Steemit Appoints New VP, Hints At Move Away From ‘Crypto-Centric

Decentralized social media platform Steemit has announced a new marketing direction and the launch of a “crowdsourced growth” initiative.

In a press release, CEO Ned Scott announced that Mitchell Loureiro as vice president of marketing would help in “taking Steemit from a crypto-centric project to a household name.”

“The way Mitchell thinks [...] is genius, and completely reflects the nature of our innovation; decentralization, empowering the people, and incentivized community interaction,” he commented.

Mitchell had previously been involved with the Nxt Foundation, contributing to its Ardor token distribution phase.

“By leveraging the wisdom of the crowd to amplify and multiply the impact of marketing efforts we’ll build out countless sub-communities, each incentivized to grow until we join the ranks of the social media giants,” Scott added.

At the same time as Loureiro’s onboarding, Steemit announced that crowdsourcing will play a significantly larger part in determining the platform’s future.

In a post Thursday, Loureiro wrote in his new capacity:

“We believe that the only way Steem growth can scale is for it to come from the community itself. So we’re going to create community-driven growth processes from the very start. That’s right everyone, we’re crowdsourcing growth for Steem.”

The project has faced its fair share of criticism in the past, notably shortly after its debut when in July last year a hack saw around $85,000 taken from accounts.