How about try listening to your customers (users)? Maybe the attrition rate wouldn't have been so high and all the newcomers exiting so fast if you paid them some attention to understand why they showed up in the first place... I've given you many messages myself, but you ignore them. Sad for all the people involved, but until you realize that in any business you must learn what your customers want, then this place will not turn around. I gave it a solid year and made 500 steem ($150) and spent many many hours a day.
Here's a perfect example:
I wrote a post for @abh12345's contest on why Steemit is so good and my post was in the top 3... But you didn't comment it, or upvote it... nor did you take the time to comment or mention the winner either.... You were friends with one of the girls and managed to give her a $1 or $2 upvote, so obviously you saw the contest, but didn't take the time to comment on people actually trying to help YOU and YOUR COMPANY... Pretty sad in so many respect...
it makes you appear that you are an elite that doesn't care about the "common folks"
it makes you a bad marketing guy because that message from the contest should've been not only have been read, but PROMOTED.
it makes people lose respect for you as a leader, because you are not just failing to lead, but you don't even recognize the leaders like Asher (@abh12345)... How can you lead if you fail to spot other leaders? (think about it and be honest, you know I'm right)
the failure to upvote the winning post, while giving a trivial upvote to someone you are connected to also sends a message that a) you're cheap and b) you're willing to reward your friends for their content (with an implicit, "as long as they suck up to you"). NOTE: I was not the winning post, but I damn well remember how I felt that day about your snub of the actual winner.
I doubt you will listen to this, and I certainly don't care about any upvotes anymore. I just thought maybe someone telling you the truth might one day get through. You are a young guy, but you have put yourself in surroundings that you a) get told what they think you want to hear or b) get complete hate negativity thrown in your direction. I would suggest that listening to either of those groups has put you and Steemit in the position it is today. I would also suggest that you "search" for people that will tell you the truth.
One last thing, if you're going to run a "social" platform, you should try to let people have more than 10 comments a day... If you think there is any way in hell people are going to pay you to talk, then you have no idea what motivates the common man/woman. A social site that restricts its users to a point that is noticeable, will die a quick death (as I'm sure you've seen in the numbers). And by the way, I (and many others) tried to tell you this when HF20 came out, but for some reason whoever's instincts its was to go forth and see if people would accept it was dead wrong. I can only hope that person is in the 70% because they really did a disservice to you and the company.
Take care and good luck, I truly hope Steemit succeeds and steem goes up in value. I have many friends that I've met here and I also see the potential. But until there is a leader at the top that "gets it", then it won't ever come close to that potential. I do hope if you stay in that role, that you develop the skills. I myself learned them over a long career. It doesn't happen overnight, but you are capable of fixing this and if you do, then everyone will put this moment in time behind them.
You're saying that people come to Steemit to get attention from the founder? I came to Steemit and I've never ever even hoped for Ned's answer to any of my comments or posts. He doesn't have to do that imo, but if he does, it's just the cherry on top.
People shouldn't expect an upvote or a comment from the founder imho. People should focus on building their community.
no he's saying a leader shouldn't be so biased :)
votes was one of the signs. disabling the comments for a video where he wants to emphasize transparency is another.
With all due respect that is one of the worst conclusions someone could come up with from my comment. The lack of his attention in the situation described was an example to illustrate where @ned is failing and has nothing to do with me "wanting an upvote". You should read things a little better before you try to dismiss the argument with such a shallow argument.
And I know of many people that focused on building the community, but many of them felt they were working against management. If you are afraid of the truth being stated online, then I'm the wrong person to speak to. Steemit is failing not due to any sentiments of any users, but because they are currently failing to listen to the users. The ones that are trying to give them advice on how to fix that are "helping them".
And please don't insult me again by twisting words to make me look shallow.
I'm sorry if you feel insulted by my conclusions, but I don't think it's anything to get mad over. I didn't try or want to insult you or anyone so maybe you shouldn't feel insulted so easily. Maybe you were just in a bad mood a bit? IDK You just could've opened a further discussion and explain without getting arrogant. < Didn't deserve this imho. :/
I get what you're saying with your second paragraph though, because as a community builder, I've felt the same. I mean I like to build a community on Steem, but then again I've felt a thousand times that why doesn't Steemit do it themself or am I even allowed to do that on my own.
As I've understood, decentralization stands for community running things and therefore Steemit has let us do that, not doing much themself. At one hand, that makes Steem decentralized, no? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I fully am fine with Steemit letting us build our own community and don't care if they ever market things or spend resources on helping make the community vibrant. I do however care that they make rules that make it almost impossible for people to stay. The implementation of HF20 and the introduction of RCs (which limited certain functions based on what THEY deemed important) was a disaster. People that sign up now have limits of 10 (or less) comments a day. I know some people think that's perfectly ok, but they essentially killed making this a mass adoption social platform. If that's what they want, they should just tell us. I have spent a year trying to get people to stay involved because of the "potential" to go viral, but that one decision makes it an impossibility. NOTE: for those that claim there is a cost to running the blockchain, my answer to that is these limits on any particular function are purely arbitrary. Why limit the thing new users care most about unless you are either 1) trying to kill it or 2) so out of touch that you have no idea what its like to be a new member that's learning for the first time how this place works.
ps... I don't want to argue with you about the point where you say I felt insulted. Its not important.
Very well said. There is a reason people came to steemit, there is a reason people stay on steemit, now it looks like there is a reason for Ned and Steemit Inc to figure out why.
Exactly @bashadow... And if I were @ned, I'd get in contact with YOU first... You are the epitome of a great Steemian that just shows up and tries to make everyone's life better on a daily basis!
He just needs to look back on his own companies reason for steemit, like they advertise on their home pages, why did he start the company, what did he want from the company, and what change did he want to bring about. From Steem.io front page, (he should look at it every now and then:
A new social media model
where contributors get
big perks
Well put and succinct. Your points are exactly the reason I created an account, but haven't really used the platform yet. Another huge problem is the power structure and how rewards are distributed. We need equality, not an Oligarchy. Then the social aspect needs to be well, more social. I am not interested in having to use another platform like Discord for a truly interactive experience.
