Why We Will Support Short Form Posts (Co-Authored By @liberosist)
When Steemit began, some of the first posts on the site were just links. Others were shorter posts than we often see today. But because voting allocates real money, voters seemed to gravitate towards the posts which added the most perceived value to the platform. The longer posts began to get more rewards.
Today, Steemit’s content resembles the Medium site in terms of the voters’ preference for longer length articles. This is fine, but in embracing that model only, perhaps we have lost something along the way. Not everyone enjoys writing (or reading) long pieces.
There are several mature social networking models online. In its general approach, Steemit today is modeled very much after Reddit. The trending/hot/new pages, the upvotes and downvotes, the comments down below, the very short term lifecycle of posts - it is all Reddit. One look at Reddit's top posts, though, reveals something interesting. Many are just links, re-shares, some are even just a picture without a single letter of text. The value is driven not by the post themselves, but by the immense engagement they generate. This has been Reddit's success, and despite some shaky management why 300+ million Redditors stick around to this day.
Of course, Steemit's greatest innovation are the monetary rewards. Understandably, this has led voters to value original content and articles much more. Today, the content being more akin to Wordpress or Medium. However, unlike Steemit, Medium is not a social network - it's a publishing platform. To engage the community, we need a greater diversity of content, whether personal rambles or sharing the best of the internet. This will generate discussion, comments and engagement we are lacking right now, and ultimately reach out to a much larger audience than Medium ever could.
We would like to see both on Steemit - a short term social network platform driven by short form posts, re-posts, re-links, and upvotes. The Trending page should reflect not stakeweighted rewards but overall engagement. Ultimately, the community will decide what these short form posts are worth. And a longer term publishing platform driven by original content and greater rewards.
Shorter length articles can be fun, expressive, and informative. In the last few days, Project Curie’s curators have begun to notice more of them on the site. We like this trend.
In the coming days (teaser alert!), a group of Steemians will be announcing exciting new steps to reward some shorter length content in particular tags.
We will continue to support and reward the traditional long posts, but we also will begin looking for high quality, short form posts. These also deserve some rewards. We hope to see more of them.
By @donkeypong and @liberosist
Image credit:
Creative Commons via Wikimedia, Montage By Peter Wadsworth
Image attributions: Heike Andres Pleple2000 Lilly M SaNtINa/kIKs Pleple2000 Pleple2000 Steve Jurvetson [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
“It does not require many words to speak the truth.” -Chief Joseph
@donkeypong, @liberosist
This is one great news!
Thank you and ...
huge respect!
@bluejay ... hope has come :)
Ah, I love War Horse!
If Steemit has a future and it does...then it follows that it will require shorter forms of communication in order for the reader to not get bogged down. Thank you @englishtchrivy for the mention and the scene from War Horse...a lovely film.
And who doesn't need both longer posts and shorter posts....just to keep things lively.
All the best. Cheers.
I do know that when I post something short form any rewards are about a 10th or less of what I make when I post something longer. As long as this remains the case I suspect this will not change as this seems true for most people too unless they have a bot or following that up votes all of their posts.
Also consider that there is a penalty for rewards when you post more than 4 blog posts in a 24 hour period. I think this discourages short form posting for some people as well. This is just speculation on my part though.
Those are great observations. Let's get the conversation going. Hopefully if people think about it and become more accepting of different types of content, the market may be a little more generous with rewards for shorter content.
I believe the 4 posts limit was enforced in the early days when Steemit was overrun with spam posts. Now that things have settled down, I fully expect this limit to be withdrawn, particularly once the social networking features (whatever they may be) are introduced.
Yeah I was pondering that a bit after I wrote my reply above. I was here when they added that so I remember why they added it. I remember several bots combing through Google and then posting a new post about ever 5 minutes. It made curating near impossible.
I prefer shorter posts myself, so I am glad to see this post. Short story writers would be an exception though. Informative snippets offer me an opportunity for further research if I am interested.
This seems like a great idea and a way to encourage more people to contribute to the site even if they are not great writers. I'm a fan!
Thank you for your post @donkeypong and @liberosist.
Expressing the thoughts of some who have embraced the medium Steemit presents to put quality content in short form believing it will be part of Steemit's future content.
@mindhunter has even gone so far as to create the tag 'nuggetized'.
If Steemit will be a hub of information and for information many venues will present themselves as it grows. Already @doitvoluntarily presents objective news articles as a reporter, @steemswede presents film and music reviews and @titin gives music lessons and @pickoum is teaching Steemians how to play chess....amazing what Steemit is shaping up to be, as it is an environment of freedom. If you have freedom....you have inequality.....not a bad thing. No cookie cutters....just individualism. Freedom to fail or succeed let the market decide.
Thank you for your article and the opportunity to express thought.
Hi, I am a minnow.
As a new person to Crypto and trying hard to learn so much, and then investing time making content, I honestly get bummed I work hard and get nothing, no engagement, no reward for most of my stuff. I basically left for 30 days because of this.
I make sure every day I sign in here, to share the heck and resteem and upvote good content, I reblog a ton to help others and the site. I think that is part of what a community minded person should be about.
No real rewards, the weights for things and work makes no sense, -- the average person does not get enough traction or have enough followers to give weight to their case. Just speaking freely. Something is not right here. I would like to see the smart people like all you guys in this post chatting about stuff I don't understand, help. I know you are working on it! TY for your time. I hope you do not mind my blue collar, uneducated opinions.
Welcome! I think a lot of people are in your situation. We are trying hard to spread the rewards around to more good quality posts from undiscovered authors. This is a social network of sorts also, so I'd suggest joining steemit.chat also and networking with others + trying to build your follow list. Feel free to contact me there if you need some help.
Thanks again for listening and replying. I appreciate that. I think a huge % of people on here are like me, new to crypto etc -- I know for a fact several of my friends have joined simply bc I am on here, and they have NO idea what is going on in this space LOL and I am trying to help them too. That's what this is about, I guess. Same road, all on different parts of that road. -- I tried long ago to join that chat thing, I gave up, I could not get in lol. I hear it is a good place like you said also. TY very much for all you do. When I joined ---- you were one of the FIRST people I followed seeing your work. I will not forget that !! Minnows never forget where they came from, lol. I am still one.
Important question: My 101 post I put up w the graphic etc that did well (for me, that is really well) -- I accidentally removed my own vote - I clicked on it and it affects the post and reward payout it says and same if I try to replace the downvote I gave myself. It is a big post payout and I messed up the metrics here obv. It is due to payout in a cpl. hours.....What should I do???? That first auto vote for our posts..... means more if the post does well and IDK what to do now.
plus I am down to like 70% voting power on top of it all, so even if I vote for it, it won't do anything, maybe even harm me. Rookie question and mistake, I know.
Sorry, the only thing I know how to do is experiment and find out what works best.
Fair enough!! TY for replying, always appreciate that!!
I'm guilty of that myself - when l joined Steemit mid July I didn't take it seriously. I was checking the ground and posted a lot of short YT link posts.
Within the time, I had learnt how to write articles. They became long, more complex and better edited.
Now, I finally realised that shorter, engaging, quality articles are way to go.
There is limited attention and time we all can spend for reading posts.
As a long term Redditor, when I first logged on to Steemit, I used it much like Reddit. I shared links, wrote short posts as well.
Like on Reddit, there's always demand for long form articles. The key is to find a balance where both short form and long form content exist and thrive.
Let's then stay tuned! To answer a few comments I have read, short posts can be original, even if a link is shared. One could always write a couple of paragraphs around the link to trig a discussion or comments, which at the same point makes the post valuable!