Bitcoin Forum

I hate clones, so I never thought I'd say this: Please make a Steem clone

Despite it's obvious flaws, Steem has shown us how we can get Joe and Jane into crypto. Steem will fail of course for reasons discussed in other threads, but a clone that fixes the issues could become a huge success. I would certainly throw a few btc at it if it had a dev with good reputation.

I would prefer one based more on pictures and videos, like Instagram, instead of long winded justifications and rants.

That's a very good idea. Making one and branding it as a new Instagram would make it huge!

I don't think that just cloning a coin is good idea. Simple clone would never be as popular as original design.
What you want to is introduce EEE doctrine. Which means - embrace, extend, and exterminate.
This is known strategy Microsoft uses as main way to conquer the market; they first copy existing idea, hone it to the perfection and then you can kill original idea and control and monopolize this idea.

I am already coding it. Well let's say coding in my head but about to actually start writing down code.

And it won't be a clone. It (probably) won't use any of their code (but I reserve the right to change my mind and base it off of Graphene).

It will be very different, except in the ways in which Steem is working, it will be the same.

I need ideas for a name?

You can read my recent posts if you want to have some ideas about what I am changing.

Others are also working on clones, and I have spoken to one of them, but we have not yet decided to work together.

It will be a fairer launch also.

I have no idea yet how soon this might be ready. And I can't promise you I'll make it all the way to launch. Perspectives can change along the way.

 Steem just opened up a successful front that entices people to open up their first CC account, and you're like, "Hey, that's working! Let's try to minimize its effectiveness with another project, but this time we'll make it extra decentralized so varying factions can quibble on the most effective means to spend their marketing budget (or not spend any of it with chants of "HODL!")".

It took me awhile to see why steem's distribution makes sense (or more sense), but when I did  :o

could you explain to us? because i dont see it... right now a few whales control the platform and generally they only upvote sh*t post(i'm not saying one o mine should be upvoted, i'm saying i've saw good writers there getting 50+ upvotes but only a few bucks for that, and other posts, with less than 10 upvotes being paid 1000USD+)

one vote from ned and you get 1500+ SBD. that doesnt make sense to me.

It's not about good writing (most people rarely even understand great writing, so intimidating noobs away is hardly a good idea--see Nietzsche). What you want is fun posts that invite people in and get them thinking, "I can do that?" You also want post that further implant the meme of cryptocurrencies into the social consciousness (see gateway drugs), and you want established players in content creation to prove that the platform works. And finally, you want to represent different clicks of ethnic, social, and cultural backgrounds.  

*a few BOOBS don't hurt either.

As far as the whale factor--you're going to see lag. What's important is that the big markets get addressed, not that quality content is rewarded, that will be addressed by sub-communities who will be better arbiters of what is good for the community and what is quality--see poetry section (a poem that used a double "that" final end-rhyme got the highest payout of $2,700, a reputable poetry forum wouldn't let that happen--but that takes time.). If you look at the financial and cryptocurrency sections, you'll see that the quality, for the most part, is superior than the other sections, mostly because we have a community already established in cc and hundreds of articles waiting to be discovered by people outside our community.

Sorry but I am too lazy to research what the flaws of Steem that has been discussed in the forum. Will you please list them here? It does not have to be long. I just want to know the gist of it. Thank you.

If you guys think that any steem user(whale or not) is going to read and get through thousands of posts and vote everything that is good, I think you got it wrong. Noone is going to spend this amount of time for that, some posts/threads are lucky, some others are not. This fair/unfair "debate" all the time makes me to puke.

If someone writes only occasionaly then he has to be somewhat lucky in order to  earn some rewards, on the other hand if someone writes good content all the time, no matter how lucky/unlucky he is short term, he will earn some reputation and people will follow him. "Follow" fuctionallity might not work right now but will in the future and that's what will save the day, followers! Btw if you think that people who earn today a lot rewards will continue to do so in the future I think that you got this wrong too. So please stop whining about "fairness" because "fairness" is what will be used by numerous s#!t clones in the near future to empty your pockets. If you think that there aren't "forces" that already devising plans on how to seperate fools and their money you are wrong!   

generalizethis, watch and learn.

There are fundamental flaws in Steem.

Haha. That might work if only targeting young male nerds.

enumerate:

*my point [in other thread?] was you might have greater flaws in the decentralized version (it would have to be much more sophisticated than openbazzar to keep everything in check).

I believe there are economic flaws in Steemit that will cause it to collapse. I want to have something ready when it does.

It isn't just about decentralization, nor any one thing. I see several huge flaws in Steem that I think (my opinion) will prevent it from accomplishing what you think it is going to accomplish.

We will see who is correct. I am not omniscient and neither are you. Nature provides competition so that the outcome is resilient. Nature rarely puts all its eggs in one egg. One shot miracles are rare beasts.

There are many issues you are not aware of. And I am not going to explain all my thoughts now, any more than I already did in the numerous posts over the past few days. That is enough talk for now.

I'd like to read what others think about naming and concepts such as what users need and want.

That's fair enough (reading strategy as a black-swan reverse stock split).

Matter of time, they are cloning everything these days... and forking

I agree, videos & images are quicker to produce than blogs, and much more likely to be produced & shared by a regular person. Not everyone can write well but everyone can take a photo or video and upload it. Everyone wants their 15 minutes ...

As for a name, "FAMOUS", or some cool alternative spelling

edit: "Paparazzi" or an alternative spelling

Feedback on the following name idea?

peerbrary
peerbase

I am visualizing all media content and even games/apps going here, not just blogs. It is our collective blockchain database which nobody owns.

I am not sure if the above names will ring with any meaning for the masses, but neither did 'blog' when it was first coined. It is important to select a name that over time it becomes very distinct from copycats. And over time users come to associate the name with something of importance.

Although there are some aspects of the above names I don't think are ideal (e.g. they don't really illicit an emotional reaction, unless one is really excited about the concept they intend), I do like that they seem (for me at least) to be congruent with the thought of investing long-term in building a trove of content and media that is owned collectively by no one.


Users are coming for a combination of inspirations:

1. Nobody owns the content. The users own the site.
2. Instead of the money going to Facebook, they can gift this money (love) to each other by interacting and upvoting good content.
3. They can contribute content and maybe it even becomes a vocation.

I think both names are terible, you need something simple like "peerIt".

Ok, noone owns the content and users own the site, but who develops and for how long? with what funds? Do you expect "volunteers" to do the hard work? I see no long term potential/survivability without some serious money paying for development.
 

Thanks for the feedback.

Peerit and what is 'it' that is being peered? And in what way peered? Doesn't seem to have any meaning. Soon there will be so many *it copycats that it won't even stand out any more. blogit, vibeit, postit, tackit, lickit, pokeit, humpit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtdWHFwmd2o), etc..  (<--- click my link for a laugh)

The word 'it' is not brandable.


There are multiple ways to fund ongoing development of the open source blockchain. And I am not thinking primarily of volunteerism.

How many people really care about what steemit means? I just think that the best attribute/quality of a name is to be easy to pronounce, it doesn't necessary have to mean anything, although it could be an added bonus if it did. Just my random thoughts...

Afaics, the primary reason for people to join Steemit, has nothing to do with shallow delusions of being famous on a social network.

And I don't see the need to relegate it to one genre of content. I do think users should be able to filter by content type and other sub-community attributes (e.g. tags, follows, etc). Perhaps you mean to prioritize a different genre of content as the first priority feature set?

My limited research seems to indicate the 3 inspirations I enumerated (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1567519.msg15743114#msg15743114) are what inspired female Steemians to join:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg15730959#msg15730959


I agree first priority is catchy name and easy to pronounce. Otherwise recall and viral spread may suffer.

I seem to want to pronounce peerbrary as "peer berry". I have no problem pronouncing peerbase. They aren't super catchy, but at least in my mind (as of now and that might change) peerbrary is meaningful, unique, and probably recallable if they get the connection to peer + library.

Instead of librarians, we can say peerbrarians.

Edit: I thought of catchier names but they don't have appropriate meaning, such as peerjam and jambox. Jambox was for app focused content especially games, but I've decided it would be better to compete with Steem.


Btw, I own the domains for snapcash, but I've decided to go compete with Steem instead of launch under that name. (this is just a rebuttal to generalizethis who said I can't think of a catchy name)

Explanation of why women join steem (though they might not tell you--who'd of thunk? Women hiding their motives? "Wat? That never happens!")

Either a sexy post can glean them money from a complete stranger, OR a nice wholesome post can glean them money from the guy at the starbucks that's always chatting them up and thinks he's in love with her.

I agree that will be one of the motivations (even if they don't realize it). But they also rationalize it to themselves per what they told me (not an allegation against the 3 who were kind enough to feedback toh me), so a name which supports their rationalization, might help?

I don't think we want to name it "Iamforsale.com".

Even "steem" is supporting the rationalization that we are giving "esteem" (love).

Women are for sale always in every day life (and I am not trying to be a sexist jerk by agreeing with you) if the offered amount is high enough (then again so are men), but we name businesses on their primary function, not on the game theories that happen there (e.g. in Starbucks).

Note your point is very valid as a potential criticism of my plan to remove the quadratic reward (and make it linear). But with the linear reward, then more women can get a few bucks, than a few women gettings $1000s.

Also another key point is that I am wanting to build something that is also attractive to serious content creators. So that is another reason to have a different naming. I will have a monetization feature for them which Steem does not have (and where the big rewards can still come from).

Hamlet figured it out:

"I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God has given you one face and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance."

Though I'm not sure why Hamlet's so mad for women gaming men, when he's gaming Shakespeare throughout the play (not going to go further into Bloom's theory, which I mostly agree with), but as far as a name.....

Steemit might be a cross of steam and reddit, so maybe cross facebook and imgur for imbook or facegur?

*those names aren't actual suggestions, but what I would suggest is locking the intropage, so it can permanently earn rewards and serve as a base from which you can network traffic out and in.

Men are gaming women also. And men are also for sale at the right price. I don't really get the relevance.

Steam is a gaming platform. Reddit is a discussion site. Steemit seems to be neither of those.

Four more ideas (variants) along that same theme:

peertrove
wetrove
peerstash
webrary

Steam delivers content, reddit forums--so the link is there.

As for men who hustle--they're a rare breed and women love/hate them for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9Yv6J6Vzyw

This is sparknote version, the film Alphie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375173/ would be the longer course, though it doesn't nail the darker aspects as well as Salvat's video. But back on topic....

Name? Anything involving sex is too obvious, unless you are creating a decentralized porn, cam, escort site that is resistant to corporate/government interest--as I'm sure they won't want their sacred cow delving into unholy places.

Why is no one building this?

Sexit would be direct and easy to remember name.

Can anyone give me some serious help/feedback on the naming?

For anyone who wants to build an alternative to steem the first basic fundamental is to give 1 human = 1 vote. If you want wisdom of the crowd to decide which post is best everyone should have equal power.

Also people should not be influenced by number of upvotes or voters's usernames this info should be hidden

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d1/2d/81/d12d81b8945164792e1cfae0dc97e0cb.jpg

"I'll take Trebek for 1000."

Yeah, we got some real intellectuals in here.

I like the meaning of 'peer', but maybe use something different like 'tribe' or 'collective' or 'commune'. Dojo is another good word that evokes a good image in my mind of lots of people joining together to work towards private, but related goals, around self improvement and sharing. Another good word to base things around is 'expression'.

Edit: I also think made up words, or totally unrelated words can work well too, like 'onfinity' or 'zenith' or 'areeba'

Edit2: could always be cheeky and go with 'tangle', although the IOTArians might be pissed off

Edit3: a sharing network is like a bee 'hive', or 'colony'

Edit 4: a smorgasbord,  'buffet'

rhizome

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=rhizome&allowed_in_frame=0 (using Delueze's sense of the word would probably give you the truest sense of the word and its modern implications).

I had been playing with the word 'hive', as it is short and energetic.

Other words:

silo
chi
laud (claud)
mojo
realm


New word for me. Thanks.

Sounds like something related to the genome.

Someone will soon create another clone for it. its inevitable. there is a competitor as far as i know but sooner a clone will rise.
Most clones actually are performing well than the original ones, probably because they now see flaws.

The Rhizome Project

I think that name is sufficient although maybe not the most pizazz.

Storing everything in a library for the web.

I think it implies you want to get in early and grow with it, such as those who got into Bitcoin early.

It seems to also to be more conservative thus separation of impression from the name Steemit and quadratic voting rewards ($40,000 for a single blog while most get only pennies) which seems to be more about hype than a steady, methodical growth plan.


If anyone can suggest a better name or if I think of better one later, then great.

I would suggest you think more academia and politics, and less commercial. I'd buy into a project that's trying to create a private and decentralized content sharing platform--I wouldn't buy into steemit 2.0.  It exists and they already have me and a few others rooting them on because of the rewards they dole out (except for maybe you :P ) , their brand has loyalty rewards built into it.

You can be a fanboy all you want. I think it is inviolable that it will implode economically in spite of your well wishes. I'll explain why when I release the white paper showing how I reworked the economics.

Of course we all like it when we are the experts earning $100 - $1000s every week, but the majority are not earning that (most are leaving with an 80% attrition rate).

I am supporting Steemit because it is publicity for blockchain tech and crypto currencies. That doesn't mean I think it can sustain itself economically.

As I said, I will target more on serious producers (and their fans too), but also I will target on mass markets that Steem is not reaching directly. I have specific monetization to go beyond the one degree of relation to a blocknerd which is Steem's current demographics. This monetization will pay bloggers more because they will get more than just the vote rewards.

When I say compete, I mean to win, not to just be a clone. I intend to be far better in critically important ways that determine the winner.

Edit: older demographics share more and not just for entertainment:

https://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/content-sections/cases-and-causes/sharing-habits-motivations-rundown-gender-gap-generational-divide-facebook/

I hate to say it as I liked the premise behind the project, but steem looks pretty done.
Time for Synereo to step up to the plate and take this forward

This is getting old and redundant, $8000 each for this mediocre blogging (not claiming my blogs were better):

https://steemit.com/life/@inboundinken/why-i-used-to-be-embarrassed-about-my-age-and-why-you-can-be-a-leader-no-matter-how-old-you-are

https://steemit.com/life/@inboundinken/why-i-used-to-be-embarrassed-about-my-age-and-why-you-can-be-a-leader-no-matter-how-old-you-are

And you think Steem is succeeding  ???

The resources are being wasted. That will blowback as investor's losses eventually.

P.S. Heidi's blog is okay, but she would have some competition if people trusted the whales to not award only to certain individuals. IMO, she should be making at most maybe $1000 per blog post given the current size of the readership and potential growth she is adding to the site. Her long-term upside on each of her blog posts could be acceptibly $8000 but IMO she shouldn't be getting that only as the site grows accordingly, not upfront. It was okay the first time she got $10k for a blog post, but for her to receive that every time she blog posts is making the site look like monotone. If the site appears to not be based on a meritocracy, then serious producers will not likely invest their production in it, because it looks like a failure in the making.

In the context of if her content was just one of many of the same quality, then at say < $1000 each, I would say the site is doing fantastic. But instead we have Heidi at $8000 and nothing else.

Edit: Steemit is giving Heidi a sense of false security:


This won't end well. She will probably end up losing it all.

Heidi admits that she is a risk taker. She is willing to travel nearly homeless and penniless. She reminds me of myself! I did exactly that too! But most people are not like Heidi. They invest cautiously.

(Btw, I am glad Heidi is grabbing the opportunity. My points above are not jealousy against her. I do think though she will only be left with the experiences and not any lasting/residual wealth from this. Well perhaps this notoriety will lead to her next opportunity.)