You should post sometime. I'm sure you have something of value to say, and it is a decent way to build Steem Power to a point where your votes cross the dust threshold and you no longer need to count your comments
Thank you very much @mineyourmind! I have really enjoyed my 1 year here (despite the lack of management's good decisions). Everything isn't good or bad only, there are many things that are awesome here, and of course many that are not so awesome... On balance I keep coming back for the people I've met... some really good ones that make any of the bad things tolerable.
And yes I totally agree that if they could integrate some of the functionality on Discord somehow, it would be a killer app that would certainly help me... Right now I spend almost 99% of my time on Discord now, and that is where they also lose business to competitiors... I have had many friends try to "steal me away" from Steemit! :P
Nice to meet you and again, thank you for the nice compliment!
ned needs to take this comment seriously. there'll always be dick suckers and haters but he's not listening to the modest people who just wanna speak the truth. i think the current rc budget is actually less than 10 comments a day for a new user, which shows how disconnected he might be.
if steem can't go for decentralization, at least let some else with a little more humility take over.
When a job opens up for someone to tell you the truth I am in line right behind Dave. Seriously though you should let people like @davemccoy and @abh12345 help. They are good people.
lol... Yes I know you would be there for sure DDC! And it would be great if they actually took the time to learn what we know, they are missing out on a treasure trove of some seriously smart people from all walks of life!
Some people are not able to think outside the box. Like my teachers in school used to tell me " you won't have a calcualtor with you all the time in life" . Oh really? Like the one I am typing this reply on and then going to make call on? That calculator? I have been telling them to make trending for actual trending posts and put the bid bot garbage in the promoted section and put a 5% tax/Beneficiaries on it for a long time now. The Beneficiaries would go back to steemit for operating costs. Then trending wouldn't fucking suck and steemit could make some $ off this dumpster fire they have going on. I have tried to get people to come on here and got them accounts set up and stuff and they always bail in onder 2 weeks.
Are you giving up on Steem which is much better than Gab, Minds, Bitchute, Brighteon, MeWe, Utterz, etc? Making money with cryptocurrencies, including Steem, is a long-term investment, and it is a gamble that may or may not work. There are a lot of variables that we should consider and we live in historical times. You should hang on and wait another ten years or more for all of this to work out. We need a lot more time to get all of this to work. It's not as easy as we all may want it to be.
No I'm not giving up on Steem, I was just giving @ned some advice... Whether he takes it or not is up to him. I have no intentions of selling my steem to buy anything other than steem monsters (which is also a variable that I think might even save the platform!) ... Thanks for the optimistic view though, that is a very nice thing for you to try and do (convince me to stay patient!) ;)
And if you go to the same date on @abh12345's page, you will see his wonderful attempt to get a positive message out! And you can see the other entries too!
That option should be on the table along with others. I appreciate the move toward sustainability in a market that's tougher than most of us thought it would be, but it's disappointing the organization was that far from sustainability and didn't anticipate some market swings.
My suggestion would be to manage your site, which I have not seen done yet. Moderate it like other social media sites. Bring in some revenue. I thought we had a revenue model here, which is posting and voting? I don't think anyone will begrudge you guys for voting the master account on these updates if that means you can pay for development. Or run some ads. Or find a some entity you can partner with to run the site or operate the communities if you guys don't want to oversee it yourselves.
I've been waiting for ads for more than 2 years now. I remember you @ned hinting the possibility of ads back then which got me excited. But hopefully this could be a reality now.
Pretty sure it was around the end of 2016 when he spoke at a conference and talked about the possibility of including ads on Steemit and possibly setting up a non-profit for this. I think this was before the ‘Promote’ function on Steemit, so probably Q3 2016. I remember several people writing about it too.
I remember him hinting at adding adds back in 2016. He suggested having it be optional for each user and keeping it small at the bottom of your post, like a footer link. He even mentioned sharing the revenue with the user.
At that time, in private chat discussions, Ned made it very clear that he had no intentions of working on anything to do with advertising at either the blockchain or interface level. And he certainly was not in favor of sharing any ad revenue with users.
Here's one video where he's talking about adding advertising that I have cued for you where he touches on it. There's also another video interview somewhere where he goes into it in more detail.
Keep in mind though, that he never said he or Steemit Inc. was going to work on this specifically, but only alludes to the possibility of it being a revenue generating business model for some unspecified application. At least that's how I understood it.
Regardless of what he said publicly, in his private conversations with me, he explicitly stated that relying on speculation was the much better bet rather than attempting to create revenue streams via his interface or attempting anything at the blockchain protocol level.
Three main points taken away from that conversation were:
Profits from speculation was STINC’s primary funding plan.
There was absolutely no desire to create a revenue-based interface or protocol-level ROI or profit-sharing for Steem investors.
There was a complete lack of foresight/vision and a complete lack of comprehending how social media is actually monetized in the real world.
Steem was in a unique position to truly innovate in both the blockchain and social media space. Our “leadership” - the people who assumed control of blockchain development and its messaging - not only failed to acknowledge their assumption of leadership, but also failed to produce anything attractive for users and investors while assuming that role.
Advertising was always an obvious option for any social media business (which is what Steemit was supposed to be) that wanted to be healthy. Other blockchains have developed these capabilities at the protocol level. But it was mercilessly shot down for a variety of piss-poor reasons and other nonsensical ideas were focused on instead...most of which will never be delivered.
Meanwhile, Ned is claiming that speculative profits have failed for his company (I told him that it was not a good strategy) and now he is claiming that advertising is on the table. It may be a little too late for his failed company, but there may still be hope for the blockchain if anyone is willing to actually work on these kind of worthwhile concepts, as opposed to SMTs, which will either never be delivered or will just end up creating a bigger infrastructural and legal mess.
I can share the conversation with you, if you’d like to read it yourself.
I do remember and have read many of the debates you had and posts you have made about your thoughts on SMT's and remained silent on the subject mainly because I don't have enough knowlege about them to voice an opinion.
Plus, I recall your points about monetizing with ads which I thought were good points. In any case, just wanted to send you this link as promised. I'm not doing it to piss you off or spark a debate.
