrow.
till now we don't have something that great as to call it a blogger's Dapp besides Steemit ofc, but you get what i mean. I don't think that Dapps completely crush bloggers-vloggers but the way they headed (the existing and working ones) will eventually lead to an extent in that.
I made a huge ass comment in exyle's post regarding that but i will try to be more quick here. A person that gets into Steemit and just likes blogging or an existing blogger will very soon realize that there is huge inactivity in this platform and mostly everything happens automatic. Even if he tries to make new friends and interact with others, chances are that he won't get many loyal followers back or it will take a long long long time.
At the same time he can simply join a community based on the country-ethnicity he is too and later on discover more specific ones. That way he will earn more rewards and at least interact with some people.
Now most of the Dapps in here, have a lot of SP so they can easier use marketing better to attract more people. (add the tokens to that). The majority of the users care about the money, either it's their first priority or simply "at the back of their head", nobody has completely erased it, cause it's the n1 reason they got into steemit, in the first place.
Now when you have an extremely inactive % of accounts, another extremely automatic % of accounts that user autovoting and stuff and don't actually comment and read the posts and at the same time Dapps that make everything easier what a normal person will do?
If a blogger that posts something it took more than 1 hour and earns 1-3$, most of them by autovoting and from people in the community it belongs and at the same time watching others upload post about products that take 10-20-30 minutes and get rewarded for that both by the autovoting accounts, the Dapp itself and by also taking some tokens what will he choose?
A couple of minutes later he will see another post regarding how many steps that person took today (which nobody cares not even the person) and again rewarded for that, or uploads a picture of his food,cat,toilet via the dapp you mentioned in your post and get some rewards won't he be tempted to try it out too?
i wanted to write more but i will close it here. i wasn't quick like i said i intended :P Note also that i am not against the Dapps, it's part of the evolution, i am just sharing some thoughts that i think tend to follow the reality more.
Do you think segmentation of these DApps will become more of an issue with posts into DLike and others bleeding into the blogging platform? In contrast, if I play Steem Monsters I'm not generating a bunch of spam into my feed, it seems to be well segmented. Cross-posting between it and Steemit is voluntary.
Steemit.com is going to die off. Even Steemit isnt supporting it anymore. Other apps read the same feed so yes I think more will do like steemmonsters and give users the choice whether to post on the feed or not.
People will eventually just use custom interfaces where a person can filter out stuff that they do not want to see. Same as right now you can mute specific accounts.
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The only way for newer members or for members with low SP to make a living is if people with high SP start voting for content, not using bots. If you look at the accounts that get decent payouts, most of the votes are coming from a very limited group of people who constantly vote for the same people, no one leaves their inner circle. SMT's are still a plan, we don't really know what impact this will have, hopefully it will work out OK as you envision.
Bots is not a problem, it's just another word for automation. When robots do all the work we will be on a Holiday! So it's not an issue. It's a liberator. The automation movement will eventually do all content creation as well as curation. People need perspective this is exponential Technology. What took me 10 years of YouTube work I can now do in 1 year with Steem. Things are growing at exponential rates so all numbers now may 100x in the near future. Which is creating so much new wealth that nobody will have scarce of it. But it's a new paradigm that a few can grasp.
Well I take it you think we will be redundant, nothing to do?
Finally we can do something else than just work!
A lot of people don't work, they are called unemployed.
I think you missed my point, what I mean is work will not be something that humans will do in the future. As Physical Labour --> Replaced by Machine, and soon AI --> Replace Brain Labour
I know what you meant I was only stating a fact there, nothing to do with AI. But I don't look forward to that future, I still think a lot of humans would become redundant and what do you do with them then?
Ideally they work on Trust and Relationships in life and develop a global inclusive consciousness that includes every Human. Lots of work needs to be done there.
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I also think that with more integration coming from Steempress with Wordpress, the blogging community will continue to be open to the millions of blogger on centralized platforms. This will become a source of continuing content creation which is what STEEM I think is all about. Whether we engage via DApps or these gateways while continue to expand the ecosystem. As Hivemind comes to be, we will be able to see communities focus on deliveries which will provides alternatives ways to also consume the content.
The only problem that newcommers are going to have is the RC... With the starter sp (15steem) post have a prohibitive cost. Trust me. Ill withdrawn my account a few months ago, left only 15sp. Ill return and a week later HF20 comes, it was a nightmare.
The new commers cant afford not earning SP first... With 20sp u can do a post max x day... And not long comments. And if you manage enough RC to post its impossible to answer the comments to interact with your viewers...
Thanks for your all your advices i read you a lot!
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