Such a minor item. I rather hear about how you plan to fix the Steem shortcomings, number of developers and projected rough timelines.

Agreed, but I like to have a name for what I am working on. I don't like waiting to figure out a viable name at the end. As for perfecting the name, sure that can wait. Webrary is sufficient for me to launch if nothing better is thought of.

https://www.yours.network/

They take a different approach, which is that as a curator you invest in content by tipping it, then you a portion of get downstream curators' tips. Therefor, they don't need their own token to debase (instead they use Bitcoin), as they are assuming people will want to pay their own individual money in order to invest in making money from curating.

The problem I see with this model is that it requires too much cognitive load on the user who just wants to use the site. The higher the cognitive load, the lower the adoption rate. So sorry, I am thinking this idea will fail.

Okay we've got the 6 letter domain names to blow this shit away. One for the blockchain and another for UI. The UI name is better than Facebook, Reddit and all that.

I've teased with some of the elided details of how to fix Steem's shortcomings:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg15756755#msg15756755

vote for BOOBS

but more serious
Graphene chains have demonstrated that they can handle the speed and load

I think simply that the Steemit "whales" for the moment are rewarding posts they consider important for the success of Steemit. If they have really the intention of competing with Reddit, Quora & others they must highlight "diverse" topics on their "baby". These topics can seem like complete bullshit to nerds and other technically savy people, but they are important to attract the masses. I don't know if they are choosing really the right topics for this (I personally would appreciate, for example, a lot more of Q&A content) but the intention is clear to me - attract women, "not-so-nerds", etc..

So I think to really know if Steem will be a success or no, we should wait some months. But I would also support a clone.

The real drawback of Steem until now seems to be the pretty centralized model (one central website) that does not differ too much from other communities with custom "currencies" like Taringa (Argentina), Lima-City (Germany) or Second Life.

I would invest in Steem/Steem Power if:
- developers really open source the code (remove the "no forking" restriction);
- they provide a public API for applications like a "Steem button", who could be a major factor for the long-term success of the platform as a content monetization system (as I've highlighted here (https://steemit.com/steemit/@coinphilosopher/steem-is-a-cool-idea-here-s-how-it-could-become-really-big)).

A couple of 1000 users online simultaneously isn't a scaling test yet.

Also afaik DDoS attacks have been directed at Steemit.com. Let's see what happens when they target the Steem blockchain network.

That's true , actually it's isnt about socializing , but making money

Here is the proposed definition (and instruction to voters) of the meaning of an upvote and downvote for the project Webrary (intended to be an improvement over Steem) I am now developing. I want to vet this with y'all, since I am designing the internal algorithms around these. Note Webrary won't be the final name, but I can't mention the final one since don't own the .com domain yet. Like Steem/Steemit there will be separate names for the blockchain/UI respectively. The former name is similar to Webrary, and the latter one is more catchy and has more mass appeal than Steemit.


Voting is the way you control the rankings of the future content you will see. An upvote or downvote is not a weapon to express agreement nor disagreement, nor to judge the value of the content to the overall project. Rather it should reflect whether you personally want to continue to be exposed to content (and the community it engenders) similar to the content you are voting on. An upvote or downvote will not cause the ranking of the content to change for voters who disagree with your content preferences. If you vote for political objectives intending to suppress or enhance visibility of the content for others and not for your preferences, then the type of content visible to you will become a groupthink monotone that fools you into believing everyone agrees with you, while others who disagree with you will continue to see the diversity of content that interests them. Indecision on your part should be reflected in a non-vote. Unlike Steem, voting remains open indefinitely and there is no curation penalty for voting later, so you may vote later once you've made up your mind.

I like your thinking on upvotes (less trying to game the system and more inviting future content for ease of use).

the problem with clones was that most of the times clones was ready to scam , now days some original coins scaming instantly and you have nothing to wait from a clone , well expect some hype!

http://www.resistors-and-diodes-and-picchips-oh-my.co.uk/?p=1210

I think the decentralization=scam argument failed when it hit mass market, so they only needed to package it to the tastes of the market, not the taste of standard purveyors--good enough trumps--inflated price--yet quality concerns remain. The product needs to be resilient, the interface simple, and costs minimal. Whoever does that, wins.  

*Was looking for the French pronunciation of ingénue and found :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenu

38+20=130 That's efficiency.

My guess is this network thrives with resistance to tampering and leveraging a world distribution of content at ever lowering costs, until a base forms and liquidity trickles in.

That's it--if you're looking for word count and fancy euphemisms, then you missed the point of capitalism--efficiency equals time

....and everyone wants more.

/end

I am thinking that Steem/Steemit made a mistake to do their client-server data transfer via WebSockets instead of REST.

They appear to have designed for a real-time update scenario, but this will come at the cost scalability (because WebSockets can't be cached upstream), and afaics the real-time updates are entirely unnecessary for the feature set of this type of site. This isn't chat and blog commenting shouldn't be used a real-time interactive chat.

I don't think Steem could scale technically to a million users as it currently is designed. Certainly not 100 million users.

That doesn't mean they couldn't do some redesign along the way, but the existing paradigm is gaining inertia that will be difficult to turn quickly, e.g. the new Steemit phone app. And the design choice they made is baked into many design decisions, such as that comments and blog posts are editable many hours after posting.

My thoughts about the major vulnerabilities of Steem:

Yes I agree. If they want a Reddit type of system then the simpler the better. The Steemit development team could be thinking that engaging the users more is the better path. But I agree with you, doing it forum style will be better. Even BCT is not running out of users. ;) It depends on how the person runs the site.

I got more into the design and realized I don't need to forsake edits, rather just forsaking pushed updates (the server pushing to the client).

Pushed interaction might be necessary for other future features, but afaics it isn't necessary for the blog content feature.

Steemians are realizing I was correct:

The joy of re-entering the career of coding and rediscovering the kafkaesque wonders of (standards) committees¹:

https://github.com/whatwg/console/issues/63
https://github.com/nodejs/node-eps/issues/13#issuecomment-222989505

¹	Quote from: https://steemit.com/dao/@charleshosk/hoskus-parvum-opus-a-brief-sojourn-back-to-ethereum (also enjoy his [Ralph Merkle] recent Epicenter Bitcoin Interview (https://youtu.be/dvzpvXLbpv4?t=580))

There's a great short story in James Joyce's Dubliners in which a man outlines his life in comparison to an old acquaintance he's recently met again. The man looks at his life: his family and work and enviously compares it to his acquaintance's writing success. The irony is that if the man had laid out his life honestly (as Joyce did in the story) he would have had a literary success--at least with that story (@highlite, I hope saw that effect of with result of his post).

I'm sure the voting system can be tweaked for better outcomes for the site and user, I don't think it will be a one-size-fits-all solution--unless it allows for a more user defined experience.

I don't think most people really care about Steem much.

That might be a myopic mistake, especially if you mean the concept itself, not Steem's flaws such as the 90% "pre"-mine and the entire lack of a medium-term investment option.

If the concept is designed and implemented correctly, I am speculating it would potentially be headed to double-digits $billion market cap at least.

Has the potential to popularize crypto-currency.

Thanks for sharing your opinion; and I am interested to read if you still think that most people should ignore the Steem concept and why?

saying that is like "people dont care about reddit" or "people dont care about bitcointalk". IMO Social medias are always relevant, they hold "great powers" in our world, and by power i mean money and information.

Something important Steem might attempt to do, or perhaps a clone could do:

https://steemit.com/blockchain/@anonymint/improving-web-browser-security-with-a-steem-like-blockchain

Steem.it to me seems to be one big clusterfuck. Bottom line, its confusing as all hell. Power up, power down, different steam tokens, inflation, funds locked in, really really stupid posts make money. Why the fuck would anyone buy that shit? Hey look i'm experiencing the world, pay me.. What is steem doing for the world that fixes a need?

A browse through the site makes me feel like I wasted time that I'll never get back. And the worst thing, people keep advertising the tits. Where are they at? The boobs that people upvoted. Why is there no boob section?
Lame.

Facebook became successful because of the original scamsters, goldmansachs and their bs ipo. That is what pushed facebook into the front.

Around the same time non technical idiots, the soccer moms of the world (who send those god awful chain letters) and even some grandmas figured put you could post pics, like your childrens pics, monitor your family. Etc.

Facebook became uncool instantly but the use case skyrocketed cause every lame untechnical idiot could start voicing their opinion.

But try to explain steem.it to these folks.

So you get paid to post shit. Ok. Everyone likes money.
But wait, mostly only tits get paid, never mind that, you get paid for doing jack shit.

But I want to cash out my new money, what the fuck is steem power and why is half my pay in that? Now everyone keeps telling me to power up some of my funds and powerdown others. What the fuck? i can only learn so much at once and pokemon go is really all I want to do.

Tldr, steem is fucking to confusing of a skeme to use

Why you're bitching, I'm gonna give stuff away.

https://steemit.com/giveaway/@generalizethis/free-monero

There already is some project close to Steem being developped, named Newbium https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1418497.0

Newbium is different to Steem that it focus on crypto, proposing tools to follow currencies in real time.

It goes the same way as Steem, with rewarding user posting content, there is currently a posting bounty occuring.

I have some coins in this project, and believe it can go far, considering the project is promising, and that Newbium team's working good and is reactive.

If some people wanna go in, i let you know that NEWB_ETH tokens will be launched on an exchange relatively soon (they've been distributed recently), and that you can already buy NEWB_NXT tokens on c-cex.

https://coins.newbium.com/ & http://newbium.com/

 :)

They are apparently implementing tipping model where presumably the funds are taken from the tipper's wallet:


Tipping (from the users' wallets) doesn't work due to the cognitive load it places on the users' frequent activity as explained in the following resources:

http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/12/17/changetip-must-die/



Steem's unique feature is that it charges the cost of tipping (rewards) to everyone via debasement of the money supply, so that users don't really have to think about how much or whether they should tip. This is what makes it work, where all others have failed. If you don't understand this, then you won't understand why the concept of Steem is very important.

Make sure you watch this:

https://youtu.be/rkQ7b-u8_6g?t=489  (Sourced from here (https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@dollarvigilante/the-dollar-vigilante-is-now-on-steemit#@liondani/re-dollarvigilante-re-dollarvigilante-re-cryptoctopus-re-dollarvigilante-the-dollar-vigilante-is-now-on-steemit-20160804t224833155z))

I also see that Newbium runs on the Ethereum and Nxt blockchains, so it won't be able to scale the content that Steem is.

I elaborated on why (https://steemit.com/steem/@pharesim/bounty-for-completion-of-native-javascript-steem-signer#@anonymint/re-williambanks-re-williambanks-re-pharesim-bounty-for-completion-of-native-javascript-steem-signer-20160804t115927518z) the above may be very important.

I agree the design creates unnecessary confusion, because I think I've figured out how to achieve the same goals and restructured it so it is more straight forward and have clearer incentives for all involved parties (e.g. minnows, professional bloggers, medium and long-term investors, etc).

This and the voting relevance algorithm are the two of the areas where I think could provide significant innovation to Steem.

Btw, please note that I think I am transitioning to a plan wherein I will try to innovate and then I will also keep open the possibility that if Steem is winning in the market, then I can retain the option to be lured by them to try to assist in bringing my innovations to Steem. Note some of my innovations would perhaps be resisted by Steem's vested interests, thus it is necessary for me to demonstrate my innovations in the market in order to force a competitive outcome. So I really need to go compete in order to innovate Steem either from the outside or within Steem, which ever way it ends of working out in the market.

I am trying to work myself to earning a position of importance in this genre of blockchain development.


They are building a community that appeals to their community albeit I think the relevance targeting to users could be innovated in order to better diversify to the masses.

If you deny they are onboarding significant members of the crypto community and its first degree of relations, then you are not being objective in spite of partial validity of your concern.


For example, I am finding relevant discussion of Steemit's design and marketing factors.

I agree the firehouse is spraying a lot of water where it probably isn't more optimally targeted, but it isn't a total failure.

I have been working on a similar project that I was planning to announce later this month, but since I keep seeing this thread popup I decided to make the announcement a little earlier. The project is called Postbase ( www.postbase.co (http://www.postbase.co)) Postbase is a decentralized social bookmarking and funding platform that groups content in a similar fashion to Reddit. I'm putting together a more detailed announcement to post under Announcements.

http://www.postbase.co/images/screenui.png

Economic and algorithmic details are missing. Are you going to release a detailed white paper before ICO? Are you going to ICO vaporware?

Shouldn't you at least have a rudimentary system running and very detailed white paper before doing an ICO?

I have to decide whether to join you or compete with you, so I need to see the details.

What is your LinkedIn account Carmey Harvey?

You apparently thought of postbase, before I registered peerbase (for me the idea comes from the amigobase.com domain I held years ago). I have veered away from that *base concept for a name, because I don't think it appeals emotionally to the masses and it isn't that brandable because there can exist so many *base copycats. Also many people think of "post office" or a pole in the ground when they see the word post, not the technical meaning to post something online. Also I don't think the concept of Steem is going to remain confined to posting content, but will widen into more a diverse set. Edit: but is not a horrible name. It is perhaps adequate.

Why I think the Steem Dollars are pointless:

My LinkedIn account is https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmenh (https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmenh). Looks like I registered my domain about a month before you registered yours, I also registered the bitcointalk username "postbase" in June.

I'll await more details on Postbase before deciding whether to pursue private communication. Good luck with your progress. I wondering if you're part-time while also still holding down your day job.

That made it to the (bottom of the) front page. Nice work. Hard to compete with boobs though.

if the bottom is $2500; not bad for a days work ;)

Well that post came about because of research I was doing for the coding I was doing. I wasn't planning to blog, it just fell out into my lap. (Edit: and I needed to write that down any way, so better to put the content on a blockchain)

I really needed some money cushion, because I have a negative net worth, no income, and the cash I have isn't even mine and that had fallen to $9000 with roughly ($350+$80+$100+$256+$300+$100+$150+$100+50=) $1586 monthly burn rate not including any gadgets or techie expenses (such as domain registrations, etc). Oh that doesn't exclude the $250 I pay every 6 months to renew tourist visa and soon I will have to fly out of the country to renew so another large expense, etc, etc.

On the positive side I can work full time on this work I am talking about herein (actually double-time as I am exceeding 16 hours daily when my health cooperates).

Btw, thanks smooth and the others who upvoted that. I feel sort of guilty about it since I want to try to compete or improve Steem via competing. But somehow it will workout for the best I presume. After watching today the video of Dan and Ned (linked upthread), they seem like nice guys to me in the video. I got a different impression of Dan in the past from written or audio communication when I can't see his face. (Edit: I think also he was very stressed out with the former Bitshares governance debacle)

Bottom line is it should all work out for the best. Just need to remain productive and try to do work that benefits the ecosystem.

Btw, on further thought I didn't like the 6 letter domain name I had selected, because although everyone liked it, it had the wrong connotation. It was causing people to think of stalking their favorite artists. So I lost another several hours trying to think of a more appropriate name that is also really catchy. I was lucky to think of one which I think is better than Steemit. And it is 6 letters. So that was a nice accomplishment also for today, but I am bit disappointed that I didn't complete my module.js code today. I put two small JS code fragments up on my Github yesterday. Hopefully my coding will accelerate from now.

Btw, if you are planning to make a clone, do not ask for names (publicly) or say names out loud for obvious reasons.

I'd mention the name I have already, but the .com is $3000+ and I don't want to spend that out of my limited cash reserve unless I am very close to launch. I've got the .org, .net, .co, and .us already. After sleeping on the name choice I have finalized on, I am liking it more and more. It is really great because it captures the esteem concept while also being more general and appropriate to upvoting and sharing on all media types, including music, etc..