I think if you were to ask any of the social people that are on steemit here for the social atmosphere, you would find that they left youtube, facebook, reddit because of intrusive advertisement. Advertisements are already on steemit. What do you think all those steemhunt, dlike, actifit, dlike post are all about? It is people advertising products to people. I myself do not upvote or even look at any of those tags. I do not like advertising that much. I have no problem with people wanting to become non-paid sales men for products but at least I can easily ignore 90+% of them all on steemit. Ads would drive people like myself away.
Think adds for visitors only that reward authors would be very a mega boost to the platform. It could attract top content providers to the platform while allowing us to spent our adds budget right here on this platform.
Today, if you link your blog post on Twitter or FB and it ends up getting massive amounts of visits from non-users, chances are you make $0.10 or less on a massively successfully post. Not the way to attract top content providers. Now consider the, what?, $0.30 or so per click you pay for an add campaign on Amazon. Wouldn't it be cool if you could run that campaign on Steemit for a fraction of that? You could make the platform add free for authenticated users, make adds opt in for authors, draw in establihed top content providers with add revenues and allow people to spent their advertising budget with the blockchain as one and only middle man. I think adds, if done right and front end independent, could be a massive win for everyone.
For making money that is fine. For people that want to see ads that is fine. For people like myself, who quit TV because of ads, who rarely looks at you tube videos because of ads, who will click news stories off I am interested in because they want to put a cookie tracker on me, or have excessive ads, not fine. There is no opt out for advertisements. People on steemit are advertising for free all the time as I mentioned above, they get a payout from the people they work for, I do not vote on nor even open any page that has the first tag as one mentioned above.
Advertising banners and plugins get added I will do like I have in the past, find something else. I know people want to monetize all their content, I even vote on their content to help the monetization of their content.
I have yet to go out in a serious search for how to convert my steem into spendable monies. I have found a way to semi sort of buy steem, and that is to buy stemm monster cards. But I am enjoying the game. If I had to wade through a bunch of advertisements to play, I would just go back to other games I like that are add free.
Advertising money is not the end all be all of everything internet wise. If the internet needs advertisers to subsidise the internet then the internet is in big trouble and will die of natural causes, or it will be bailed out by well meaning idiots, like the american automobile industry. The american banking industry, and the american this and that industry that has been bailed out by the American tax payers ever since FDR.
If advertising is the only solution to steemit's problems then steemit will have a problem, as they currently do, retaining users. If Steemit still dreams of being something new in the world of social media then they must not repeat the problems of the current social media.
For myself, like I said, if they bring advertisements on board then odds are very likely I will leave and go elsewhere.
I think the value of the platform, first and foremost is determined by its content, and as such a huge problem standing in the way of growth for steemit lies in the fact that there is negative incitement for established top content providers to switch to the platform.
The reality is: established content providers make money from advertising and their established followers that they will lose the moment they move to steemit. Basically they start from scratch on the platform, hoping they can build a new following to make up for the old one no longer generating profits. The old following is used to adds, the potential new following, as you so rightfully point out is unlikely to even tolerate them. But I think this doesn't need to be a problem. What I think would be the solution to make these two wolds connect is actually pretty straight forward.
Posts don't get advertising unless the author opts in his/her post.
Advertising won't show on posts if the visitor has been authenticated as a steemit user.
Advertising won't show up on posts if the visitor arrives on the post from another steemit page.
Advertising is modeled as an automated internal market (like the STEEM/SBD internal market, but also like a two-sided version of Amazon advertising bids system) based on tags.
By doing it this way, none of the regular steemit users should even notice there are adds. Someone however who is an established content provider on an other platform however will draw visitors who aren't steemit users (yet), visitors that, coming in from FB/Twitter/etc links will get presented with advertising that would provide the content provider with hopefully a competitive revenue stream.
Note, I'm not in any way suggesting any of the revenues from advertising should go to Steemit Inc. I am suggesting the feature of allowing established top content providers to migrate without loss of advertising revenues will end up improving the monetary value of STEEM, what in turn will fix things for Steemit Inc.
Without Steemit INC or any other third party getting in between the person running the add campaign and the established top content providers, in theory steemit should have a competitive edge from the perspective of both the content provider and the person buying click throughs.
Good riddance! Apart from ads or paid promotion the only solution is pay-to-play. Reality is setting in and speculative money is dwindling. It's time for Steem to start earning!
If advertising is the only solution to steemit's problems then steemit will have a problem, as they currently do, retaining users. If Steemit still dreams of being something new in the world of social media then they must not repeat the problems of the current social media.
For myself, like I said, if they bring advertisements on board then odds are very likely I will leave and go elsewhere.
There are billions of social media users out there who don't mind ads at all. Have you ever read the Steem white paper? The value proposition of Steem is to get as many of those people to come on board or to consume the content as possible.
If the Steem community rejects paid promotion, then the platform is certain to die.
Sorry to disappoint you but it was stated in the Steem whitepaper that the value proposition of Steem was the attention of the crowds. The way to monetize that is through ads and paid promotion.
Did you seriously think a game of Greater Fool was going to pay the bills forever?
Like I said I have no problem if people, steem, or steemit, want to monetize, as I said if the only way forward for the internet is through advertisements and subsidies, at some point people are not going to continue to subsidize it. Then the internet will get to be back where it started out as a tool for researchers in Military Industrial Complex. How many industries must be subsidized before it all becomes owned by the state. We have seen how well that has worked out in other countries.
When flashing ads start to appear on steemit in every available pixel of white space, then I will be leaving steemit, as I have left a lot of other media that relies on advertisements.
The way to monetize that is through ads and paid promotion.
If that was the original intent, then waiting two and a half years to explore and find a ways and means of that paid advertisement has been a complete and utter failure and with that then steemit will go the way of Compuserve, AOL, genie, netscape, and a lot of other early internet companies and die an ignoble death due to the inability of its leaders to look ahead and see where they and their company are headed.
I, and the other users of steemit are not the ones that caused the failure. Attracting Advertising, and advertisers is not the answer to everything that is wrong with steemit.
