Steemit Circlejerk will come to an end...eventually
I see your point about the top page and Steemit. If you look at my blog, you will see that the only posts that got rewarded were ones about something related to Steemit.
But I do think this will come to an end. People will get bored of talking about Steemit, or we will simply run out of things to talk about.
I think gaming could be huge, and by building a reputation in your niche, you are getting ready for massive success when the shift comes.
Furthermore, I overlooked whales talk about stopping upvoting Steemit posts.
Also, we are currently working on some experimental discovery mechanisms for Steemit that would help people find all the great content that is slipping trough the cracks, as well as offload some of the pressure from whales (they will still be required to put a final stamp of approval to get on the frontpage, but the curation up to the level where they can see great content will be crowdsourced).
On Original Content
I like the fact that Steemit strives to be about original content. Its what differentiates it from other social networks. I think its a unique feature and a pretty cool one.
Its fascinating to me, how the obsession with original content came to be from the community. There was never any rule written on what can and can't be posted on Steemit. It just materialized as a belief from the early adopters. It is a part of our "company culture" now.
I agree with most of your post. One thing I'd like to expand on is original content. I just want to be clear that I don't oppose original content, I just don't think it is a necessity to promote discussion. I think any content that gets users to engage in discussion is good content, whether it's original or sharing a link. Obviously stealing content is NOT good, and I'm not a fan of copying and pasting an entire article, but I don't see anything wrong with sharing a link to something that helps users engage in a discussion. I suppose I'm thinking of it more like a message board, I use to run my own and plenty of topics were links to another source, with a small amount of commentary by the author of the thread, and those were sometimes the best discussions.
My overall point is, I think something that is engaging and promoting discussion is better to me than a long winded original content essay. However, I suppose that depends on the community, if Steemit is going to embrace smaller communities as cogs in the bigger wheel, then those communities will end up deciding on their own what is worthy of upvoting and what is not. We are a long way from there, but I can see that as the future of Steemit.
If Steemit wants to embrace the original content aspect of it fully, perhaps its better off being a direct competitor to Disqus rather than social media such as Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. Have sites embed Steemit as their comment sections, and submit their content directly to Steemit.
This discussion is very interesting. My first post here was about a related topic - a "Steemit button" or "Steemit plugin" that could be implemented as a Wordpress plugin, for example. It would contain an upvote button and a comment section.
The problem is if the authors post all the content of their articles to the Steem blockchain, they will probably get problems with duplicate content. Search engines would ignore their posts on their blogs/websites because Steemit is much more popular.
So inevitably if Steem develops in a more website-agnostic solution (a blockchain based Disqus-Flattr hybrid) at least a part of these authors would post only a part of the content to the Steem blockchain - link, title and meta description, for example. That would not be bad however, it would be a bit more like Reddit, and it very probably would lead also to a more diverse authorship with more diverse topics.
I think diversity in content is GOOD! Anything to get Steemit on that track, I am on board with. I'm just getting bored of seeing thousands of posts about Steemit.
First, nice discussion you two are having.
Well, more or less, having non-original content linked to if it's an honest attempt at showcasing something interesting and not unethical, then I can get behind it. We are surely on the same page with not wanting copy/paste articles with low quality or non-existent comments by the reposter who is just trying to get some cash. Stealing content is also what none of us that really care about the "company culture" here wants.
I think you are right. This is going to be hard to predict. The future is funny like that. We users don't have the final say in how things proceed and some decisions may turn out to be fantastic and others disastrous. We can only wait and see and hope this project can be so lucky as to have these problems in the future.
Cheers
Its fascinating to me, how the obsession with original content came to be from the community. There was never any rule written on what can and can't be posted on Steemit. It just materialized as a belief from the early adopters. It is a part of our "company culture" now.
Absolutely agreed. I absolutely can't take the credit for it, but I can say I tried to make my voice heard on that subject to the tune of thousands of lines of text over the last 3 weeks. In hindsight it might have been a waste of time because I could have been posting content and trying to gain a reward for my time like so many others, but I feel this will pay off in the long run with a community I can be proud to be a part of.
It probably will be an ongoing fight to keep the "company culture" thinking along these lines once the influx of new users hits unmanageable sizes, but sowing the seeds now makes sense and I'm very glad I'm not a lone voice!
Stay original, Steemit!
I've always been against the obsession with original content. I think it came about in large part because many of the early adopters of Steem were themselves bloggers who didn't like the competition for visibility, attention and rewards.
In my opinion, links which provoke discussion (where the discussion is the original content) are great, and people who are great at finding and selecting the most relevant and discussion-generating links should be rewarded. Of course I love the bloggers too. We can do both.
Hi @smooth
I've noticed that you have supported a different view and I think that is great. I agree there should be the freedom to do both. Where I find the issue, and you may not agree, is when that content that is being shared is more or less copy and paste, no real value added by the reposter and the content owner of what is linked is unaware that his content is being used to make a profit.
I agree that curation in this sense is surely worthy of reward, but I feel it needs to be done responsibly and not lazily.
A month or two ago it might have been ok to "steal" some content due to a lack of quality content and real rewards. But now we can and should do better. IMO, it was not ideal to have certain "curators" of content get handsomely rewarded while someone else could post the exact same thing and get nothing.
The content was not king. It was the kingmaker(whale nepotism) that made the content king. On top of that it was pilfered and profited from in a less than ideal way. Just because FB and other social media sites rip off the content providers, doesn't mean we must follow their lead or die.
https://steemit.com/music/@thisisbenbrick/can-steemit-and-the-blockchain-kill-spotify
This is what I feel this site can cultivate ideally. The idea that content creators, not the middle man, get a greater share of the rewards. When I see a curator getting the immediate rewards for supposedly giving the creator more exposure I get ill to my stomach. That business model deserves to die and if I have any say in the matter it will die.
Having been a professional content creator for most of my life I really can't stand to see the artist getting the short end of the stick. Sorry to go on and on about this matter.
Cheers
@smooth LOL, I love the "(where the discussion is the original content)" part of your post. I have found myself on many occasions more engaged with the comments section than the original post as well.
Anyone who denies the thrill of being pulled into a good comments thread is also denying themselves half the fun of a healthy social media outlet for open discussion and debate. ;-)