I moved away from my "jambox" or use of the term "jammin". I do have one alternative name not "fanjam" (which is also quite good! but suffers from the copycat problem) with the term "jam" in it. But I am nearly certain everyone will like my main choice.

Btw, I am contemplating entirely eliminating downvoting.

I guess I will go ahead and share the name I was originally thinking of using but even though it was catchy, I realized quickly that is was entirely the wrong meaning (except perhaps for the music content I am planning to go after later):

fanjam (note the .com is in use but I think not seriously)

Please do not criticize me for that name, as I did not continue with it. I registered the .us for $1 only while I gave myself more time to catch up on other duties (and also because I was having some brain fog due to my illness and put it on back burner until that abated) then returned to it and realized it was not the right meaning even though my gf and others liked it as very catchy and inducing.

Note the Jambox name was originally intended to focus on music sharing and after that apps in general (starting with games). So the "box" was your mobile device. It was all supposed to be in there. But Steem's example is that user created content is lower hanging fruit, so needed to move entirely away from "box" or confined to mobile devices. I still want to go after the music and apps later.

My long range goal is to entirely replace the Android and iOS APIs and app developers will program to a new API which abstracts those. We have these sort of platforms already, but not within an ecosystem which is larger than Android and iOS. I am annoyed at the bastardization of my mobile device by Google and Samsung. Fucking thing updates and installs shit without my permission and basically I am no longer in control of my device! (Yeah I know I heard I need to buy a Nexus or other brand, but I can't find here in Philippines and/or too expensive for me at this time, and besides I like to use mainstream stuff so I can see the problems that need to be solved for the masses)

I am thinking really big. I want to create a new programming language that compiles to JavaScript. Etc.

But we usually crawl before we walk before we sprint.

I am intending to replace the web browser also (unify it with mobile and the concept of an OS). Big dreams but I don't need to get all the way there in order to declare success. I will bite it off in morsels of lowest hanging fruit first. And have to observe my health also (which has been getting sometimes very good and very encouraging).

I (the goals) need capital to fund and motivate those big plans. Not just monetary capital but also the network effects capital of ideas and ecosystems. And I hope to get the capital I need from doing this first stage which is to compete with Steem. Or will see if that ends up causing myself and/or my goals to become folded into the Steem ecosystem instead.

That is a key realization about the concept which is also paramount in the way I was already thinking of restructuring Steem's design.

And it also pertains to my logic on why I think that Steem dollars are unnecessary (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1567519.msg15824214#msg15824214). Note I am not intending to design a system to bailout people quickly from their messed up lives (as this guy will eventually find out that Steem's large easy payouts are not sustainable and so I hope he has stabilized his life asap). That is not to say I don't appreciate being bailed out of my cash flow problem by Steem, rather that it is not in the best interests of a correctly designed system IMO. This bleeding heart change-a-life works for Steem as a first noble driver of interest (and I have nothing against charity when individuals are tipping from their own wallets, not a collectivized one[1]), but it is not a good model for sustainably onboarding the masses. That is not to say there wouldn't also be instances in the design I am contemplating, but they wouldn't be as easy to attain (lotto-ish). In my design, the serious money goes to the serious content producers. The moderate rewards go to the average users who must keep it invested to see it grow into something very valuable:



[1] Some of you may remember I distributed $5000+ in charity provided by vokain and rpietila (mostly vokain) to victims of typhoon Yolanda and specifically documented with photos several examples of the new roofs that were constructed. Some where I still have all the Palawan Padala receipts documenting that.

VESTs are increasing so fast that you can power down and increase your VESTs at the same time. As jl777 put it: have your cake and eat it too.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@jl777/how-to-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-to-or-how-you-can-have-your-sp-increase-even-while-you-are-powering-down

Well decent is a little like steam..

On security of crypto-currency transactions:


Btw, I think this needs to go in another blog post, because I don't think laymen (and the world outside of Steem's current readership) yet understand that the main problem(s) of crypto-currency security/theft have been conceptually solved (including my DEX design in that to stop the theft from centralized exchanges).

The big picture:

As well, upvoting needs to be different than liking the argument of a blog post:


I think thinking every post needs a poll (e.g. Agree/Disagree) in addition to an upvoting button for relevance. The upvoting button should be "I want to read more content of this quality, topic, and readership coterie".

Wait, so you're trying to discourage groupthink with a level of agreement/disagreement button--some things we're better off not knowing why--the imagination sometimes gets jolted by its unknowingness.

People want to express their reaction to content. If we conflate their opinion of agreement with the relevance of the content for their attention, then we don't have an attention relevance metric rather some Frankenstein. I may disagree with a blog post and be compelled to express it with a quick click, but it may not mean I want to hide that content from my future attention. Without an accurate relevance algorithm, we will encourage groupthink, because attention (i.e. ranking) drives votes and rewards.

Newbium is really great!

Pollsters would agree and that's why we get groupthink politics--not that there's anything wrong with it--just that enough metrics gets you one size fits all products.

Reading this I thought there may be a word that could represent this functionality better than "upvote"

What do you think about using the word "magnetize"?

I was thinking a volume button where you could adjust your tip (because what guy hasn't ever felt the urge to make it rain at the "scrip club"?). Though I think this goes hand in hand with a funded wallet.

Pacman Jones + scrip club = a 2-3 year bit on Jim Rome--can't imagine the curation miles that guy would rack up.

I don't think every post needs that, but a poll feature could be useful in making interesting posts.

I wasn't proposing a poll for its feature value (although that is another perhaps useful feature), but rather as a release valve for those who will otherwise "abuse" the upvoting to reflect their agreement or disagreement, rather than using upvoting exclusively for expressing relevance of what they want to be see highly ranked for their own eyes ongoing. Disagreement isn't always "I don't want to see this genre of content in the future". See the problem is the two meanings of voting are currently conflated. I am still contemplating how to best handle relevance and voting. Not confident that a poll as a release valve is the optimum solution.

Edit: I thought about using time spent on a page as a metric of relevance and leave the upvoting for agreement+tipping (eliminating the downvoting), but time spent on a page is variable due to varying length and complexity of the content.

Voting in Steem does not express personal relevance. Prior to the recommended feature being removed, it could be interpreted as having in part that effect, but it no longer does, and that is certainly not its essential function.

Voting in Steem is more like tipping or crowdfunding, with a social component that increases rewards if more people approve.

For example, I'm not a fan of the Dollar Vigilante and I don't really care whether I see more of his stuff or not, I don't even know whether I agree with him on most things or not, but I voted for his posts because I think funding him adds value.

Maybe the upvote button should be replaced with a dollar sign/coin icon.

The question of personal relevance and own eyes is interesting, because I might very well want to see content that I think is crap so I can downvote it. In fact I'm more interested in seeing that than content I'm neutral about.

Agreed, see also I was thinking similarly per my edit of my prior post while you were composing your reply.

Steem's current relevance filters are:

* tags
* active, trending, hot, new
* and soon follows


The value question is very important to study.

Does your (or a groupthink's) judgement of value add the most value to Steem? I argue no. Because I posit a groupthink can perpetuate the singular demographics that can prevent Steem from crossing the chasm to mainstream diversity of demographics (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg15844532#msg15844532).

Rather I think the greatest value comes from the most users engaging in investing their time and effort in the site. For this you may need a proliferation of smaller coteries which are implausibly numerous for the groupthink to recognize. It is surely beyond Dunbar number upper bound of the cognitive load a human can handle in social networks.

So that is why it may not be wise to consider value and relevance orthogonally.


It depends on the what an upvote is supposed to mean and is actually doing. As it stands now, it is both a relevance and value judgement feature. But it has problems.

One example could argue that people want to view the upvote as an expression of something, not as an insignificant (insulting level) of monetary tip. The quadratic weighting can make each vote more monetarily significant when combined into a groupthink. But the groupthink has negative downsides/tradeoffs.

It doesn't actually do anything for (individual) relevance since the recommended feature was removed so I think that is incorrect.

Some alternate interface and new features may make sense to try to address that need. I think we will learn more as already-planned and developed features are rolled out.


To some extent a groupthink notion of value does add a lot of value (possibly the most value) to a social media platforms, as personally unappealing as that may be to you (or even me). There is reason you and I probably don't spend a lot of time on social media platforms. The nature of the beast is to try to bring people together on common ground so they can be starstruck at who has the most followers, "Like" each other's updates all day long, and occasionally engage in drama (which itself requires commonality otherwise you don't care). Teenage girls love it. Teenage girls are not typically iconoclasts.

There may be room for multiple dimensions of value, but raw popularity can't be dismissed as a huge value driver.

I didn't qualify with "individual" and that was intentional. What I mean (which you understood) is that the ranking by value judgement is a also a relevance offered in the "trending" and "hot" relevance sortings (and those sortings within tags).

Since the other relevance features (active, new, tags but noting tags are sorted by new, active, hot, or trending) are not very personally relevant either, then I claim the only relevance currently offered is really mostly the value rankings.

Follows won't improve that much for discovering new content outside of the people you already follow.


Even if so, I posited that the quadratic weighting will still influence blog posts towards a groupthink (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg15844532#msg15844532). I posit the quadratic weight will fight against any attempt to develop relevance coteries, because it gives the economic benefits to those who can cater to the groupthink. This I believe is a catastrophic design decision and the Achilles Heel of Steem.

One can argue that if the demographics are diverse, then the quadratics will be split across many diverse groups, but not only is it a chicken-and-egg dilemma, but also power-law distributions don't work that way. They are always trending to more centralization and the free market creates mechanisms to route around the failure of overconcentration (and heck Steem started with a sneaky mine at 90% concentrated into 0.1% which is orders-of-magnitude worse than a stable power distribution).

OTOH, Steem has the advantage of being an open database that any one can leverage. Open systems are more resilient. But Steem is not entirely open source (can't be forked and there is less economic incentive thus far for creating a Steemit clone)


I thought of that too (and even mentioned (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg15844532#msg15844532) the initial raw popularity lead is conceded), but remember the entire point was to move crypto out of our tiny nerd demographic and if the groupthink is economically enforcing the walled garden, then I think it is more negative than positive.

Edit: it is true that Facebook started with a smaller demographic to build a base and leveraged that to cross the chasm. But the problem I see is the quadratic weighting may be a wall that prevents that.

Yes I agree for the most part. Enhancement is needed there. A market solution may be people who offer feeds that feature new and undiscovered content. There is already one blogger doing this that I know about. I bet there are more and I can't find them!


If it gets stuck in a crypto demographic then I agree it will fail.

However, I'm not sure that the push toward what you call groupthink (and I call raw popularity) will reinforce this or overcome it. If people join who are not cryptonerds, then the content that appeals both to those inside and outside the crypto ghetto will do the best. Content that appeals to smaller groups will in some sense subsidize the content that appeals to the broadest audience. Perhaps it is a reasonable cost to pay such rent to gain the network benefits of sharing a widely-popular platform as a small niche that most people don't care about. Or perhaps you are right and niche interest groups won't stay at all.

I posit the above violates the Pareto principle (e.g. 80/20 rule) of efficiency. Focus beats a firehouse. Serious bloggers will focus on how they can earn the most.

Also I have a specific economic incentive innovation over Steem (that afaics Steem can't copy) which will make it very clear to the serious bloggers that they should choose my competitor to Steem instead of Steem. I believe they will clearly see that the quadratic weight of rewards pulls their investment away from their following towards the groupthink. In other words, I think serious bloggers will see Steem as parasitic on them and their following.

Orders-of-magnitude and squaring are very powerful concepts. Principle of least power may apply in spades. One can do more harm than they foresee by applying too much algorithmic power. The elephant is unaware of all the things he crushes under his feet.

I could be wrong of course.

A share button (and following people with esoteric tastes)--fixes this. My guess is an algorithm can't fix closed mindedness--if anything, it will likely exacerbate it.

Did you not read this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg15844532#msg15844532)?

Esoteric might help for those are very astute at who they follow, but I thought we were talking about crossing the chasm to mass adoption. Even I have followed people at Steem because I like a few of their posts, but that doesn't mean I will be interested in everything they might share.

But that isn't even the main dilemma (all social networks have this problem and any innovation will be a first mover in that way), which is really the economic problem of who is incentivized to invest their time and effort in Steem.

My guess is the chants of "too many boobs," is probably wrongheaded in this regard--it might rather be, "too many BTC and ETH posts..." Though the trending page is looking cosmopolis--at least more so than a few weeks ago.

Afaics, the diversity of the content is orthogonal to the cognition that to earn significantly, you must cater to the demographics that are already on Steem. Meaning it is possible to find diverse topics that are judged to have a high value by Steem's current demographics, but this is normally because it is judged that the content is new and thus widens the appeal to potential readership. But a serious blogger isn't interested in always being new, because they can't be. They are interesting in being rewarded for being expert in a coterie. But coteries are a negative economically on Steem because of quadratic weighting (except for now the cyptonerd and future of steem intersection coterie which is why two of my blogs paid well, and of course the boob coterie of young enough cryptonerd males to still get an erection). You actively want to avoid forming a coterie.

Realize that the reward pool is partitioned by quadratic weighing, so the larger your vote count, then quadratically more of the pie you get.

Serious bloggers are not stupid. They will eventually figure out the economics of Steem is parasitic on coteries. Articles will be written about this. It can't be hidden.

Expect me to home in on the most salient issues. That is one of my vocations.

hone away...

You call it parasitic, I call it rent. You pay orders of magnitude more rent for being on the busiest street downtown as compared to out on a country road in the middle of nowhere. But in most cases it is worth it because that's where the customers are. I don't think the value of being on a widely popular platform can be denied, but ultimately it comes down to price. Probably some specialists will not like the platform and its rent and will go elsewhere or self-host, just as happens with bloggers now. The numbers on how this will work out are entirely unclear.

As I said on a Steem comment reply, I don't think n^2 is written in stone either. It could be changed if the price is unworkable. It won't be changed to linear because that would indeed break the system, but there are a lot of other options.

Makin' a living

https://steemit.com/life/@generalizethis/makin-a-livin

Achilles Heel of Steem


I replied:


The delay in my reply was because I was eating and also catching up with my gf on some issues we needed to discuss.

Yeah I agree, but I think you don't see how I posit that may work against Steem.

We pay for popularity when it adds to our bottom line profits and/or readership.

Being popular within a groupthink won't do anything for the bottom line profits or readership of a serious blogger who is not targeting the demographics of that groupthink.

See the example (https://steemit.com/steemit/@ntomaino/the-distribution-monetary-rewards-tradeoff-and-a-proposal-to-accelerate-disruption-of-incumbent-social-networks#@anonymint/re-ntomaino-the-distribution-monetary-rewards-tradeoff-and-a-proposal-to-accelerate-disruption-of-incumbent-social-networks-20160805t035246736z) I linked to where the blogger has 119k followers already else where, and doesn't want to risk the disruptive effect given Steem's demographics are not tuned to his and besides Steem only has maybe 5000 - 10,000 ongoing users at this stage. Steem would need millions of diverse users before it could even begin to offer 119k followers to him:


I expect Steem will end up with a set of serious bloggers who are well-tuned to the groupthink effect of the quadratic weighting and I think ultimately aggregated by whale controller later as the understanding of the economics of the system matures. I already noted this effect when I observe @stellabelle brown nosing @dan. (some might even argue I do this to you @smooth, but I have tried at least in my most recent and first blog to be very helpful on aspects of Steem)

From my recent blog post (https://steemit.com/steem/@anonymint/steemit-s-skyrocketing-alexa-rank-on-the-road-to-world-domination), even at a million users Steem wouldn't be even close to obtaining the economy-of-scale to be more viable than Medium, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit for bloggers. Facebook is already beginning to add user created content and well before Steem gets close to any incipient challenge in any meaningful metrics, Facebook can have unleashed 100 million users into blogging:


For a Steem-like concept to really compete and sustain (and not end up another Ello and goodbye (https://steemit.com/steem/@anonymint/steemit-s-skyrocketing-alexa-rank-on-the-road-to-world-domination)), it must have something that those other sites can't offer. And the economics must be such that serious bloggers need to be on the Steem-like competitor rather than be on those large social networks that are far more popular. And that is why the economics have to engage a wide diversity of serious bloggers (and their audiences) and not be a groupthink that ultimately is a power-vacuum to be filled by the most resourceful whale (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1567519.msg15845935#msg15845935).