It keeps getting pointed out the immutability of the blockchain, and the security of it. There are a lot of of tax preparers in the United States, that have records they must maintain for 7 years or more. Same with accounting companies, and tax laws have been changed to where digital copies are valid for use.
The failure of steem.io company is it's inability to reach out to the people that would benefit from their technology. They seem to be to focused in one direction, and not paying attention to what is going on in and around their blockchain.
Look at what Steem Monsters has done. Look at the shear amount of information they must save and process for their silly little game to work. 90% of what they have done can be so easily translated into other fields and industries, yet where is the Vision?
Yes I cave to all the masses drinking kool-aid, the answer to everything on the internet is ADVERTISEMENTS
What you're describing is pay-to-play. And that's a perfectly fine way to bring in revenue. That can exist alongside with advertising revenue as a source of income.
You have stated your personal distaste for ads but the vast majority of Internet users do not share it. Social media is still a growing business and it's funded to an overwhelming degree by advertisers. All the Internet giants, including Google, get the vast majority of their revenue from ads. Gargantuan value is supported by ad revenue. It is nothing to scoff at. (And, no, it doesn't have to be 1990's style blinking banner ads on a white background. And there is much more to paid promotion than banner ads.)
Take your blog and go home then. Those of us who intend to stay and build an ecosystem will have to be economically sustainable. Bloggers have been feeling the pain for months and it's time to actually solve the monetiztion problem. Ads need to exist also because currently people are paying bots to upvote when they could just buy promotion the right way.
And ads aren't bad if done right. Make it op-in, and do things right.
That would solve so so many problems would it not if everyone just went home!
Bloggers have been feeling the pain for months and it's time to actually solve the monetiztion problem.
If you read back a few comments in this trail you will see that I am NOT your kind of blogger. I did not come to steemit to monetize myself. If you did look back you will see that I am a user of steemit.
After one and almost a half years I have still not bothered to look into how to buy, sell trade steem and make it into "REAL" money. It was only through playing steemmonsters that I was able to buy some steem. But the truth is I was not buying steem, I was buying digital cards to play a game.
Ads need to exist also because currently people are paying bots to upvote when they could just buy promotion the right way.
So ads are going to do away with the vote bots, as a user I do not see that happening.
All options need to be on the table and tried. We should also consider a referral program. It's time.
All options, as long as those options and opinions of the non-blog user, (such as myself), are not on the table. There are several types of people on steemit. There are those that are strictly investors, they do not blog, they may on occasion make a Post. There are the people that are using the blockchain as a means to develop programs and software, they are not bloggers, they may on occasion make a post about what they are doing and developing. There are the business owners, those that run bots for profit, steem style banks for profit, and games for profit. They do advertise to their customers via Post. Then there are the people like me, the social poster, the reader of your Blog content. The people YOU just said to Take your blog and go home then. I am not a blogger as I have, I thought, made it clear in my comments. I am the type of person that YOU as a blogger are trying to get to follow you and give you money, and you want me to "GO HOME"
All options need to be on the table and tried.
So all options as long as they do not involve the targeted audience. I hope you understand now that I am not a Blogger, that I am a user. The price of steem has one effect for me right now, it governs how much content I can give a valuable vote to. One day I may learn and jump through all the hoops and loops to convert steem into fiat money so that I can go buy things from the local store down the street. Until that happens I will continue to be a poster, reader and voter of content that I find to be of value to me, and hopefully the value will return to steem so that my vote can give be of value to people.
There are very few people that are concerned about the value of their vote toward other people. I am. So the price of steem does effect me.
If you read back a few comments in this trail you will see that I am NOT your kind of blogger. I did not come to steemit to monetize myself. If you did look back you will see that I am a user of steemit.
After one and almost a half years I have still not bothered to look into how to buy, sell trade steem and make it into "REAL" money. It was only through playing steemmonsters that I was able to buy some steem. But the truth is I was not buying steem, I was buying digital cards to play a game.
You are a part of the ecosystem but Steem Monsters is very new and also very niche. It's contributing to the growth of Steem so I support it but I do not know enough to know how it works.
So ads are going to do away with the vote bots, as a user I do not see that happening.
As a blogger the demand for upvote bots is due to the fact that we cannot promote our content in any more legitimate means. So if we want our content on the trending page then we have to pay the bots. It's a broken system because the bots are essentially a cartel. I would rather just pay the Steem blockchain itself.
All options, as long as those options and opinions of the non-blog user, (such as myself), are not on the table.
All options should be on the table and all opinions of participants in the ecosystem should be considered. I'm in favor of ads but I am also in favor of it being opt in. I'm in favor of ads specifically here for Steemit because Steemit is based around blogging while Steem Monsters is something else.
I guess we will have to see what will happen. Perhaps one of the other front ends will monetize and run ads in their system, such as busy.org. They can auto add "Posted by Busy.org" to the tail of all the post from their site (as many other front ends do also), so it should not be hard for them to add advertisement banners to the top or bottom of a poster's post.
It does not all need to be on the top of steemit's front end. An ad placed in this manner would still be visible on all front ends. Look at the footers of some of the posters, some of them have a lot of "banner's" at the foot of their post advertising this or that service or page or program.
posted with partico posted with esteem posted with Busy Posted with steeve
I would be very sad to see adverts on Steem. The trending page is already one big advert. But I can just avoid that. I don't think I could deal with it disturbing my enjoyment of post. The lack of ads was one of the first things that intrigued me about seem.
@ned Before you do that, I dare you to contact me!
I need 5 min. of your time to exsplane you my idea! I will put my STEEM, where my mouth is!
So, after you heard my idea......if you say, it was a was of time, I will give 100STEEM (all I have now) to user of your choice!
I think selling ads is a great idea, if done properly. Select ones that are relevant to the community and let people opt out of seeing them. Most of us wouldn't opt out, if we know it helps keep steemit going.
