I'm an IT columnist in Korea. Recently I wrote a column for Sisain in which I introduced Steemit for the first time in Korea. Sisain is a weekly magazine ranked No.1 in circulation.
I think next wave of internet services would be the Dapp(Decentralized application) based on blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Steemit is the first service that shows the possibilities of those new combinations. So I think it is worthy enough to introduce Steemit to Korean readers.
Here is the summary of my column.
The megatrend of internet services has changed three times. The first megatrend was Yahoo who made the first search engine based on directory management. Second megatrend was Google who implemented the collective intelligence of the ordinary people in their algorithm. The third wave was (Twitter and) Facebook, the largest SNS in the world.
I think blockchain based Dapp(Decentralized App) would be the 4th wave of internet services. And Steemit is the first service that is combining contents service and cryptocurrency based on blockchain.
Steemit has their own economical structure and they reward their users with cryptocurrency named “Steem”. Somebody criticize that Steemit is like a ponzi scheme, but it is not because users don’t need to pay to use this service or to get reward. (Actually the reward is not Steem, but I simplified the structure because it is difficult to explain the relations between Steem, Steem Power and Steam Dollars in short column.)
There have been many experiments in internet services that tried to give reasonable reward to the contents creators but many projects were failed because it is too difficult to make the reward system work continuously. With the combination of contents service and cryptocurrency, Steemit suggests all new model in the internet ecosystem.
Moreover the completeness of this service is incredible. They even have a bot @cheetah that detect whether the contents are copied from other sources.
Steemit shows that what could happen in internet services when cryptocurrencies are combined with it. It is possible that the experiment of Steemit fails in the end of course, but there are many other experimental projects based on blockchains now and some of those projects would be the 4th wave of internet megatrend.
PS : I hope that Steemit will be the first successive model in those experiments because no other project is more outstanding than Steemit so far.