The argument that people will use Steem because at least they can earn a few $ more than they do on Medium is nonsense. The argument that people will put their blog on Steem and then use the other social networks to popularize it, is also nonsense (medium-term at least, might work in the start) because those other sites will certainly find ways to give preferential treatment to content that is not in competition with them.

The attrition rate I wrote about (https://steemit.com/steem/@xtester/an-unstoppable-force-and-first-compelling-mass-market-solution#@anonymint/re-xtester-an-unstoppable-force-and-first-compelling-mass-market-solution-20160801t204526817z) is very important, because we can have skyrocketing hype (and Alexa rank (https://steemit.com/steem/@anonymint/steemit-s-skyrocketing-alexa-rank-on-the-road-to-world-domination)) while also underlying the system may be failing to truly onboard diverse usership.

Even if my stance above is too one-sided, a competitor which removes those potential limitations of Steem, is very likely to become a serious challenger in the race for popularity. Because there are a lot of reasons that Steem hasn't captured all of the wholehearted attention of our community. It is going to be pretty damn difficult for investors to resist a chance to get in on the ground floor with something better designed that doesn't have a 90% premine and which doesn't force them to lockup their investment for 2 years (1 year weighted average price) in order to take an investment stake. Of course hypothetical words about vaporware are not reality.

jus checkin--sum uf us do dis2
https://global3.memecdn.com/say-hello-to-my-little-friend_o_1828245.jpg

I am just sharing. I am laying out much of my thought process for peer review. It is not an attempt to dominate the discussion, rather it is an attempt to be open.


For example, the title was clickbait for the male who wants to know some secret about the why females are in the bar, i.e. expecting some hypergamy or PUA insight:

https://steemit.com/life/@sweetsssj/the-secrets-of-why-girls-go-to-the-bar

But it is only a blog post relevant to those (smaller coterie) who might want to visit China or know what bars are like in affluent China. But he was forced to make the title groupthink clickbait in order to get the upvotes he received.

If he had titled it, "Bar overlooking skyline in China" I bet he would have only earned a few hundred dollars at most, and perhaps a total flop.

I believe the site will turn more and more to game theory manipulation instead of relevance. Which is precisely my point. The quadratic weighing honeypot is too enticing to ignore and write for your followers instead. You don't bring your followers to Steem (unless they are cryptonerds), you extract from the demographics that Steem is drawing in due to hype.

The China content is also interesting to many cryptonerds and anarchists in spite of the misleading title, because we are all sort of idolizing China and Asia as the next big thing. Many nerds are probably dreaming of working and living in China.

Nietzsche called westerners "bliss addicts," which is short form for "he who creates the bliss, rules."

Here we have an apparently established writer, so this might be offered as a counter-example to the expectation I wrote today:

https://steemit.com/story/@ericvancewalton/indentured-solitude-a-short-story-in-4-parts

@smooth, @smooth.witness, @complexring, @itsascam, @steemed, @kushed, and @roadscape are whales who upvoted this and are responsible for nearly all of its reward thus far.

Thus we have the whales trying to create the impression that Steem has an audience and significant economic following for a serious writer.

But the problem is that is not organic. It shows the whales choose who has an economic gain and who doesn't. And of course this is a power-vacuum. These whales no matter how well intentioned they are (and no offense is intended against those whales), can't force organic demand. Organic demand must originate from the users, especially if you want it to go viral. And to the extent these whales can successfully nurture key writers and develop an audience for them, then a deviant whale has the incentive to capture that power vacuum and monetize it. I posit that squeezes Steem between two non-optimum outcomes: inorganic centralized growth and top-down success.

Note we do have follow through by ~80 other voters, but it is likely that these are those who are understanding that the site needs to draw in professional writers to diversify content, not because those 80 voters are the organic (bottom-up driven) audience for that content.

---

Another counter example can be the quality of non-professional content:

https://steemit.com/travel/@fairytalelife/this-crazy-little-airport-in-the-himalayas

If Steem can get users to become non-personalized content producers (i.e. other than selfies and videos for their friends and family) instead of only content consumers (and curators/sharers), then afaik (?) that would be a major change as compared to the most popular existing social networks. Medium gets 30 million users who visit the site per month.

But again the problem I see here is what advantage can Steem offer that Facebook can't quickly replicate if it is truly popular? The common response is earning money, but again only those who cater to the quadratic weighting groupthink will earn enough to make it a worthwhile advantage.



Edit: I think both user generated (non-professional) content and professional content are huge potential markets, if there is a model for offering them better economics than they can get any where else. I don't see that being possible without changing Steem's fundamental design (meaning the way the STEEM POWER is structured now has to change, which I think is impossible for Steem to change at this point).

I am eager to read counter points. I am hoping for peer review.

he's right. Unless steem becomes a cosmopolis, what's the point? This is why I said that Playboy was smart to hire a bunch of literati and class the place up (award winning content is cheaper, more focused, and is the carrot with the most pull/pools).

Now I can go to bed...

I don't like what many authors (I'm an author too so my criticism is on that level) are doing with the breaking in very small parts. Sure it's more readable, but 1400$ for 588 words? Huh? So if I have a 2000 word story, it would be better to milk it as 4 stories for 1400x4 ? ::)

This is very inconsiderate to the reader I feel. It is disruptive to immersion and difficult to "follow" an author on when they'll publish part2-3-4. Plus by the time they do publish it, you've forgotten the plot and are out of the "feel". Stories, in particular, require a certain level of immersion in order to activate the readers imagination centers, where he start to get the "feel" of the story. 500 words aren't enough to do that, and 4x doses of 500 words won't cut it. You can't properly immerse and get the feel of the story.

I argued yesterday on a long post I made (~3100 words) that it will probably tank precisely because I hadn't cut it in parts, but I felt this is wrong for the reader: https://steemit.com/ai/@alexgr/the-catalytic-effect-of-artificial-intelligence#@alexgr/re-condra-re-alexgr-the-catalytic-effect-of-artificial-intelligence-20160806t155201933z

Sure I could have broken it up in 6 (or 10) pieces to milk it, but (for my standards) this is bullshit. I've also made other 2k+ words posts and they tanked. (Predictably I may add - but I don't mind - I've been paid ...400$ for a simple 2-3 line comment so it evens out in the long run). But if posts tend towards "fast food" consumption AND get rewarded, we'll have a problem in our hands in terms of quality.

Good point. Apparently another impact of the rewards system, that authors are incentivized to write for maximum audience superficial upvotes instead of maximum relevance to their core following. I also tried to keep my blog posts short/concise, because I know that is essential to attaining widest readership.

One could point out that terse content (the age of snapchat, tumblr, swipes, etc) is more popular. But I presume bloggers don't always make their most money by targeting the most superficial readers. I presume they target a lucrative demographic and sometimes a target demographic is attuned to loquacious time consuming content. Will we be become exclusively a society of only tweets (microblogging) and no more books?


Also I want to say that in spite of this posited flaw, Steem is going to generate a lot of hype and grow from here. The issues I am pointing out are posited medium-term problems. In near-term, I think it is likely more and more users will see the $$$ on the leaderboard and give it a try. We are essentially onboarding[signing up] everyone who had some (even one degree of relation removed) affinity to cryptocurrency. Until that viral spread has peaked, we should see more upside to Steem's signups.

And also I reserve the caveat that I could be totally wrong.

It's not that complicated (guess I'm never going to bed) content producers know a joke when they see it (bad writing and bumblebee art is the equivalent in the artist world of Vcash and "accidental" mines--buyer beware).

Has anyone here heard of a Guggenheim fellowship or read The Paris Review? (I hope so) Centuries of artistic curation and established practices wont rollover into an algorithm, but they will roll into a project that promises to reward established practices and set a high bar for content.

Smooth has the right idea, I'm just wondering if there's enough establishment backing to see it through.

Hoping I get a frank reply to this:

---

Oh my, I want to puke, Lol:

https://steemit.com/dance/@krishtopa/first-ever-steem-video-dance-tutorial-from-kate

Replete with steem T-shirt. What a circlejerk. I feel embarrassed for her just watching that. (No offense intended to her, I am not wanting to insult anybody, the reward algorithm is driving this result)

I won't downvote. I will just laugh. Every filipino in elementary school can do that dance.

---

Ah here we go, some more anecdotal confirmation for me of the disappointment coming in a few months from now:

https://steemit.com/life/@thehousewife/my-6-month-steemit-challenge

https://steemit.com/writing/@mctiller/dear-steemit-i-love-you-but-i-can-t-be-exclusive-anymore-i-have-to-get-back-to-my-book

Edit: and smooth was already getting similar feedback before I started my rants today:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@t3ran13/steam-community-is-popular-but-what-will-be-next

This lady who comes entirely from outside of cryptocurrency explained the dilemma:

An observation that reputation is working for me and saves me time: https://steemit.com/steemit/@alexgr/despite-the-bitching-i-think-the-reputation-system-is-working-ok

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1578741 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1578741) - Based on Comet Platform
And of course CometCoin blockchain - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1477176.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1477176.0)

We saw this post when we come here to make the ANN post O.O

Some that I upvote which the whales are not going to upvote, because my personal tastes don't match theirs (they are too young):

https://steemit.com/music/@reelmusic/guns-n-roses-front-row-camera-footage-of-an-entire-houston-show

https://steemit.com/irs/@ericwhoru/how-to-beat-the-irs

https://steemit.com/value/@felixxx/why-steemit-doesn-t-fly-yet

Who in my age bracket wouldn't want to see Axl Rose still singing for the fences! Hell yeah Knockin' On Heaven's Door (we will be soon...).

You can't attribute motive like that. I did upvote it but not for that reason. However, I would comment as a counterpoint to your claim that Steem does, almost by definition, have a significant economic following, as long as it is able to pay competitive rewards to authors. Most authors and artists make so little no matter what they do that it doesn't even take much to be significant here.

I meant implied intent, not necessary to be conscious intent. You are actively trying to promote diverse content (kudos to you!), believing this will help attact a wider diversity of usership. So you are trying to do the role that organic diversity would do, but can't do because whales have all the control.

I don't blame you. I blame the design.

I argue that inorganic curation will be a false positive for the users, and they will realize there isn't the readership they are misled into thinking there is by the large payouts for diverse content. Once again, this is the white paper's design to fool users into incorrectly assessing their earning power on Steem.

That won't end well. I already see users getting pissed off, but they are trying to sustain their resolve to keep trying. Eventually they will blow their top. Just wait...


Economics 101 teaches you about the term opportunity cost.


If you think anyone's time hour(s) are worth $1.32, then you've lost the plot some where along the way. Maybe in the third world, but they mostly don't even get $1 because the whales+dolphins are not from the third world (the blog posts the Indians write are so obviously money extractors that no one upvotes them).

Serious bloggers stay where the readership is. Blogging for fun means you have no competitive advantage against Medium and Facebook is adding blogging now too.

Edit: I think there will be a core of bloggers who know how to write in order to capture the whales and significant votes and this core will collect most of the rewards. If instead the whales adopt the concerted plan to not reward the same author too often, then they can end up losing this core by diluting it too much. In any case, this will not be viral growth. And then eventually the market capitalization and price will collapse to reflect the reality that it isn't viral growth.

Edit#2: smooth I expect your rebuttal should be along the lines of arguing that open source can add more new features faster than Medium or Facebook and thus will out innovate in terms of fun. And that for now it is only necessary to seed the database and usership in order to seed the ecosystem of open source clients other than Steemit (which could operate on different types of media and formats).

On that point I will concede it has a chance. But I still think there is much better model. And I better shut up and code, so please let's wrap our discussion. What insight/information can you add to help me not waste my time?

You are still attributing motive! Again, #fail.

I sincerely believe that you are falling into the groupthink of "whales control everything" that is widely spouted on that site. It's quite wrong. As I have explained many times, there is no quadratic weighting between users. Two semi-whales are equal to a whale. Ten deciwhales (call them dolphins) are also equal to a whale. Ten decidolphins are equal to a dolphin.

This is happening all the time on the site and the fastest growing group (not counting the bottom rung which is very likely padded by many scammers vacuuming up free 3 SP accounts hoping to be able to cash them out some day) are the middle rungs, the dolphins and semi-dolphins who are constantly growing in influence as they earn rewards. Whales are limited in number and increasingly limited by both attention and voting power dilution in being able to vote at all for an increasing ocean of content. And whales are also mostly powering down, further reducing their influence over time.

Yes whales will pile on to some content when it reaches Trending. But how does it get there? Whales can't find it. Even with a team I miss a lot (I know this because the team members give me few duplicates). The power is already spread out and being spread out more and more daily.


Compared to anything else that exists today, there is probably more opportunity for the masses than any other method of monetizing their work. Typical opportunities for (non-star) writers and artists to make money are minimal to nonexistent. Until and unless there is something better, Steem is quite wonderful, even for the masses and not just the superstars. No, they won't all make money, and most that do won't make much, but more will.

Steem is reaching into a huge untapped market of theoretically-monetizable talent that has been completely untapped because existing vehicles for monetizing it have been so atrocious. I don't know how deep that is, but the bottom is nowhere in sight.


I think nonprofessionals generally make literally zero from their writing and creative work almost always, and even many lower-level professionals struggle mightily to make more than $1.32. So, no I don't think $1.32 is good pay for an hour, but I also don't think social media is ever going to be a job for most, it will be a fun and potentially (occasionally) rewarding way to pass the time.


That may happen. It is indeed a huge competitive advantage relative to the fully-centralized platforms. As yet this is entirely speculative so we don't know how significant it will be. There does seem to be the start of a thriving effort in independent development for Steem with some very nice results. (I really like steemstats.com and use it daily for example.) We'll see if that continues to grow or dies out once Steem is less new and has viable competitors.

As for the much better model, go ahead and create it if you think it is really much better (since much better can overcome a first mover; merely better usually can not). If Steem fails because something much better beats it in the market despite the uphill battle of being much later, it will mean we have a much better platform, and I'll be happy with that outcome.


Just don't.

I don't know why you are reacting defensively on this point.

It is a simple fact that if whales don't upvote our post, we don't earn shit. Period.

And I do notice you are voting just about every post you can find that has any level of reasonable content and you are trying to spread your votes across diverse content that you yourself might not even be interested in, but because you believe that by promoting diverse content, you raise the value of the site (as you even said about the @dollarvigilante).

That is implied intent to promote diverse content, even if your conscious intent is not to deceive any one. I already stated that I don't fault you for the design forcing you to have that role. Eventually it will simply be impossible for you to keep up with enough blog posts to spread your vote around enough to create the diversity that would be the case organically if whales didn't have so much voting power.

My design won't abuse you that way.

It is up to you if you prefer to stay with the inferior design if mine comes to fruition.


It is a mathematical fact that the masses can't make money on the site. The debasement is insufficient (~7.75% per annum) to pay more than ~7.75% fraction of each user's SP holdings on average to each user yearly.