How about try listening to your customers (users)? Maybe the attrition rate wouldn't have been so high and all the newcomers exiting so fast if you paid them some attention to understand why they showed up in the first place... I've given you many messages myself, but you ignore them. Sad for all the people involved, but until you realize that in any business you must learn what your customers want, then this place will not turn around. I gave it a solid year and made 500 steem ($150) and spent many many hours a day.
Here's a perfect example:
I wrote a post for @abh12345's contest on why Steemit is so good and my post was in the top 3... But you didn't comment it, or upvote it... nor did you take the time to comment or mention the winner either.... You were friends with one of the girls and managed to give her a $1 or $2 upvote, so obviously you saw the contest, but didn't take the time to comment on people actually trying to help YOU and YOUR COMPANY... Pretty sad in so many respect...
I doubt you will listen to this, and I certainly don't care about any upvotes anymore. I just thought maybe someone telling you the truth might one day get through. You are a young guy, but you have put yourself in surroundings that you a) get told what they think you want to hear or b) get complete hate negativity thrown in your direction. I would suggest that listening to either of those groups has put you and Steemit in the position it is today. I would also suggest that you "search" for people that will tell you the truth.
One last thing, if you're going to run a "social" platform, you should try to let people have more than 10 comments a day... If you think there is any way in hell people are going to pay you to talk, then you have no idea what motivates the common man/woman. A social site that restricts its users to a point that is noticeable, will die a quick death (as I'm sure you've seen in the numbers). And by the way, I (and many others) tried to tell you this when HF20 came out, but for some reason whoever's instincts its was to go forth and see if people would accept it was dead wrong. I can only hope that person is in the 70% because they really did a disservice to you and the company.
Take care and good luck, I truly hope Steemit succeeds and steem goes up in value. I have many friends that I've met here and I also see the potential. But until there is a leader at the top that "gets it", then it won't ever come close to that potential. I do hope if you stay in that role, that you develop the skills. I myself learned them over a long career. It doesn't happen overnight, but you are capable of fixing this and if you do, then everyone will put this moment in time behind them.
Cheers!
You're saying that people come to Steemit to get attention from the founder? I came to Steemit and I've never ever even hoped for Ned's answer to any of my comments or posts. He doesn't have to do that imo, but if he does, it's just the cherry on top.
People shouldn't expect an upvote or a comment from the founder imho. People should focus on building their community.
no he's saying a leader shouldn't be so biased :)
votes was one of the signs. disabling the comments for a video where he wants to emphasize transparency is another.
Thank you for explaining this without getting mad. : )
With all due respect that is one of the worst conclusions someone could come up with from my comment. The lack of his attention in the situation described was an example to illustrate where @ned is failing and has nothing to do with me "wanting an upvote". You should read things a little better before you try to dismiss the argument with such a shallow argument.
And I know of many people that focused on building the community, but many of them felt they were working against management. If you are afraid of the truth being stated online, then I'm the wrong person to speak to. Steemit is failing not due to any sentiments of any users, but because they are currently failing to listen to the users. The ones that are trying to give them advice on how to fix that are "helping them".
And please don't insult me again by twisting words to make me look shallow.
I'm sorry if you feel insulted by my conclusions, but I don't think it's anything to get mad over. I didn't try or want to insult you or anyone so maybe you shouldn't feel insulted so easily. Maybe you were just in a bad mood a bit? IDK You just could've opened a further discussion and explain without getting arrogant. < Didn't deserve this imho. :/
I get what you're saying with your second paragraph though, because as a community builder, I've felt the same. I mean I like to build a community on Steem, but then again I've felt a thousand times that why doesn't Steemit do it themself or am I even allowed to do that on my own.
As I've understood, decentralization stands for community running things and therefore Steemit has let us do that, not doing much themself. At one hand, that makes Steem decentralized, no? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I fully am fine with Steemit letting us build our own community and don't care if they ever market things or spend resources on helping make the community vibrant. I do however care that they make rules that make it almost impossible for people to stay. The implementation of HF20 and the introduction of RCs (which limited certain functions based on what THEY deemed important) was a disaster. People that sign up now have limits of 10 (or less) comments a day. I know some people think that's perfectly ok, but they essentially killed making this a mass adoption social platform. If that's what they want, they should just tell us. I have spent a year trying to get people to stay involved because of the "potential" to go viral, but that one decision makes it an impossibility. NOTE: for those that claim there is a cost to running the blockchain, my answer to that is these limits on any particular function are purely arbitrary. Why limit the thing new users care most about unless you are either 1) trying to kill it or 2) so out of touch that you have no idea what its like to be a new member that's learning for the first time how this place works.
ps... I don't want to argue with you about the point where you say I felt insulted. Its not important.
!!!
This! This right here!!
Very well said. There is a reason people came to steemit, there is a reason people stay on steemit, now it looks like there is a reason for Ned and Steemit Inc to figure out why.
Exactly @bashadow... And if I were @ned, I'd get in contact with YOU first... You are the epitome of a great Steemian that just shows up and tries to make everyone's life better on a daily basis!
He just needs to look back on his own companies reason for steemit, like they advertise on their home pages, why did he start the company, what did he want from the company, and what change did he want to bring about. From Steem.io front page, (he should look at it every now and then:
Well put and succinct. Your points are exactly the reason I created an account, but haven't really used the platform yet. Another huge problem is the power structure and how rewards are distributed. We need equality, not an Oligarchy. Then the social aspect needs to be well, more social. I am not interested in having to use another platform like Discord for a truly interactive experience.
You should post sometime. I'm sure you have something of value to say, and it is a decent way to build Steem Power to a point where your votes cross the dust threshold and you no longer need to count your comments
I may just use another UI and If I do, cross-posting is frowned upon...So, do I choose Steemit, Whaleshares or WeKu? I'm still in the fence.
I’m loving whaleshares right now there is also ONO
Hahahahahahaha. What are you like Ultraviolet 😂😂
:D they are great though :) room for a few
Thank you very much @mineyourmind! I have really enjoyed my 1 year here (despite the lack of management's good decisions). Everything isn't good or bad only, there are many things that are awesome here, and of course many that are not so awesome... On balance I keep coming back for the people I've met... some really good ones that make any of the bad things tolerable.
