@kyriacos, this was a good read... thanks!
I have not been here "since the beginning," so I've only been party to watching the evolution of Steemit since the first of February... and it has been interesting to get a sense of the lay of the land.
What I can say-- without hesitance-- is that this is truly UNLIKE any other social platform I have been part of... and that goes back to primitive message boards and email-groups in the 1990s. What's so interesting is that I keep looking for past "disastrous site killer scenarios" to repeat... and yet they seem not to. Or, if/when they do... the effects are very temporary, almost like the Steemit ecosystem has an "intelligent" internal adjustment mechanism. Most recently... the "removal" of a large scale known scammer. In stark contrast to the outpouring of support for a fellow Steemian facing a mountain of medical bills.
So far, the challenge Steemit has not faced-- and I expect it may be our greatest-- is true mass adoption. Not the few-thousand-accounts-a-day type of inflow we see currently, but the kind of inflow that takes us from here to 30 million users in a couple of years or three... happened at the last really good social blogging platform (Xanga) in 2004-06 when they went from a sleepy little blog host to 33 million monthlies... (and that was on a MUCH smaller Internet!) can the infrastructure handle that kind of scaling? I suppose only time will tell.
As for "intentions," I feel pretty safe in saying that the more "mainstream" we become, the more "bottom feeding money seekers" will come to the platform, and the more we will deal with those who care not one whit about the goose... they just want the eggs NOW, and preferably with no effort. And that can be tough to manage, when such "egg hunters" suddenly outnumber the rest of us by 10-to-1.
This was perhaps one of the best plays I have seen in here. But we do that often :)
Yes. Actually Steemit along with Bitshares runs on a chain that can handle more transactions than all the other cryptocurrencies combined :) . Dan IS the man (creator of Steemit)
We had them before. they didn't last long. The community is amazing in stopping these kind of things.
No worries. We will get more @cheetah 's :)
The last post I read from @cheetah mentioned that it costs him more than he earns, and that he has, more than once, considered quitting.
It may be necessary to provide additional support, as expecting such investments in excess of income for the service @cheetah provides may prove a long term detriment to that service.
It will be a necessity. perhaps is he makes report posts once in a while he can make a profit.
I've been amazed by the efficiency and adaptability of the community before... I'm totally prepared to be amazed again!
:)