Without another revenue source, it is impossible to pay all the masses significantly. So well paid content can't be the viral reason for them to join the site.

The onboarding gimick needs to be causing something else to happen that will lead to significant users remaining active for other reasons. And best if the onboarding gimick is viral.


I emphatically agree an easier and clearer way to earn from doing creative activities than needing to establish a blog (or other creative content) and figure out how to monetize.

But the gimick has to follow through with something compelling that locks them in. If they are only there for significant earnings, they are going to be disappointed (unless another revenue stream is added).

Btw, I have devised that another revenue stream it is not external! Dan and Ned missed a very big opportunity in their design that they apparently did not see.

Remember the 2nd derivative of velocity is acceleration. And we can derive "revenue" from acceleration.


Naw we can make the onboarding extremely lucrative for everyone. It is just math. I'll show you all how.

And then we just need to have a plan of what to do with that large asset, so fully realize its value. But again I'll point to open source ecosystem...


Many will be reticent because they are rewarding the 90% premine.


It must be virally better. Steem is not that viral afaics thus far, but I am still waiting for more data as it is early yet. And better analysis of the data and/or giving me more raw data to analyse.


There is far too much code and ecosystem help in Steem already.

The marketing battle is easier, because I know how to write and explain.

The uphill battle is one of resources.

This is factually wrong if you believe, as I do, that earning $50-100 for a post, or in some cases even less, is still pretty good (not including heavily researched or longer posts that involve a lot of effort, but most don't). I regularly come across posts with no whale votes at that reward level. This will only increase as the ranks of the middle fish continue to grow.


This is also factually wrong. I reject a majority of what I find that has reasonable content, in many cases because I think the $50-100 it is already earning without any whale votes is good enough.


For the third time, you have no idea why I voted for that post. Implied intent is something you create in your own model that may or may not represent reality. In this case I'm quite certain your statement of intent, implied or otherwise, is not accurate, but this particular case isn't important, except to indicate that your model is broken. Even that doesn't so much matter though.

The rest of your post was basically repetition of you claiming to have ideas how to create something better. In that case, go do it. Or publish them and let others offer their peer review and potentially implement your ideas, which would also be valuable. In failing to do either, you have no actual contribution.

That's not defensive, it is an honest assessment that at this point you are just spewing FUD and repeative promotion of non-existent, non-reviewed vaporware (also a form of FUD). You can stop doing that any time you want.


I certainly agree with this part, because most people, even those who try, just don't have the talent or following for others to want to pay them a lot for their content, and no technology is going to change that. Either being paid a little or getting a chance to be paid more is the only way that pay is going to enter into any social media site for the vast majority of participants. The primary motivations beyond that will be enjoyment, passing the time, and for no particularly good reason but everybody else does it.

Also, one thing that has been stated before by the Steemit developers, and was reinforced in the Berwick interview, is that the social media component is just the beginning of what they have planned for the platform, especially in its current form (in the interview they called it a minimum viable product). I have no idea if any of the other stuff will work at all, whether or not the social media part does, except to say that it could possibly give other reasons to join and use the platform. Maybe that will broaden the ability of people to find value even if they aren't great content creators.

I wasn't writing about any specific post. I was writing about perhaps > 50% (I haven't counted but noticed so many) of the posts on the trending page has your upvote. I've noticed you are spreading your votes around quite liberally and I even said to you kudos because it seems you are trying to make sure both more people are rewarded and that the site has more diverse content that is rewarded.

Why would you in any way take that negatively? Is it because I also stated that is a mathematical deception as admitted by the white paper. And I even said it isn't your fault. So I don't know why you are getting angry for what I have stated which seems to be factual. Perhaps you don't like being associated with mathematical deceptions. Or perhaps you feel it isn't a big deal and at least some people are earning something.

I raised the point in the context of whether inorganic selection of content for rewarding, would build community (coteries) so that users have a sticky reason to stay on the site, regardless of earning money.

Now you've turned my desire to have a factual discussion into attack on me, just because I associated the facts of the situation with some imperfection or malintent in the design.

Hey I am taking this very seriously. If you think I am dicking around here, then why the fuck you think I've been awake for 18 - 24 hours at a time for the past 2 weeks busting my ass to make sure I understand every aspect.

I appreciated the discussion, but I tend to think you just want to beat me in debate and when you can't you get stern with me. I actually don't really entirely understand the way you are reacting. Maybe you are just tired of so much discussion. But for me it is damn fucking serious. I thought with your $4 million or whatever in Steem, it might be damn serious for you too, but I don't know your networth, maybe that isn't so significant for you.



I think I already explained above why I don't think it is broken.

I think inorganic is not engagement. It is not sticky. It is not real. It is fake. Smooth is 1/50 of the site activity (or something like that, not exactly that). It is not accusation against you. It is an accusation against the design parameters.



I also stated that mathematically we can't pay the masses well with Steem's current design. That seems to be a relevant fact to not ignore.


I have said that myself, yet you accuse me of being redundant.


Spewing FUD? WTF???

Did I not predict there would be a huge attrition rate before I had the data? And was I correct.

I won't bother to enumerate all the major work I have done on analysis.

I will just remind you that this discussion only began one page back (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1567519.msg15844718#msg15844718) when I started my work day and now I am at the end of my work day. And it was you who enjoined the discussion and I responded about how I thought the combination of quadratic weighting and whale voting power was working against engagement.

I hope you understand that a 90% premine pisses a lot of people off. I remember you (and others) wrote upthread that Bitcoin investors don't matter and investment should come from outside, and the users don't care about the 90% premine. I also think you want us to reach open source harmony (well so do I). Well sometimes shit doesn't mesh.

Funny you insinuate that I should give away all my designs and work for nothing, when you are in on a 90% premine. But I guess what you mean is I can't do it as well as Dan and Ned did, then maybe I better just admit I have to give away my shit for nearly free.


The ability to innovate on top of the block chain is incredibly valuable. I have also stated that. We are in entire agreement on that.

Steem+blog+sonnet= https://steemit.com/life/@generalizethis/what-black-swan-can-teach-us-about-ruthless-ambition

There are a number of different ways to interpret that. Maybe I vote for them once they get there (it is after all one of the few discovery methods that exist), maybe I'm effective in picking posts that will make it, maybe my voting a post increases its chances of making it, maybe it is a mathematical (near) requirement to make it to the very top (but not moderate top) that the biggest stakeholders support it. Probably some combination of these.


I'm not taking the general concept negatively, I'm just pointing out that your 'implied' motivation was incorrect. If anything that might be useful information in understanding what is actually going on?


There's no anger, I'm just pointing out inaccuracy. As for the deception, I do pretty much feel that it isn't a big deal. It is deception in the sense of marketing that suggests to people buying a particular brand of clothing or even a beverage will make them happy and successful. It doesn't literally promise that, and when thinking rationally about it, they know it isn't true, but the marketing still works to some extent. It isn't deceptive in the sense that anyone is being promised something that isn't true.

People are being invited to sign up for free and if they enjoy a chance for a larger payoff more than they would enjoy it if rewards were flatter, then it will have more of a draw. I'm not convinced that is incorrect, but I'm not convinced it is correct either.

I have no real dog in the fight over how concentrated the rewards should be, as I pointed out in that comment where I said that n^1.5 or some other superlinear but flatter curve might better, or might be worse. I don't know. Even n^1.1 has been seriously proposed (but probably in connection with other newly-introduced incentives).



I'm not attacking you, except in the narrow context of repeatedly promoting your vaporware. I think that is actually quite a negative way to approach things. Sorry if it was perceived as some sort of attack beyond that.


I appreciate the analysis, but to be frank sometimes the repetition on points already well-covered such as your dislike of the quadratic rewards, when presented without anything new of substance is just tedious.


Well it may be valid criticism of the design, the rate of redistribution, etc. We will have to see how that works out. I think the whitepaper discusses that highly-vested interests are important to some elements of the design (such as downvoting, and other myopically altruistic behavior, which is only incentivized at all by having a large stake in the overall platform and its success). Maybe there are better ways to do this, or maybe the downsides of having highly-vested interests outweigh the benefits. It is possible, but i don't think it is clear.


We agree on that, and I said so. I don't think anyone disagrees? The Steemit developers want to try to motivate people with the chance of something big rather than a guarantee of very little. That might work, or it might not. It is unclear to me.


I think I explained clearly what I was referring to there (in terms of repeated claims to knowing how deliver a better product and claiming to be working on doing so, with no details or peer review to back it up), and it is clearly correct. It doesn't mean you have no useful analysis as well because obviously you do.


I'm still not sure you are correct about actual attrition rates (meaning real users who actually start using the site, not account scammers, or even, as a few people have stated, failed attempts to sign up which leave a dead/"abandoned" account when the user signs up for another one, with only the second being used). We need to analyze the blockchain data better.

Too many signals are getting crossed:


The data I have seen seems to show a huge attrition rate. I have no idea if they are mostly Sybil accounts, even though I know most are now coming from Steemit and not mining. But even if they are 85% Sybils, then it points to abysmal signup rate and reach of actual unique users. And that is a factual (no FUD!) statement.

Btw, in my design we will verify every user is a real human, but of course not on signup. I make this very small so I am not accused or promoting vaporware.

---

I wrote "implied intent" not "implied motivation". And I even said it need not be conscious. Meaning it is nothing you are thinking of doing. I mean the effect is the implied intent. By implied I didn't intend to mean you had any cognitive involvement in the intent.

Your cognitive intent is probably just trying to apply some personal equation of maximizing value and user satisfaction. And I am positing the design causes the implied intent that I outlined in the prior posts, meaning it is not in your control, no matter what you do (other than not voting but then all the whales+orcas would have to recuse themselves). My point was the design is thinking for you and causing you to have a very big footprint.

I think the point is too abstract to discuss in this tedious medium.

---

I don't know for sure either. So let's discuss this rationally.

1. Will users find something worth sticking around for, so that they forget any initial reason they had for joining?

2. Will they ever cognitively associate the promise of large rewards with failure to receive them and be negative? Negativity and anger can open the door for a competitor which offers them an outlet to vent their dissatisfaction in a positive way (and that could be Medium or Facebook, not necessary referring to my project). Btw, viral adoption has a large emotional component. Emotions are what motivates people to share virally.

3. Are there are other rewards we could give which would lessen the odds of user disappointment/disillusionment?

---

I argued upthread that near to linear would perhaps present an opportunity for users to join voting pools to defeat voting as a differentiation metric and maximize their rewards. I argued that is always the case for whales, but so far afaik the whales are not doing this. So I argued that moving towards linear would be more risky on the game theory. None of us are exactly sure what would happen.

Any way, let's assume Steem could successfully flatten the reward weightings. This still wouldn't solve the concentration problem until they take voting power away from the whales. And they can prevent whales from splitting their voting power to avoid some future threshold on voting power, because it is all locked up in SP. Whales could split 1% a week though so Steem would need strong anti-Sybil verification to make it sustainable.

---

I certainly believe it is possible to eliminate the highly vested footprint on anything other than being a passive investors as you should be. But as you say, talking about vapor is boring as fuck for everyone who doesn't have access to my bong. So I guess we can't discuss that further at this time.

Btw, you know someone who knows the entire design spec thus far. Maybe you can bribe him for some smokes. I heard he lost a lot BTC lately due to heists. (I don't think you bribe people...)

Not at all. Dan and Ned spent months developing the details of their design on paper and in code, and only then did they try to sell it to the world (other than pitching it to some private investors I guess). That is what I am insulating, not that you should give it away for nothing, unless you want to. Certainly the latter is an option if you think that wide peer-review will benefit your efforts, but I'm not telling you how to distribute your work.


Sybils, if they exist, basically have to come from Steemit signups because the situation in the mining market with some high powered miners getting most of the blocks means that only a very small number of accounts can be created that way per day. My guess (without data) is that it is cheaper to cheat Steemit out of $7-10 plus an account name than to mine $7-10 of coins plus an account name.

I agree that if a lot are Sybils than the account signup rate is pretty low. Even without Sybils the absolute rate is pretty low at only 1K-2K per day. That is where I agree with your response to the hype-isn "viral" post.


Of course, everyone is applying some equation, you just haven't necessarily identified the correct equation. That is the disagreement here.

You do make an interesting point about not voting, because a very significant portion of the whales do not vote, or vote very little. I don't know how that translates down to other parts of the distribution, or what the effects of that are, but it seems to me the affects of voter apathy overall have to be pretty significant. For example, if other whales don't vote and I do, then my influence is further increased, at least assuming all else is equal with the rest of the distribution. That may be part of why my votes so-often end up on the top of the Trending list despite my "only" having 1-2% of the theoretical voting power.

Here's a timely email from an amazon vendor:


"Castle Art Supplies"

" Hello [redacted, for my privacy],

 I see that you recently purchased one of our products! I just wanted to send a note to say thank you :)
 Here are the details for Amazon order: 105-31...........
 Castle Art Supplies Drawing and Sketching Pencil Art Set (26 Items)


 We at Castle Art Suppliesâ"¢ try our best to provide the ultimate art supplies that you love as much as we do!

 If there is ANY reason you would not rate this a 5 star experience, we would like the opportunity to talk to you first! If you run into any issues at all or have any suggestions on how we could improve, please don't hesitate to let me know. I'm ready and willing to help, all you need to do is reply to this email :)

 We appreciate your business and hope to serve you again!

 Sincerely,

 Aaron at Castle Art Suppliesâ"¢"


Now, I don't about you, but I read the funny name spelling as a plea, "Amazon's got us by the balls--please, please, find our site and buy directly!"

--they could even put-up a nice "how-to" window/blog on steemit. <--this is a niche

I urge you to go back to evening of Aug 6 or morning Aug 7 and count the number posts and points I made and the ratio of them which were mentions of my project.

And also I want you to take a look at the title of this thread.

Sorry you've just written FUD (except note the admission of "duly noted" below).

Of course I am promoting that I want to work seriously on a competitor and I am demonstrating my investment in effort to do so. But I don't think I have gone overboard on promoting or mentioning vaporware. Two others have come into this thread trying to sell ICO for what appeared to me to maybe be vaporware using fancy visual mockups. I haven't done that!

And of course I understand that I want to stop writing here. But if you have something important to say, I want to analyse it because in some cases it is much easier to fix a design at the inception than later. When I make a mention of something I am designing, it is because I use this thread as my notes. I don't keep copious private notes at this stage. I work very fluidly. You are alienated by my work style, but that is the way I work. It has its tradeoffs.

I understand it is boring and unfair as fuck to not be able to respond to specifics that are obfuscated. So in that respect your criticism is duly noted.

I think we are both a bit overworked at the moment. Let's squelch our misunderstandings.

Note it is also possible that some discussion might convince me to not continue with a Steem-like project. That is another reason for me to be so engrossed in this discussion. I didn't really pay attention to when I was mentioning obfuscated design ideas I have. It was just coming out in the flow of my thought process as I am replying.

Nobody cares...

The world isn't "fair" and even when "fairness" is introduced, it's just a matter of time where the substrate of fiat/assets wealth inequality will lead to a re-concentration of wealth.

Dogecoin and LTC have like 51% in their top100 wallets (BTC 19%). How the hell did a coin like Doge get so concentrated, when everybody was mining it with their GPUs, people were tipping off one another, etc etc? It's because fair distribution is a mirage.

Poor people will sell it at first opportunity (as it will be something they have to sell to keep up with life's necessities), rich people will buy more of it with their excess wealth - because they can throw millions around to anything they want.