And yes I totally agree that if they could integrate some of the functionality on Discord somehow, it would be a killer app that would certainly help me... Right now I spend almost 99% of my time on Discord now, and that is where they also lose business to competitiors... I have had many friends try to "steal me away" from Steemit! :P
Nice to meet you and again, thank you for the nice compliment!
ned needs to take this comment seriously. there'll always be dick suckers and haters but he's not listening to the modest people who just wanna speak the truth. i think the current rc budget is actually less than 10 comments a day for a new user, which shows how disconnected he might be.
if steem can't go for decentralization, at least let some else with a little more humility take over.
When a job opens up for someone to tell you the truth I am in line right behind Dave. Seriously though you should let people like @davemccoy and @abh12345 help. They are good people.
lol... Yes I know you would be there for sure DDC! And it would be great if they actually took the time to learn what we know, they are missing out on a treasure trove of some seriously smart people from all walks of life!
Some people are not able to think outside the box. Like my teachers in school used to tell me " you won't have a calcualtor with you all the time in life" . Oh really? Like the one I am typing this reply on and then going to make call on? That calculator? I have been telling them to make trending for actual trending posts and put the bid bot garbage in the promoted section and put a 5% tax/Beneficiaries on it for a long time now. The Beneficiaries would go back to steemit for operating costs. Then trending wouldn't fucking suck and steemit could make some $ off this dumpster fire they have going on. I have tried to get people to come on here and got them accounts set up and stuff and they always bail in onder 2 weeks.
Are you giving up on Steem which is much better than Gab, Minds, Bitchute, Brighteon, MeWe, Utterz, etc? Making money with cryptocurrencies, including Steem, is a long-term investment, and it is a gamble that may or may not work. There are a lot of variables that we should consider and we live in historical times. You should hang on and wait another ten years or more for all of this to work out. We need a lot more time to get all of this to work. It's not as easy as we all may want it to be.
No I'm not giving up on Steem, I was just giving @ned some advice... Whether he takes it or not is up to him. I have no intentions of selling my steem to buy anything other than steem monsters (which is also a variable that I think might even save the platform!) ... Thanks for the optimistic view though, that is a very nice thing for you to try and do (convince me to stay patient!) ;)
Great. Good advice. Can we mine or seed Steem like we can with Bitcoin, BitTorrent, etc?
That I don't know, I'm sure there are others here that would know!
Definitely one of the best replies I've ever seen in Steemit.
Thank you very much for the compliment @glory7!
hi @davemccoy
would you mind sharing with me link to your mentioned post ? I failed to find it and I would really like to have a look
Sure I'm happy to do that... Here you go!
https://steemit.com/welcometosteemit/@davemccoy/the-party-is-just-getting-started-welcome-to-steemit-everyone
And if you go to the same date on @abh12345's page, you will see his wonderful attempt to get a positive message out! And you can see the other entries too!
Thanks for checking on this, its nice to know :)
Im very sorry for such a late reply @davemccoy
Thank you for being so responsive. I noticed that you have enormous follower base. CRAZY!
You're one of the most popular blogger here on Steemit, arent you?
yours
Piotr
That option should be on the table along with others. I appreciate the move toward sustainability in a market that's tougher than most of us thought it would be, but it's disappointing the organization was that far from sustainability and didn't anticipate some market swings.
My suggestion would be to manage your site, which I have not seen done yet. Moderate it like other social media sites. Bring in some revenue. I thought we had a revenue model here, which is posting and voting? I don't think anyone will begrudge you guys for voting the master account on these updates if that means you can pay for development. Or run some ads. Or find a some entity you can partner with to run the site or operate the communities if you guys don't want to oversee it yourselves.
Agree. I hope the Promoted section becomes an initial place for Ads and that becomes a generating revenue for Steemit Inc. to shoulder the costs.
I've been waiting for ads for more than 2 years now. I remember you @ned hinting the possibility of ads back then which got me excited. But hopefully this could be a reality now.
When did he hint at ads? Last I spoke with him on the topic (spring 2017), he had zero interest in it.
Pretty sure it was around the end of 2016 when he spoke at a conference and talked about the possibility of including ads on Steemit and possibly setting up a non-profit for this. I think this was before the ‘Promote’ function on Steemit, so probably Q3 2016. I remember several people writing about it too.
I remember him hinting at adding adds back in 2016. He suggested having it be optional for each user and keeping it small at the bottom of your post, like a footer link. He even mentioned sharing the revenue with the user.
You sure that wasn’t me?
https://steemit.com/steemit/@ats-david/advertising-revenue-and-distributions-on-the-steem-blockchain
At that time, in private chat discussions, Ned made it very clear that he had no intentions of working on anything to do with advertising at either the blockchain or interface level. And he certainly was not in favor of sharing any ad revenue with users.
I'm pretty sure I heard him talking about it during a podcast or video somewhere. I'll see if I can find it and shoot you a link.
Here's one video where he's talking about adding advertising that I have cued for you where he touches on it. There's also another video interview somewhere where he goes into it in more detail.
Keep in mind though, that he never said he or Steemit Inc. was going to work on this specifically, but only alludes to the possibility of it being a revenue generating business model for some unspecified application. At least that's how I understood it.
Regardless of what he said publicly, in his private conversations with me, he explicitly stated that relying on speculation was the much better bet rather than attempting to create revenue streams via his interface or attempting anything at the blockchain protocol level.
Three main points taken away from that conversation were:
Steem was in a unique position to truly innovate in both the blockchain and social media space. Our “leadership” - the people who assumed control of blockchain development and its messaging - not only failed to acknowledge their assumption of leadership, but also failed to produce anything attractive for users and investors while assuming that role.
Advertising was always an obvious option for any social media business (which is what Steemit was supposed to be) that wanted to be healthy. Other blockchains have developed these capabilities at the protocol level. But it was mercilessly shot down for a variety of piss-poor reasons and other nonsensical ideas were focused on instead...most of which will never be delivered.
