I imagine it is hard for us to truly fathom the profound change it would make to those in the poorest nations. I'm glad to be part of it. Sadly I haven't had a great success of bringing more people over. I'm at a dozen or so, but have been declined by so many.
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It's amazing, isn't it? It seems like it would be so easy to get people to sign up, doesn't it? After ten months and around 13,000 or 14,000 Steem earned, my wife still isn't interested. Yet, everyday, without fail, she's on Facebook and Instagram. I just don't get it.
My experience here as been so much more satisfying than any other platform, and mostly because Steemit inspires me to create. That's what I love about it. These past ten months have been the most productive writing period of my life. My interest in photography has also been reawakened. Those are rewards enough and, yet, on top of that, I've been able to make money, investments, and interact with great people.
It's remarkable how people respond. I did manage to talk my wife into resuming blogging here... and even though she's not all that active, at least she's giving it a try. But she spends more time on Farcebook and twitter.
I spent many years in sales and one of the things that typically holds true is that people value something about as much as they pay for it... conversely, people are also more likely to contribute with about the intent and quality they get rewarded. The fairly consistently high quality of content (compared to the papp of FB or other social media) is perhaps testament to the fact that people DO care more when they are compensated for their efforts.
This is how I see it as well. It has a huge opportunity as a platform to bring a lot of third world people a lot closer to the western "standard" to be honest. So the value may not be seen by a lot of average western people. It will snowball though because it actually pays.
It's definitely "bigger" for people who live in economies where they have nearly nothing. Imagine what a $50 post means to someone where the monthly income is $100! As a western person, I see this as a chance to give people various levels of a helping hand.
I hear you-- that's a strange and interesting dynamic... and it puzzles me. The *heart" of the mystery is that some people believe this is a "scam," evidently because we get rewarded. I'm really not sure how to interpret that. Have we really (as a collective) been trained so well that we believe the only "right" way is to give away our valuable content for FREE? To companies that profit from our efforts?
Apparently they are all drinking the Zuckerberg Kool Aid because they all seem perfectly happy to trade away their time and content for the "pleasure" of using the platform. These are the very people that I always hear complaining about how broke they are and how they could really use some extra money. It is beyond frustrating to me.
I guess their dopamine receptors are already too dependent on getting little jet of juice from Farcebook likes and smileys to consider giving them up for some more tangible rewards. And yes, it's frustrating to watch people doing the "I'm so broke" song and dance 24/7/365 and yet be completely unwilling to take even a minimal chance to break out of that cycle.