If you had started with 10.000 people having equal steem (not SP), right now it would be -again- concentrated to some whales. A market spike would be enough for most people to cash out.

I don't think you understand what the killer app of blockchains is (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg15858038#msg15858038).




Edit: I followed up:

Blockchains are simply the technological outgrowth of increased storage, bandwidth and processing power that allows what used to be centralized, to become decentralized. By extension it "democratizes" power and eliminates middlemen.

As I see it cooperation is not needed nor is an essential characteristic - as blockchains must be built to endure in adversarial conditions.

The killer app of blockchains will differ depending the time-space coordinates. Initially it will be about text storage (like financial records - like ...bitcoin), then image storage, then video storage - as technological capabilities scale into the next 2-3 decades. If you told someone back in the 1980's that the entire encyclopedia would fit their 360kb floppy-equipped PC they would laugh. Fast forward ten years later, microsoft releases the encarta on a CD rom (with multimedia too). Fast forward twenty years later, the size of wikipedia (which is orders of magnitude richer and can be equated with the world's knowledge database) is around 150gb with the images. It can fit on a microSD that one can carry in their iphones. Fast forward twenty years forward, we may be hosting every single imgur photo on a microSD equivalent and thirty years later every video ever made in quality sub4k-res.

So, as I see it, the killer app would always be related to the elimination of middlemen who are currently using the centralized system to do what the decentralized system can't (due to storage/bandwidth/processor handicaps). Currently it is banking (bitcoin) and we are moving into more text (steemit) and we'll be moving to text+images, etc etc. But the "reddits" aren't the same type of "middlemen" that the banks are. The online payment and currency sector is by far the larger killer app here but it isn't that popular due to ease-of-use and associated technoweaknesses in the demographics. Steemit is an easier concept that is closer to foruming, but it competes in a market with far less revenue than online payments and banking.

AlexGR you entirely missed the point.

The marketing aspect is the killer app. And the movement towards cooperation (people-to-people) and away from central banks, big government and big corporations is going to change everything[1].

Blockchains enable such cooperation because no one owns it (except in the case of Steem where Dan and Ned own it).

[1] c.f. Strauss's Generation Change model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory) and what we should expect at this juncture. I'd been expecting this since 2012 (http://goldwetrust.up-with.com/t9p570-inflation-or-deflation#4735) and now I see confirmation in my marketing focus groups on Steemit (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1567519.msg15859995#msg15859995)!


The Hero (Gen Y) generation is coming. I am from the Nomad (Gen X) generation, but I was lucky to be ready for the coming of the Hero generation and so I am ready to be adjust myself to be in sync with their ideals. Yet I was also talking to my mom and she can also identify with cooperation as a goal. So this is very unifying across all the generations, and the Heros will lead it (although some of us Gen X will also play key roles).

China will be big on this also. Also the Heros in Japan are ready to overthrow the old system. It is happening every where.



P.S. Steemit is a dead-end because the blockchain is rewarding a "pre"-mine which won't fit the ideals of the Hero generation. Once they know the truth, they will abandon Steem in droves if there is something better for them to express their disapproval in a positive way.

Can you give me a tangible example of people-to-people cooperation (blockchain-based)? I need to understand this better.


The whole generation thing is bogus. I've made the case here: https://steemit.com/millenials/@alexgr/gens-x-y-z-why-they-don-t-really-exist-and-why-genealogy-needs-to-adapt

(...indirectly answering that woman with the question of why isn't her generation getting married)

In my view, the best equipped western generation right now is the one being born around 77-83, with the best probably being those around 79-81. (obviously I'm talking about sub-generations, not 25y generations). I think they hit the threshold of growing up the old way but taking advantage of the technology without it corrupting them to the same degree as the post85 and post90s.

There's a lot of DOA children post-90s and even more post-2000s.


You sign, you write, you get paid. You don't care how the money comes. You overrate this aspect too much.

Steemit


Tell that to the WW2 generation when Elvis gyrated his hips on national TV.

Tell that to the boomers (and even my generation) when we see Millennials' eyes glued to their smartphones when walking.


You still don't understand that the specific amount of money being paid is not what is driving those to Steem who will end up being sticky.

It is the ideology of being able to cooperate on the resources and better this world and not paying rent to capitalists who own OUR PRODUCTIVE CAPITAL (which was the entire point of my famous blogs cited in the OP of the CoinCube's Economic Devastation thread).

The ideology is cardinal. Payouts and rewards are one of the effects, but secondary.

Steemit what? Where is the cooperation? At what level?


There was a time when the world evolved slowly and people born after 20 years didn't make much of a difference in how they were raised. Now even 5 years can make a huge difference. The generation gaps are accelerating. And I can already tell you that this will be accelerating even further due to AI helpers taking over education.

Kids have endless questions but noone to answer them. Enter AI helpers, a la Watson. Kids in 2020-25 get their answers from AI helpers and customized education. Suddenly the stupidification trend that started in those born mid-late 80s (and progresses still with even dumber kids), starts reversing as the AI is able to deliver a pull-based-customized education to every child.

Fast forward +5 years when the AI has evolved to a level that it can provide much better answers. Fast forward +5 years due to the same reason. And suddenly you have generations growing up which will be differentiated by the operating system of the dominant helper AI. "oh you are a watson '24 kid... great". Like saying "you are a windows 3.1 - windows 95-98 kid".

Evolution is just too fast for generations to remain unaffected. Even the smartphone addiction is different in a 35 year old millenial to a 25yr old millenial to a 20yr old millenial. For the grandpa it might look all the same, but it isn't. The 35yr old may even understand the difference of being rude to others by his preoccupation with his mobile, while the 25yr old might not. For the 25yr old, he may find the 20yr old "excessive" with their bending-down-and-being-glued-to-the-screen or his tendency to view certain materials or use certains apps - which he finds ridiculous. He believes the smartphone isn't for that type of stuff, etc etc.

[/quote]

There's nothing inherently incompatible with improving the world and getting paid by ...steemit.

Look. The distribution is SO BAD that it can only improve. When you start from a fucked up concentrated percentage like the one there is right now, it can only be improved by further distribution. So the effect downstream is one of people getting a share to the wealth. That's what you and I are experiencing without entering a single cent and getting thousands out of nothing.

If, on the other hand, the distribution started "fair", then suddenly you'd see accumulation phenomena. You would not see wealth distribution. You would see gradual concentration and instead of wealth trickling down, it would be small people cashing out their share and bailing.

And something more: The only thing that may be worthy of your time is finding a solution to the reward scaling issue.

This is the only thing that I can think of that it can render the platform DOA.

Users can experience explosive growth, say go from 50k to 50mn. (1000x)

What about rewards though? Can marketcap go from 200mn to 200bn to preserve them? Obviously not.

So what then? Will it have to be a case of "self-correction" where you "let staff go" because they don't get paid as they should? (They let themselves out really).

How do you deal with that problem where you have a network that is a victim of its own success. This is even worse than bitcoin scaling (and not being able to get loads of transactions per second if it becomes extremely popular).

Why not?

There has never been a crypto with more than about 1-2% of 50 million users. How do we know what such a thing would be worth?

Actually, your average i7 doing 30K hps can mine about 1 STEEM/day (more if it's water cooled and can max out).
 

And one account scammer can probably sign up dozens or hundreds of free accounts (with 3 STEEM each) per day.

Precisely.

I already told @smooth that without engagement it can't become sticky.

But steemit does portend a model of cooperation on a blockchain. I am not going to tell you every feature and improvement I have in mind right now.

We can say at the moment that users are cooperating to upvote to fund causes they believe in. The crowd funding is already a cooperation. And hypothetically no middle man taking a cut of the action due to it being on a blockchain and no censorship to disrupt the cooperation (but Dan and Ned own/control most of the money supply in the case of Steem)

We can see for example the users are cooperating to make sure that plagiarism is downvoted. No need for government enforcement of copyright, the users are doing it.

There will be so many more examples of cooperation.

Ya man, it's 2016 and people been whining about "unfair distributions" for years... and nobody cares. Deal with it.

Steemit's biggest problem is the "Karma Whore Dilemma"...
Since one is penalized for disagreeing with idiots (unless you are a whale)...  
People with professional experience and an intelligent point of view will just go back to Reddit.

On Reddit one can post a controversial, but intelligent commentary...
And often get surprised by the amount of positive karma...
While on Steemit you can only get on your knees... and Suck The Big One.

What part of censorship-resistance and trustless do you continue to forget over and over again.

What part of TBTF did you forget from 2008.

What part of the moral hazard of charging failure to the collective and giving profits to the fat cats from 2008 do you think the people do not care about. Why are Bernie Sanders and Trump so popular.

Please this is getting redundant. I don't want to be dragged into more pages of verbose crap talk.


Females are not going to buy into our scams. Did you not see the lady with 500 people she wants to bring into Steem but she is worried they will think it is a scam.

The masses are staying away from our all-male tinfoil hat cryptospeculators Pink Sheets shit.

Don't you know the reputation of Bitcoin amongst the masses is rampant scams and theft.

Because if I extend this even further to a user base like 500 million (closer to twitter and instagram levels - and still 1/3 or 1/4 that of facebook), it then requires a marketcap of 2 trillion - which is an absurd amount. And I'm not accounting for increase in value due to network effect - my assumption is for linear relation.

It is not absurd. The global networth is perhaps $500 trillion.

Social networking could be very large segment of the knowledge age economy.

Bitcoin is nothing maybe 100,000 to a million users and has a $10b mcap.

I agree there are issues here that have to be improved. I am not going to agree on any specifics right now. I am lacking sleep (only 5 hours in the past 38 or so)

In theory everything is possible. But I would argue strongly against its probability of happening.

What I think will happen, is that a trendline will emerge over time regarding marketcap size (I predict it will be relatively stable) and user expansion (moderate but steady increase). We will then be able to extrapolate the rewards by extending the curve into hypothetical space (future userbase) and find the point of non-viability for the average westerner (he'll have to bail), then the point of non-viability for average south.american / eastern-european, then africans and asians...

Sure at some point it may slow down a bit, but these are relatively small factors. If it gets to 50 million users and beyond then much of the value of the network will be things other than getting paid for your blog. Everyone in the world is not a blogger. Actually as I've stated earlier in these threads, already most people aren't going to (and shouldn't) be paid much because they don't produce much of value. They may get a few coins here and there which might be enough to seed the concept of crypto for them, but if it goes beyond that and there is utility on the network they want to access, they will earn (meaning direct business or employment type earnings, not blog rewards) or buy coins.


I would argue that 50-500 million users on Steem is highly improbable, but conditional on that happening, a very high (relative to current cryptos) market cap is almost a certainty.

Of this I'm confident as well: ETH has nothing on steem in terms of real life use and it will either have to drop below 200mn, or STEEM will have to go beyond 1bn. Otherwise it's a tremendous market anomaly.

I don't know if it'll get to threaten bitcoin though - although I can't rule it out.

We could end up being shocked when the world figures out that the industrial age economy has a negative profit potential and they better shift to something of value.

It is a long-shot, but not unthinkable.


The ecosystem will absolutely not stay stuck on blogging.

The different ways value will be generated will proliferate.

It is going to cause dizziness it will be so fast due to open systems.

We are the cusp of the biggest thing ever.


Agreed.

But the probability of it happening on some blockchain is better (more chances and forking allowed for more experiments/challenges), although still a long-shot. But if someone nails the killer app, we will be on our way to the moon.

Make sure you pick your horses well or diversify.


A Steem-like concept could blow by Bitcoin easily. But still everything is highly improbable at this juncture.

See I told you guys!

I wish a whale could throw some appreciation to this lady's comment for participating in a marketing focus group study:


Note she has a cryptonerd bf or husband. So maybe she is (unknowingly) coached (i.e. influenced). I hope the other lady replies who came from outside of crypto.

Steemit website looks like it was built in the 80's, it's awful.

Seriously this site give such a bad image to crypto and it makes the project looks so cheap. Dan and Ned ( I believe ) have tried to improved some aspect of the design today but it got even worse, really they shouldn't even try to work on the front end, they clearly suck.

It's a shame that the site pays playmates 10k USD per post but can't get a dev to code a new modern UI.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@steve-walschot/dear-steemit-why-do-you-undervalue-your-developers-who-make-this-platform-big-and-usable

The minimalist UI argument is moot, you can have a very clean design that doesn't look like a stone aged website.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@etherdesign/new-website-design-for-steemit  This user came up with a pretty good design and is probably more suited than Dan for the job. Dan clearly has no idea what a UI should look like in 2016.

Btw I saw your other thread. My 2 cents is I presume they just tried to get something launched and will let the free market build better UIs or they will improve theirs over time.

So many design concepts need experimentation including even totally new features other than blogging, not just the UI design.

But go look at google and tell me that substance (core functionality) isn't cardinal over form/aesthetics.

P.S. there were no websites in the 80's.  ;) Well maybe one since Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. But DHTML didn't arrive until late 90's.

I agree but the substance ( earning money) is not there on steemit for 80% of the newbie so UI is more important to keep them on the site.I would think that with a tech community it would be trivial to get a UI that doesn't look so outdated but it seems not.

my thoughts about solution https://steemit.com/steemit/@t3ran13/what-will-happen-with-steemit-if-the-whales-disappear

I followed up:

Upvoted and replied:

we dont need it to be honest, the steem itself is really great and i think that it is going to grow only, it would be a really smart decision to invest in it

I think discussion is one of the most valuable engagements:

Steem's design is failing. And I believe they can't fix it (at least not without radically changing the distribution of the STEEM and the entire meaning of the STEEM POWER, which afaics is impossible for them do):

Anyone who is interested in the steem platform should look up https://nimirum.org/ it is an upcoming project with a bright future.

It is not exactly like steemit, but similar

more infos
https://cointelegraph.com/news/nimirum-on-a-mission-to-end-online-censorship-with-blockchain-technology

It will need much time and money for make it, because as we knew volume trading of steem is very high. And it will need big support from developer and comunity, but it is just my opinion. I am doubt there are people will make speculation but who is know.

Everybody wants to come into this thread and sell a vaporware ICO.

What all these are missing is they don't understand the marketing and scaling issues for viral adoption.

Note that Nimirium is a decentralized forum, not afaik a long-form blogging platform like Steemit.

I claim (or let's say I have reasons to think) I will beat all of these, but I won't beat them to be first to ICO vaporware. So investors pick your horses and be aware.

Put up or shut up.

Exactly. Vaporware isn't putting up.

I could also go create some fancy website and make all these claims to raise BTC for vaporware. But I am not. I will raise money when I have something (at least partially) functional to show.

Instead I worked my ass off (120 hours in a week) to self-fund my own BTC by working as a blogger at Steemit. Which also enabled me to learn about what works and doesn't work.

I'm a successful blogger at Steemit (who will now recuse myself from blogging while I think the rewards algorithm is rewarding the wrong behavior), raising some 15 BTC on my own efforts. This is not vaporware.

Wow 15 BTC! I'm glad you could earn your monthly McDonalds Paycheck from them. Lol
Nobody cares what you think about vaporware or not, the facts are you don't have a product either, so shut the fuck up bashing other people.
If you actually were going to create a product, you wouldn't be making meth binge type rage posts against me each time I post.

I see you are jealous of (Vitalik) mETH's burn rate. I can get a lot done without wasting a lot of money.


Well it is factually incorrect to state that no one cares what I have to say. There may be a lot of others who may agree with you, I dunno.

And I wasn't bashing others. I was stating the facts. It is an ICO, it is vaporware, and it is a decentralized forum design, not long-form blogging.

If you think removing your source of slush fund is bashing with facts, then I am guilty as charged.

Instead you could take my post positively as a challenge to actually go release something before you raise money.

