This Was Supposed To Be Marketing Monday...

It's official. I have the absolute worst timing ever.

At least when it comes to raising the awareness of the need for marketing STEEM.

What I might have been able to accomplish over the course of months and months (if that), was eclipsed in one day by Justin Sun's acquisition of Steemit, Inc., 10 to the 100th power.

Now, aside from everyone being concerned, confused, seeking answers, speculating, etc., marketing, among some other things, is top of mind.

You're welcome.

Except, I obviously had nothing to do with it.

Two Weeks—That's It

Despite some pretty prominent folks calling for calm and waiting and seeing and proceeding as normal, I think I will at least suspend Marketing Monday for now.

I was trying to build awareness. I don't think I need to do that anymore.

Different Topic, Similar Conclusion

In a future post, potentially to be published this week, I was going to talk about how I believe that STEEM is lacking a crucial component, one that is being confused or conflated with another crucial component. The latter component is curation. I think we've got that now. Thanks to the EIP, there are more curation trails covering more topics and their content creators, and combined with autovoting in general, with more of the upper SP participating, we've got curation.

I think we have plenty of content creators, too, at least for the amount of active users we have currently. What we don't have is enough reading/engaging.

Yeah, I just said we've got curation. To me, in this current format, curation and reading/engaging are not one and the same.

Anyway, that was before the whole Steemit Inc. and steemit.com acquisition went down.

Why Not Still Talk About It?

I don't know about you, but despite some people's best efforts here to find out information and allay fears and confusion in the process, things still feel a little too up in the air.

And I'm sorry. As much as I would like to put a positive spin on all of this, I'm finding it hard to believe certain things.

And the only way some of these things can be believed is with time, and right now, like so many times before, it's early days.

I'm really impressed with how so many of you can be so trusting. Taking someone at their word without much hesitation. That's hard for me to do when I actually know someone, depending on who they are and the history we have—let alone a perfect stranger.

What Kind Of Things?

I keep hearing about how Sun is so intelligent, and how he knows his stuff when it comes to marketing and blockchains.

And yet we have conflicting versions of what Sun wants to do with STEEM. In the press release, tweet and now a video on YouTube, we read/hear that the entirety of STEEM, basically, will begin a migration to TRON. Even though Sun supposedly only owns Steemit Inc., and steemit.com, not STEEM the blockchain, and not all the dApps on the blockchain.

In the 'AMA', Sun says, nope, no migration, no token swap—just money, marketing and all the resources STEEM needs to keep on keeping on, so that it can soar to its highest heights.

Apparently, he's said similar things to Steemit Inc. employees—no token swap, no migration, as you were, keep doing what you're doing.

Some people have been rationalizing the conflicting information. The marketing department isn't Sun. The marketing department hasn't spoken with the Steemit Inc team yet. Sun didn't understand fully what he was buying. Now he knows what he bought and he's all for STEEM growing on its own and in the process, taking both STEEM and TRON to higher heights.

If He's So Smart...

I watched another Sun interview where he said that he/they/TRON are actually pretty cautious about their acquisitions. They check into things first, see how it might fit, be beneficial, etc.

From what we know, Ned Scott and Sun or his negotiating team spoke terms. You would think that Scott would tell Sun what was up for sale. Did Scott not fully disclose what STEEM is? Did he not mention a community now primarily composed of diehards who were probably going to balk at the idea of migration, token swaps, etc., etc.?

Or did Sun just ignore all of that? Or did Scott just gloss it over?

Because the negotiations didn't begin and end on Friday morning. Who knows how long they were going on, but they certainly took a while. Sun would ask about the financials, the assets, etc. Scott would disclose the information. They would talk price. Sun would counter, and so on.

It's just hard to believe Sun being intelligent and knowing what he's doing but not having much of a clue what he was buying.

What The Public Sees Vs. Privately

I find it hard to believe that the PR arm had no marching orders. They didn't just make all this stuff up about migration and token swaps. They were told to say all of that. There must have been some kind of discussion about it. There was probably some amount of time to prepare the press release, the tweet, the video.

So, again, not knowing what he bought is just unfathomable. Is there a reason why he would say one thing publicly, but something else privately? My guess is, he's beholden to something publicly. If there's not a board, then maybe there's a reputation as a blockchain buyer to uphold, since supposedly that's what he does.

Privately, he says all the right things, but publicly, he needs to keep up appearances, even if none of it makes sense, really, from any perspective.

One Thing Is For Sure

Everyone's talking about Sun, TRON and STEEM. Even me.

As far as I can tell, that's all anyone cares about. Can't say it's unjustified. The future of STEEM is at stake.

Another thing. Ned's heart was no longer in STEEM. Can't say I blame him. In too many corners of STEEM, he couldn't ever do right. Not that he was able to help his cause much. I do have to say, though, I feel like his approach to STEEM was mainly hands off, and I appreciate that. The worry that Steemit Inc. would use their ninja mined influence in some way or another never really came to pass, not through official accounts, anyway.

So Now What?

I don't know. I thought the last few hardforks brought plenty of uncertainty as to STEEM's fate, and while in some ways they did STEEM no favors, in other ways, they might have actually improved things.

This uncertainty, though, feels different, mainly because there's now a virtual unknown with Sun and TRON in the mix.

I intend to keep posting, commenting and curating as much as I can. I just don't know about what. None of the topics I've been interested in seem as important anymore, but talking about Sun and TRON ad nauseam just seems, I don't know. Wrong, maybe?

No one, including maybe Sun himself right now, knows what he's going to do until he does it.

We can either believe his public stance, or his private one. We can either jump ship now while we can, or we can ride things out.

By The Way, VOICE Had An Announcement, Too

Anybody care about that? My guess, not here, which is probably what Sun was actually trying to do—overshadow the EOS PR.

Mission accomplished.

By The Way, Too

We've been back to receiving SBDs as payment for posts rather than liquid STEEM.

And STEEM is actually holding now at close to double what it was a few weeks ago, after briefly hitting two and a half times the amount it was.

Maybe the bull run is beginning?

Maybe it, more than anything, will influence what Sun does, and what we do.

Who knows. I think it's good to be skeptical, so I'm going to stay firmly planted on the fence at this point, until more time has passed and we get to see the real Justin Sun in action.

Just not sure what I'm going to post about that you all are going to care to read.

_{Image source—Pixabay}