Meanwhile, Ned is claiming that speculative profits have failed for his company (I told him that it was not a good strategy) and now he is claiming that advertising is on the table. It may be a little too late for his failed company, but there may still be hope for the blockchain if anyone is willing to actually work on these kind of worthwhile concepts, as opposed to SMTs, which will either never be delivered or will just end up creating a bigger infrastructural and legal mess.
I can share the conversation with you, if you’d like to read it yourself.
I do remember and have read many of the debates you had and posts you have made about your thoughts on SMT's and remained silent on the subject mainly because I don't have enough knowlege about them to voice an opinion.
Plus, I recall your points about monetizing with ads which I thought were good points. In any case, just wanted to send you this link as promised. I'm not doing it to piss you off or spark a debate.
I think if you were to ask any of the social people that are on steemit here for the social atmosphere, you would find that they left youtube, facebook, reddit because of intrusive advertisement. Advertisements are already on steemit. What do you think all those steemhunt, dlike, actifit, dlike post are all about? It is people advertising products to people. I myself do not upvote or even look at any of those tags. I do not like advertising that much. I have no problem with people wanting to become non-paid sales men for products but at least I can easily ignore 90+% of them all on steemit. Ads would drive people like myself away.
Think adds for visitors only that reward authors would be very a mega boost to the platform. It could attract top content providers to the platform while allowing us to spent our adds budget right here on this platform.
Today, if you link your blog post on Twitter or FB and it ends up getting massive amounts of visits from non-users, chances are you make $0.10 or less on a massively successfully post. Not the way to attract top content providers. Now consider the, what?, $0.30 or so per click you pay for an add campaign on Amazon. Wouldn't it be cool if you could run that campaign on Steemit for a fraction of that? You could make the platform add free for authenticated users, make adds opt in for authors, draw in establihed top content providers with add revenues and allow people to spent their advertising budget with the blockchain as one and only middle man. I think adds, if done right and front end independent, could be a massive win for everyone.
For making money that is fine. For people that want to see ads that is fine. For people like myself, who quit TV because of ads, who rarely looks at you tube videos because of ads, who will click news stories off I am interested in because they want to put a cookie tracker on me, or have excessive ads, not fine. There is no opt out for advertisements. People on steemit are advertising for free all the time as I mentioned above, they get a payout from the people they work for, I do not vote on nor even open any page that has the first tag as one mentioned above.
Advertising banners and plugins get added I will do like I have in the past, find something else. I know people want to monetize all their content, I even vote on their content to help the monetization of their content.
I have yet to go out in a serious search for how to convert my steem into spendable monies. I have found a way to semi sort of buy steem, and that is to buy stemm monster cards. But I am enjoying the game. If I had to wade through a bunch of advertisements to play, I would just go back to other games I like that are add free.
Advertising money is not the end all be all of everything internet wise. If the internet needs advertisers to subsidise the internet then the internet is in big trouble and will die of natural causes, or it will be bailed out by well meaning idiots, like the american automobile industry. The american banking industry, and the american this and that industry that has been bailed out by the American tax payers ever since FDR.
If advertising is the only solution to steemit's problems then steemit will have a problem, as they currently do, retaining users. If Steemit still dreams of being something new in the world of social media then they must not repeat the problems of the current social media.
For myself, like I said, if they bring advertisements on board then odds are very likely I will leave and go elsewhere.
I think the value of the platform, first and foremost is determined by its content, and as such a huge problem standing in the way of growth for steemit lies in the fact that there is negative incitement for established top content providers to switch to the platform.
The reality is: established content providers make money from advertising and their established followers that they will lose the moment they move to steemit. Basically they start from scratch on the platform, hoping they can build a new following to make up for the old one no longer generating profits. The old following is used to adds, the potential new following, as you so rightfully point out is unlikely to even tolerate them. But I think this doesn't need to be a problem. What I think would be the solution to make these two wolds connect is actually pretty straight forward.
By doing it this way, none of the regular steemit users should even notice there are adds. Someone however who is an established content provider on an other platform however will draw visitors who aren't steemit users (yet), visitors that, coming in from FB/Twitter/etc links will get presented with advertising that would provide the content provider with hopefully a competitive revenue stream.
Note, I'm not in any way suggesting any of the revenues from advertising should go to Steemit Inc. I am suggesting the feature of allowing established top content providers to migrate without loss of advertising revenues will end up improving the monetary value of STEEM, what in turn will fix things for Steemit Inc.
Without Steemit INC or any other third party getting in between the person running the add campaign and the established top content providers, in theory steemit should have a competitive edge from the perspective of both the content provider and the person buying click throughs.
Hope I'm makeing sense here.
Good riddance! Apart from ads or paid promotion the only solution is pay-to-play. Reality is setting in and speculative money is dwindling. It's time for Steem to start earning!
There are billions of social media users out there who don't mind ads at all. Have you ever read the Steem white paper? The value proposition of Steem is to get as many of those people to come on board or to consume the content as possible.
If the Steem community rejects paid promotion, then the platform is certain to die.
Sorry to disappoint you but it was stated in the Steem whitepaper that the value proposition of Steem was the attention of the crowds. The way to monetize that is through ads and paid promotion.
Did you seriously think a game of Greater Fool was going to pay the bills forever?
Like I said I have no problem if people, steem, or steemit, want to monetize, as I said if the only way forward for the internet is through advertisements and subsidies, at some point people are not going to continue to subsidize it. Then the internet will get to be back where it started out as a tool for researchers in Military Industrial Complex. How many industries must be subsidized before it all becomes owned by the state. We have seen how well that has worked out in other countries.
When flashing ads start to appear on steemit in every available pixel of white space, then I will be leaving steemit, as I have left a lot of other media that relies on advertisements.
If that was the original intent, then waiting two and a half years to explore and find a ways and means of that paid advertisement has been a complete and utter failure and with that then steemit will go the way of Compuserve, AOL, genie, netscape, and a lot of other early internet companies and die an ignoble death due to the inability of its leaders to look ahead and see where they and their company are headed.
I, and the other users of steemit are not the ones that caused the failure. Attracting Advertising, and advertisers is not the answer to everything that is wrong with steemit.