The "whitepaper" (lol, not even close to being a white paper) for Nimium (Nimrod connotation?) doesn't even layout the case for any monetization model.


Ah fuck those bitches (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1579135.msg15907051#msg15907051). I stand by what I wrote there. They were bashing Jeff without any hard proof to support their allegations.

What have I written against you  ???

And you'd have to be delusional to think I haven't being writing mostly about my research on the necessary design, marketing, and economics.

---

Orginally from the Biblical Nimrod, a mighty hunter, it has come to mean socially inadequade.

---

Before investors go buy a vaporware ICO, please read my insights:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg15907716#msg15907716

The English trick was to speak for the base, the French to the base....the American from the base...

https://steemit.com/poetry/@generalizethis/icarus-part-one


Or maybe the dumbed down uni-version--is better?

https://steemit.com/story/@ericvancewalton/success-an-original-poem

I mean why make someone pick up a book (including the narrator--I'll leave the reader to decide if hammock pics and first-word/best-choice rhymes deserve more than a chapbook's fee from a reputable magazine--especially when the structural irony of the soapbox is in question.)

or put simpler, "Dude, where's my high-school English teacher? Can't he see I'm an artiste' chillin like a villain? Suckers! Didn't even have to dust off my feet."


Maybe I should just play nice and say, https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/5a/47/4c/5a474cbcb0203904565f972c858c0514.jpg

(not on my watch, but bonus for using original in the heading to disguise the triteness of the observation)

https://steemit.com/story/@ericvancewalton/the-edge-an-original-poem



https://steemit.com/poetry/@generalizethis/how-do-you-write-an-american-epic

totally agree, i dont know why they didn't hire a good designer yet

Back to coding again...

https://github.com/shelby3?tab=repositories

the problem with clones was that most of the times clones was ready to scam , now days some original coins scaming instantly and you have nothing to wait from a clone , well expect some hype!

Have you heard about DECENT - decentralized digital content distribution platform?
Check: http://sale.decent.ch/

Or join the Slack channel (https://decent-slack.herokuapp.com/) and discuss the networks abilities with our community!

How's your work going? Much closer? ETA!? ;)

This goes to show you don't understand on of the main driver that brings people to Steem.

People struggle to make the ends meet, that's why they buy lottery tickets. Do you think they would buy lottery tickets if lottery was egalitarian and low risk / low reward? People don't put 5 bucks in lottery tickets to earn up to 10 bucks with a decent probability or get half their money back. People buy lottery tickets for the tiny chance of making it so big that they can quit their shit job and give the middle finger to their asshole boss. And if they don't get that, they are fine to lose their money and keep trying painstakingly every week. That's how despaired people are.

The primary driver that brings people to Steem is dream. Millions of people already post content. It costs them nothing to post content. They do it anyway out of boredom and loneliness, because that gives them the feeling of being part of something. So now they can turn this content into lottery tickets, and not only does it pay big when it works, but it also has a significantly higher chance of hitting! And they don't need to wait one week or one month for the draw. The draw happens everyday. Everyday they get that rush of dopamine, and it's damn good, and it's damn addictive. It's like gambling except that there is no risk of ending bankrupt. And when they don't hit big, they still have the consolation prize, they build up a little bit of karma and can dream of a more remote, future day where the little karma they earned will be worth thousand times more like it happened for early bitcoiners.

If you look at things from that perspective, Steem has got it right all across the board.
* Shit posts make thousands of bucks? That's exactly what should be happening, because if it wasn't the case, Joe blogger would not stand a chance of earning anything, and he would know it.
* Payouts are totally unbalanced? Lotto effect, selling dreams.
* Daily payout? that's a lottery draw every single fscking day ... If you posted today => continuous engagement, addiction.
* Whales hold all the power? That's precisely why all the wholesome unbalance is happening. Whales are instrumental in detecting new members that can bring them more users and shower them with cash to buy their loyalty (see @dollarvigilante for ex), and making things look as arbitrary as possible for the rest of their votes so that people think (and rightly so) that even them can make it big one day, and that day may be just around the corner.
* Really cheesy stuff gets paid thousands? That's also great because everyone has cheesy stuff to write. Got big boobs -> can make money. Got cute toddlers or pets -> can make money. Got a cool car? -> can make money. Are a big attention whore? -> can make money. Are a silly selfie taking teen? -> can make money. And what if you've got nothing of the above? Well, see, that gets even better. Are bipolar, autistic, depressed, suicidal? -> Can make money. Are a big drug junkie? -> Can make money. Just got out of jail, or even better still in jail? -> Can make money. Got raped or abused or mugged or whatever? -> Can make money. Got fired from you job? -> Can make money. In fact, the more shit or bizarre things that happened to you, the more likely it is that you gonna make money telling them. The only people who don't make money on Steem are people who have a boring uneventful tepid life with zero feeling of joy or pain or despair or rage, and these aren't the people who need Steem in their life anyway. They'll just follow eventually when everyone else is on Steem.

So the bottom line is that I see Steem is doing just the right thing. You can make a clone, but it won't be quite as successful unless you copy their model. And if you copy their model, then what's the selling point of your clone?

As one of the posters mentioned above (don't remember who), there is a niche for longer term quality content. Steem is focused on short term earnings. Posts receive the bulk of their attention and revenue within 24h, and catch the few late voters within a 30-day window. The Steemit page makes it almost impossible to find content older than 30 days and quite difficult to find content older than 24h unless it was a huge hit. There is no way to keep receiving payouts past 30 days, so Steem is a bad fit for serious professional content writers who normally earn royalties for life on their content. Steem isn't a good fit for professional novelists, artists, researchers etc. A clone that would target the longer term would have no difficulty cornering the market because Steem just doesn't try to be that so there won't be any competition at all. And there is no need of rewriting the code. Steem technology is pretty good. The only thing that is needed is change the incentives to encourage voting for the long term, like buying equity in the post to benefit from future (possibly remote) prospects and change the Steemit web front-end to allow structured access by theme and advanced search instead of the currently "hot / trending" system that caters to a very short term / narrow attention span type of consumption.

I'd be interested helping with developing / launching a clone like that (I'm a very experienced C++ dev). But I'm not interested trying to compete with Steem when it's obvious to me that they are already doing everything that they need to do to reach hyper-growth. Actually, it's been 7 years that cryptocurrencies are trying to escape the gravity pull of geekdom to launch into mainstream. The closer we have ever been was Dogecoin, and it was just a flash in the pan. Steem is the first crypto to make it into Joe space. If you / me / anyone around here really know better, why is it that none of us managed to pull what they just pulled? What are our chances to beat them at a game none of us even realized was possible a few months ago? Why not instead just seize effortlessly the other totally empty niches that Steem tech has just made possible?

Where's the fucking upvote button when you need it? :D

Well, if you breakdown masteryoda's stats 40% of all Steemit posts involve Steemit...
So you have an incestuous echo chamber about "Steemit changing my life/the world".
 
Subtracting the Steemit spam, the "lotto plan" worked initially...
But users have been flat for a month now at about 3,000 random ultra low value daily posters...
With no sign of a coherent marketing plan to do anything coherent except more of the same.

How is this worth $160 million... maybe tech is worth $50 million if a marketing professional implements an actual plan.

how can i install steemit at my hosting area ? it is opensource , and is there any way to install it in my local language ?

Well, how about Bitcoin? It's a payment network right? How much of its daily volume is only the same crypto folks buying and selling other cryptos for Bitcoin?
If you substract the crypto trading spam, what is left?
Quite an incestuous echo chamber too...
It's only normal that a technology caters to the interests of its early adopters. In the case of Bitcoin, it's been 7 years and it's still mainly a crypto-geek thing.
Steem is a few months old. The Steem themed content is naturally still getting a lot of attention, but as time passes and users from more diverse horizons join, the relative proportion of Steem themed content will shrink. I really don't see this as a concern at all.

Where do you pull these starts from? I'm seeing loads of new users joining everyday. Only this week we got Charles Hoskinson, Trace Meyer, Roger Ver and Charlie Shrem who joined among other well known Bitcoin personalities. If that isn't a sign of Steem spreading and gaining acceptation within the Bitcoin community, I don't know what is. Show me a single other project that isn't a sidechain and that's getting endorsement from so many Bitcoiners so fast.

Facebook, Twitter and Reddit also did "more of the same", and ended up being huge social networks.
That's unfair but it's like that: social networks benefit from network effects. There is no better marketing than existing users introducing their friends.


It's worth what people are ready to pay for it. It doesn't matter if it means $50M or $160M or whatever. Like every crypto, what is fueling the price is speculation about future prospects, not really the current state. Ethereum in its current state is certainly not worth $1B either, it is almost entirely useless, all projects supposed to launch in early 2016 are late and the first high profile application that was launched on it was an epic failure. It's worth $1B because people think it's gonna grow to a $10B+ market cap. Same thing for Steem. If it grows to become a popular social network, it will have a multi-billion dollars market cap. Right now of course it's just a social experiment that could fail completely.

Bumping.

I make mainly pennies for every post (sometimes better), but seeing the followers gather slow and steady, and that they don't shy away from the tougher topics, that's what keeps me posting every day. Progress is progress, even if it starts from humble beginnings.

Thank you for a good explanation. The sad part here is those who share their mind blowing posts and originals might get copied also. That will be stressful for the user less payed and someone stole your idea. Ergh

The more places where you can make money the better. Especially of it works like steem since steem has done so well I'm sure most if not all of is welcome more with open arms. The more going on with crypto the better for us all. So I really hope there is another steem type website on the horizon. :)

It's already here. It's called masknetwork. We have launched the main net 2 days ago. Check www.maskbuzz.com

There's also what they call newbium coins which they do have a system much like steem where users also earn just when they post respoces and topics in their site. Not sure if its going to be valuable later but they claimed they were the first to have such idea.

Just buy synereo (amp).

Alpha release is in a week -> social network platform. Price is 0.15 usd now, will go to 1 - 3 usd soon.

They will also do a funding round on bnktothefuture.com (big pocket investors) and coins who were funded there when to the moon (lookup price graph of Factom and Storjcoin).

Also the devs of synereo work closely together with vitalik and vlad from ethereum on casper.

This is the next gold coin in 3 weeks. I'm buying all I can!

FYI, anyone want some verification of the health ailment (and blinded in one) that inhibits me, also to know me a bit as person in video:

https://steemit.com/travel/@anonymint/welcome-to-the-philippines

Out of nowhere the idea appears. But certainly we could be helped by appeared several atlcoin or also to the emergence of bitcoin late in us. because I feel the changes are quite amazing after using bitcoin and I will be making changes to my life being someone who was instrumental to the growth of the bitcoin. Perhaps the beginning of the year I will make Online store based Bitcoin

I believe you'll do much better financially and in terms of followers aggregation in your strategy with the design I have under development, if I can ever get it to fruition.

My design is more attuned to that long-term investment strategy.


Afaics, Steem(it) is failing at precisely that.

If you look at my AppCoin then you will see that it actually has many of the same features as steemit plus a bunch more. I plan to make it more social. Instead of cloning steemit you should look at getting into AppCoins in general. Synereo is another AppCoin that looks promising.

If you guys are looking for a competitor to STEEM you should take a look at NEWBIUM. It's crypto content focused, but similar ideas of paying content providers with tokens based on attention, votes, etc

Did you read my critical analysis upthread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1567519.msg15822830#msg15822830)?

I do think that many blogs will work in this way one day. I could see someone cloning steemit and making it into a niche blog. Let's say a "food" blog.

I highly doubt it. Paying blogging by diluting investors (or later by capturing transaction fees for some widespread commerce) doesn't make any sense. The entire point was to onboard the users to enable a widespread commerce ecosystem. It was never about paying for blogging long-term.

You all have entirely the wrong conceptualization of all of this, which is great because all my competitors will be off chasing the wrong directions.

Don't worry about that. I think Steem devs may already be doing this. Once Steem gets failed they will release the new clone by a dev with "good reputation".

Sounds sensible. There will never be enough ppl who blog for btc or eth or whatsoever. And no worldpower needs an absolutely free media. But many companies would invest in a platform that may gather large audience for commerce one day.

For lack of a better place to put it, I'll throw this statement in this thread since it impacts my effort to create a "Steem variant". Note not a clone, because I have written extensively about that I think Steem is not succeeding and that we need radical changes in the design, focus, and of course in the transparency of the initial distribution.

I will update about my health status.

For background, I had made some posts and comments recently about my health (and you can following the "a brief synopsis" link the quote to read more historical background going back past several years and see photos if you want):


This week I became quite desperate and adamant because this illness has been fucking up my coding productivity for the past years. It is just fucking ridiculous the daily ritual I been through and the massive man-years of my talent that have been flushed down the chronic fatigue syndrome toilet. And I decided to take some risks on my health, because I felt it is now or never in terms of myself completing a project.

As explained in the above quote, I had been afraid all these years of taking Calcium supplements along with Vitamin D3, because I was spooked by the possibility of kidney stones and the excrutiating pain they entail.

But I've come to find out that I am probably Calcium deficient and that might have been the missing link in terms of getting well all these years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_metabolism#Effector_organs
https://www.google.com/search?q=importance+of+calcium+immunity

There is a complete lack of these sort of esoteric blood tests here in Davao, so it is always guesswork.

In any case, I got extremely pissed off starting this week and I've been upping my calcium dosage to as high as 3g per day, including citrate (vegetable) and carbonate (milk) forms.

Also I did something crazy. I started going to the gym to do 2 hours of intense nonstop aggressive barbell, boxing, and basketball TWICE DAILY! Imagine that! 51 years old, supposedly sick and training like I am a 20 year old preparing for college sports.

And I have what I think is a breakthough. I won't be able to conclude this is actually a breakthrough until it has sustained for a few weeks, but I can say I have not had energy like this to go do two-a-day all-out intense workouts.

On Tuesday, I think I did about 20 rounds of boxing in addition to barbell and full court game of basketball with young athletes in their 20s.

This hasn't really taken time away from developing, because it was otherwise time I would be having difficulties concentrating, sleeping, or otherwise coping with illness. Instead I was active and so the time I have had on the computer (for example all day today Thursday) has been quality time where I could concentrate and work with 100% vigor. And I got a lot done today.

I have massive soreness in my abdomen, but this is soreness as one tends to feel when they injured or overworked their body and are healing. Not pain causing my head to go into brain fog and CFS. Soreness pain is different from wallowing in pain. Soreness and testosterone is "let's go do it some more and make it more sore!".

I am fighting like a hell now. I don't want to fail. I am giving it 150% effort and not reserving anything and putting it all out every day, every hour, non-stop except for sleeping, eating, and other necessities.

I hope the next time I speak about this will be some weeks from now and I hope I can confirm it had been consistent and I hope it will also coincide with my showing a near alpha version of my project.

Apologies for the personal melodrama.

If this fails, I will exit crypto-currency and move on to something else. I have decided it is now or never for me and blockchain work.

Has the thought occurred to you that all these problems "appearing" to prevent you from coding, may be of your own subconscious desire to self-sabotage yourself, for some reason that is consciously un-acknowledged (and will probably require some soul searching)?

Give it some thought (no need to share the answers - these are personal stuff).

I can only tell you that the physical ailment is really debilitating when it is. The worst part about it is it comes at the wrong times, when starting to gain some momentum and this is very disruptive to developing a continuity which is necessary to get "into the zone" of working intensely. When I work intensely, I like to roll from my computer into my bed and dream about what I am going to work on when I wake up.

And I am working my ass off to make it go away. I have run in my youth 13 miles at faster than 6 min per mile pace. That is grueling. But that is nothing compared to the grueling effort it takes to fight this illness I've had.