It keeps getting pointed out the immutability of the blockchain, and the security of it. There are a lot of of tax preparers in the United States, that have records they must maintain for 7 years or more. Same with accounting companies, and tax laws have been changed to where digital copies are valid for use.
The failure of steem.io company is it's inability to reach out to the people that would benefit from their technology. They seem to be to focused in one direction, and not paying attention to what is going on in and around their blockchain.
Look at what Steem Monsters has done. Look at the shear amount of information they must save and process for their silly little game to work. 90% of what they have done can be so easily translated into other fields and industries, yet where is the Vision?
Yes I cave to all the masses drinking kool-aid, the answer to everything on the internet is ADVERTISEMENTS
What you're describing is pay-to-play. And that's a perfectly fine way to bring in revenue. That can exist alongside with advertising revenue as a source of income.
You have stated your personal distaste for ads but the vast majority of Internet users do not share it. Social media is still a growing business and it's funded to an overwhelming degree by advertisers. All the Internet giants, including Google, get the vast majority of their revenue from ads. Gargantuan value is supported by ad revenue. It is nothing to scoff at. (And, no, it doesn't have to be 1990's style blinking banner ads on a white background. And there is much more to paid promotion than banner ads.)
All options need to be on the table and tried. We should also consider a referral program. It's time.
Take your blog and go home then. Those of us who intend to stay and build an ecosystem will have to be economically sustainable. Bloggers have been feeling the pain for months and it's time to actually solve the monetiztion problem. Ads need to exist also because currently people are paying bots to upvote when they could just buy promotion the right way.
And ads aren't bad if done right. Make it op-in, and do things right.
That would solve so so many problems would it not if everyone just went home!
If you read back a few comments in this trail you will see that I am NOT your kind of blogger. I did not come to steemit to monetize myself. If you did look back you will see that I am a user of steemit.
After one and almost a half years I have still not bothered to look into how to buy, sell trade steem and make it into "REAL" money. It was only through playing steemmonsters that I was able to buy some steem. But the truth is I was not buying steem, I was buying digital cards to play a game.
So ads are going to do away with the vote bots, as a user I do not see that happening.
All options, as long as those options and opinions of the non-blog user, (such as myself), are not on the table. There are several types of people on steemit. There are those that are strictly investors, they do not blog, they may on occasion make a Post. There are the people that are using the blockchain as a means to develop programs and software, they are not bloggers, they may on occasion make a post about what they are doing and developing. There are the business owners, those that run bots for profit, steem style banks for profit, and games for profit. They do advertise to their customers via Post. Then there are the people like me, the social poster, the reader of your Blog content. The people YOU just said to Take your blog and go home then. I am not a blogger as I have, I thought, made it clear in my comments. I am the type of person that YOU as a blogger are trying to get to follow you and give you money, and you want me to "GO HOME"
So all options as long as they do not involve the targeted audience. I hope you understand now that I am not a Blogger, that I am a user. The price of steem has one effect for me right now, it governs how much content I can give a valuable vote to. One day I may learn and jump through all the hoops and loops to convert steem into fiat money so that I can go buy things from the local store down the street. Until that happens I will continue to be a poster, reader and voter of content that I find to be of value to me, and hopefully the value will return to steem so that my vote can give be of value to people.
There are very few people that are concerned about the value of their vote toward other people. I am. So the price of steem does effect me.
You are a part of the ecosystem but Steem Monsters is very new and also very niche. It's contributing to the growth of Steem so I support it but I do not know enough to know how it works.
As a blogger the demand for upvote bots is due to the fact that we cannot promote our content in any more legitimate means. So if we want our content on the trending page then we have to pay the bots. It's a broken system because the bots are essentially a cartel. I would rather just pay the Steem blockchain itself.
All options should be on the table and all opinions of participants in the ecosystem should be considered. I'm in favor of ads but I am also in favor of it being opt in. I'm in favor of ads specifically here for Steemit because Steemit is based around blogging while Steem Monsters is something else.
I guess we will have to see what will happen. Perhaps one of the other front ends will monetize and run ads in their system, such as busy.org. They can auto add "Posted by Busy.org" to the tail of all the post from their site (as many other front ends do also), so it should not be hard for them to add advertisement banners to the top or bottom of a poster's post.
It does not all need to be on the top of steemit's front end. An ad placed in this manner would still be visible on all front ends. Look at the footers of some of the posters, some of them have a lot of "banner's" at the foot of their post advertising this or that service or page or program.
posted with partico
posted with esteem
posted with Busy
Posted with steeve
These are all micro ads.
I would be very sad to see adverts on Steem. The trending page is already one big advert. But I can just avoid that. I don't think I could deal with it disturbing my enjoyment of post. The lack of ads was one of the first things that intrigued me about seem.
Posted using Partiko Android
We will just have to wait and see what happens. One of the nice things in this flow of comments was reading that @ned is not in favor of ads.
Could you consider taking a small beneficiary cut out of steemit.com's posts like other dapps do? And maybe think about it more than ads? :)
This is a very promising idea!
@ned Before you do that, I dare you to contact me!
I need 5 min. of your time to exsplane you my idea! I will put my STEEM, where my mouth is!
So, after you heard my idea......if you say, it was a was of time, I will give 100STEEM (all I have now) to user of your choice!
Here is a small suggestion from me. It won't make huge amount of money and I'm not a programmer. So I'm not sure about the difficulty of implementing something like this. But I'll just leave this here: https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@vimukthi/steemit-improvement-proposal-cosmetic-upvote-feature-to-replace-bid-bots-and-fund-blockchain-development
Additionally here is a poll I conducted on the subject: https://dpoll.xyz/detail/@vimukthi/steemit-inc-had-a-layoff-of-70-of-staff-due-to-lack-of-funds-how-should-they-raise-more-money
Hope these would help at least a little.
Best of Luck!
Yes! Ads (that can be easily shown or hidden) will be a game changer.
I think selling ads is a great idea, if done properly. Select ones that are relevant to the community and let people opt out of seeing them. Most of us wouldn't opt out, if we know it helps keep steemit going.
I think ads are the best idea so far if it can be done in a way which burns Steem so the ecosystem benefits.