That being said, I am headed to gym now for the evening workout. And I am damn well determined that this shit is leaving my body now!

And if I make it to alpha, I will raise enough money so I can move to where a quality gym is not 2 hours roundtrip driving. So I can get my morning and evening hard workouts in without losing so much time.

The problem of the illness had been that it depletes and drains my energy. It is impossible to explain this to someone who has never suffered from CFS and autoimmunity (with comitcontant effects such as periperhal neuropathy, pruritus, psoriasis, etc). You might think of it as sort of imagined condition, but this shit is real. It can turn an upright IronMan into a lizard squiggling along the ground. You simply have no idea until you've been there.

But as I said, it is time to kick this shit out of my body. I think I've done the curcumin and oregano oil for months, so any pathogens or whatever might have originally been complicating factors are maybe now eradicated. So maybe now it is just getting my minerals and endrocrine system back into balance.

I am using hellified exercise intensity combined with high dose Vitamin D3 + Calcium now to take a very risky aggressive DO OR DIE approach to solving this PRONTO! I can't afford to wait patiently any longer. If I get excruciating kidney stones, then that will be the price I will pay for taking this risky move. But I think the intense exercise will mitigate any chance of that and I think the uber intense exercise will perhaps maybe lurch my body out of this autoimmunity imbalance or gut dysbiosis or what ever it is .

I prefer we not discuss this for 3 weeks or so. Next report will be if it worked or failed.


Edit: small factoid. My teeth are so sensitive past days that I can't brush my teeth. The vitamin D3 appears to be pulling massive amount of Calcium out of my bones.

Cloning coin is not a good idea where people are going to confuse it because if that coin or you clone is turn into scammed they are going to say that you patnered with that website or coin for me the best idea is follow your gut create your own

Coincidentally I was just discussing with the person who is advising me on launch ICO, that I didn't want to prioritize blogging and he said if I don't offer blogging then investors can't view it as better than Steemit. So I guess not a clone but also maybe have to also include blogging in addition to other things I had planned. But I don't know yet how many different content types can be accomodated at the start. A lot of work to do for all that.

Any way I also don't do something which is a ripoff clone. I have to do some significant innovations and differences else I wouldn't bother doing it.

I see Steemit flatlining and I would of course endeavor to changes aspects which I think can lead to viral growth.

Moved this over here... so I don't spam off-topic in other thread whence this originated:

I got an idea of Xteem.

Xteem will be a crypto-media Xteem, based on Ethereum, Nxt blockchain or other POS blockchain. Xteem has several functions:
1. erasable blockchain, in which article or reply in a transaction can be deleted for copyright problem;
2. TA software for analyze stock, coin market;
3. many parameters of Xteem are changeable by contracts, so don’t need to change source code.

How a user earn money?
Not like Steem, which reward the writers by Steem dollar.  just to like reddit, weibo, webchat...
a)   an user gets money by others’ tipping;
b)   answer other user’s question;
c)   write a article which reader pays when read;
d)   trade others’ fund and get fee.

it has to have valuable rewards or else the users won't be intersted to write something for your xteem.
does anyone have any idea which steem clone script is for sale? I wanted to create my own article site but not related to crypto. I'd reward users with USD, its the contents that matter this time for google.

You are pretty specific, but only mention the POS part.  I assume that you are picking your clone coin parent based on the fact that they are side chain coins.  Is this correct?

https://maskbuzz.com last 3 days show  ???

https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/gnlTX4gp8.png

You must just get it at the wrong time..


I have managed to access it about 70% of the time.

Yeah it goes down a lot!  But it is only a week old and I assume they still ironing out the bugs and trying to scale the web node to allow more users at one time.

The mining is DPOS as well so I worry that at the moment there is not as much hash power as there could be if there where more miners voted in with stronger power.  

I do with they had just made the mining part of it open to everyone.. Only 15% goes to miners anyway to they could have just had that open to everyone and gained a much stronger network than running it all on there own in the current DPoS model.


*TRY IT NOW testz*

https://i.imgur.com/tve1ai7.jpg

Regard the Mask project, it appears to be duplicating the flaws of Steem?



Even if they only minted 1 million tokens for themselves, yet they use those whale positions to control which content receives the most payouts, thus as they mint new tokens, the bulk of it can go to themselves. Redistribution is not assured. Redistribution to minnows&dolphins certainly isn't happening fast at Steem and some have theorized that certain Steemit whales might be creating sockpuppet blogging accounts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg16119829#msg16119829).


They want to restrict total supply to 21 million tokens, thus eventually they can't pay for content any more. They mention you can buy tokens to promote content ongoing, but we already discussed in other analysis of Synereo that the advertising funding model can't be profitable for bloggers. If it was, they'd already be doing it at Medium with its 25 million readers and 20,000 active weekly bloggers.

IMO, none of these Steem copycats will amount to anything significant. If you haven't improved significantly on Steem, then everyone will just stick with Steem and its flaws.

iamnotback..


I totally agree.

The way I have read it though is that they are distributing 5% a year of the coin. ad infinitum..  100% - 5% , -5% , -5% ... Never quite reaches 0 ...   So the price of msk would have to go up every year by atleast 5% to counteract this to keep bloggers rewards consistent over time.

There are some interesting dynamics playing out tho as the whales have no incentive to vote anyone elses posts and so they post under their own sock puppet accounts and upvote themselves.  Seen clearly in the "app store" where there is an empty app making 20$ a day!!  (Yes there is an app store with a programming language built into msk that is kinda easy to make dapps)


Anyhoo..  Interesting to check them out and see how it plays out using this type of model .  The users also have to pay to do anything (a small amount like gas)  which go back to the network pot for re distribution.. 

So in essence I think this has a chance to grow to a point of equilibrium where it is too costly to post and only the whales will be left posting there own content and upvoting themselves.. Like little robot miners essentially.

The rest of the site will just be spam with people only returning to upvote there own content each day ..


* I invested a small amount (0.1 btc) but have already withdrawn my initial and still have a number of coins due to the way the rewards have been spread this last week.. So for me I am just seeing how this plays out for now.  *   

I am surprised more people have not taken notice of mask tho.. As there is like 10 users maybe.  And syneroe and all those have mega user bases already.   Mask has some cool tech as well so it makes me really question the devs.

Coolest tech to come out this year (Ethereum x steemit)?  Or laziest scam ever?  I am not sure yet.

Transaction volume could be recirculated to content rewards. That is one possible to way to maybe design a stable system, although the ratios don't seem to work in my calculations. Indirectly Steem even has this in mind, because they take bulk of dilution from STEEM (not STEEM POWER) which they hope will be eventually held mostly by those who need to do transactions (since STEEM POWER can't be transferred).

Afaics, the insoluble problem is that rewarding from collective pool of funds via curation can be gamed no matter how you spread the stake around:

https://steemit.com/steem/@anonymint/blog-rewards-can-t-be-widely-distributed

So I see no viable way of rewarding content from a collective pool of funds if the criteria is subjective quality decided by voting. I entirely abandoned voting in my radical redesign of the concepts.

Voting is not viral activity. It is divisive. Notice a Like on Facebook has no downvote (although Facebook is experimenting with other expressions now).


I messaged them when they first announced months ago.

They don't even have a white paper.

I think speculators are looking for viable projects. Have they clearly articulated everything? I don't think so. I don't even see a list of who is working on this and their backgrounds. I don't see any detailed info about their system really. Perhaps there is some at the github, I didn't check.

That is just my 2 cents and I am not trying to interfere with you recouping your small stake.

Dude you do not have to explain yourself or say you interfering.. Totally cool to give your 2cents and freedom of speech.

I have already recouped my stake because of exactly the reasons above (generic reply from dev, no white paper, no PR) ..

The source code is published under the MIT licence so maybe it is worth your time to see at least some aspects of their code .  Perhaps you will find some small valuable things you did not think of to add to your study in this area.


I think a fair distribution does not look like mask currently .. But then again, all crypto's are plagued with similar issues from unfair mining advantages to unfair ICOs.  But I guess nature is un fair as well.

But yes this dev could have made some more effort explaining this coin with a decent ann and some other info.  There is a small help section on the maskbuzz site but no info on the devs or delegates.   

The web node maskbuzz is amazing (in my eyes in terms of user experience) but they can just shut down at a moments notice and all masknetwork would have is pvt/public keys and no activity as most users will not be able to export public keys (due to not being educated about crypto).

I have even tried to get a dev to set up my own node but alas it did not work and I was un able to compile. 


Anyhoo : I will follow your progress in this field of study and look forward to the results you find iamnotback. 

Because many of the things that you describe would either need to be or need under them a side-chain to control the price per action or whatever it is that you pick up and do with the coin.

Maskbuzz.com was offline for quite some times in the past, but for the last days it was running smoothly.

Its a pretty good alternative for people who missed the Steemit train. Maskbuzz is still at the very beginning!

Ya know, STEEM is only trading at only 300% of June levels when no one had heard of it...
Considering how much smooth, professional progress they've made since then...
And the upcoming HF 14 and 15 which includes built-in escrow and enhancements for sidechains/subchains...
STEEM is not exactly expensive anymore.

http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem/#charts

Again, the "blogging" is worthless and a Trojan Horse...
Any app can be (easily) built on top of the STEEM network (which is the whole point).

Are you missing an @ there?


I wrote the following in private today:

"... Steem is likely to morph into other things, except my concern is that the problem is the game theory over the competition for rewards. Really who has the incentive to go build massive ecosystem projects on top of Steem blockchain, when the concentration of control and ownership is so skewed. So it seems the economics is going to continue to drive whales towards extraction, although they will need to obscure their activity behind sockpuppets and even convince themselves they are doing good with ideological BS such as that recent blog post @dantheman wrote.

Also regarding #1, I think it is likely that as it becomes apparent that there is no viral onboarding, then the push to extract (while hiding it) will become greater. For as long as there exists some hope, then the cohension is maintained somewhat. But as the reality becomes more stark, then the rational activity is to try to not be the last one who didn't maximize extraction of value. That is just game theory. If one whale defects, then the others must too, unless they can detect his defection and nullify it. Any way, it is going to be an interesting experiment.

Obviously if  a whale is successfully hiding his extraction, then perhaps there is no additional push for those who are unaware and blissfully not maximizing extraction...

@misgivings might be an extraction sockpuppet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg16119829#msg16119829).

Blogging can't be the main economic activity, because blogging doesn't comprise significant value for the user. There is an oversupply of blogs, and it is not the case that users will ever pay to read a blog."


To elaborate, any app you want to build on top of Steem, will suffer from its content reward economics being controlled by the same whales.


Why would anyone think a clone of the same Trojan horse game can be hoisted again against Steem and its significant momentum? The crypto faithful aren't going to leave Steem to go do the same activity on a clone (which doesn't even rectify the distribution problem among other aspects).

If you want to challenge Steem, you need to innovate.

What about Synereo? An opinion on this? I know it's a different platform, but I believe they have similarities.
I believe that users may be rewarded in some way using the platform, but correct me if I'm wrong.

No1 USE  MASKNETWORK!!!


I just lost all my coins on there.  MY addressees just vanished.  After I had bought some coin.  How convenient! What a scam..  EVERYONE STAY AWAY FROM MASKNETWORK..  I thought it was legit but they took all my coins.

Still coding (https://github.com/shelby3?tab=activity).

My new code is of course in a private repository.

FYI, the untruncated history is here (https://githubcontributions.io/user/shelby3/events/1), which can also be employed for any Github user. Although it is not as real-time as the quoted link.

This pretty much sums it up nicely. Even cheap lotto tickets are not viral, but boring.

But at least Steemit continues to expand their very detailed stats...
And has stabilized at 4-5K daily users (of which about 1K are multiple or bot accounts)...
So we are talking 3,500 daily users... almost certainly more than use Ethereum daily.

Dan can kill off God and spout all the faux "revolutionary" rhetoric he wants...
But unless he deprecates the offensive, elitist Whale Culture by HF some form of redistribution...
Steemit's fatal flaw will dead-end the platform (and decimate the value of whale accounts).

Are you sure the numbers are correct?
Steemit went down like 85% so the rewards should have went down too no?
And rewards were the only thing getting people on board.

Another reason (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=355212.msg16275375#msg16275375) I have reduced my posting activity.

   
This is better than a Steemit clone. Monetizing podcasting!

COVAL based on a loyalty network is going to release an app called VOCAL in about a month that essentially monetizes podcasting. Podcasting has struggled even more than blogging to produce a revenue stream as people don't want to listen to audio adverts which are a pain to produce anyway unlike google ads revenue. I see it as having even more potential than Steemit it they pull it off well. What do you think?


https://mobile.twitter.com/circuitsofvalue/status/768994220153659393

It seems really have some good potential if properly developed.

I'm still coding...

I checked Newbium - it is not very liquid - only 6$ was traded yesterday. See

https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/newbium/#markets

Okay this is the first serious Steem clone. And this is a serious competitor to the project I am working on.

But I see they've already made the critical error of choosing voting as the reward and onboarding paradigm. Thus I am not worried. I will defeat this project.

Thanks for the competition. This lights a fire under my butt.

They have a significantly diverse team. But if you study carefully, they don't have many top 1000 programmers, maybe not any of those guys. That doesn't mean they can't produce something good. Looks like they have some technical progress.

But there aren't so many Satoshis in this world.

This is good competition for me. Thanks.

About the proposed Boost language tangent that I got dragged into in early September and extracting myself from that blackhole:

https://github.com/keean/zenscript/issues/11#issuecomment-257667869 (read only the linked comment post)

https://github.com/keean/zenscript/issues/13#issuecomment-257757157 (read the linked plus following two comment posts)

Potential significance of a totally different kind of Steem "clone":

The idea of forcing "Jane and Joe" into the crypto world is inherently flawed. Any system that thrives off of the non-savvy community is destined to fail. Adoption will come to the commoners after everyone else, it's the only viable way.

With that being said, fuck steem and fuck anyone who tries to make a clone.

Good luck trying to fuck me. I doubt that will work out for you. Ask the gays in the Philippines who violating my respect for them by trying to flirt with me when I was giving clear body language that I was not interested.

I agree about "force".

But I disagree if that is providing what people want and need...

Steem clones such as Ark based on DPOS and the same failed concepts as Steem (such as voting) will IMO also fail:

Masknetwork looked good until they shut down earlier. However their UI was about as bad as it gets and really had no future if they didn't have more nodes that looked more professional, instead of using calibri font all the time ::)

Ark.io is running an ICO now and already raised $1 million with another ~3 weeks to go, but they are not even promising how much of the premine the ICO participants will get:

https://ark.io/ARK-TEC-Agreement.pdf

Nor are they limiting the amount of funds raised, thus the initial value of the market cap required in order for those ICO investors to even exit break even.

Why would anyone invest under such horrible terms? What are these speculators thinking?

(I hope somebody is going to put an end to this nonsense soon! and all those who bought these scamcoins are going to observe their tokens become worthless! That is my hope.)

@iamnotback
Good eye.. they count on us not reading the fine print.
This comment of yours is deserving of a bump to raise awareness of this sketchy situation.

Watch out guys it's gettin' pretty damn scammy out there.  :-\

Steem.it would be a great platform if you host blogs. What I would do is use their code for more niche blogs. I would make one for "recipes". Then make a coin and use that coin to hire content writers. Once you cloned it and had the payments going you could start pumping out new blog sites for every popular niche.

I have bigger ideas and I don't think steem.it technology is very good. I'm more into fully decentralized platforms and mobile dapps. It's definitely a good idea to use it if you're starting a blog.

I dont think we need a clone , just something with a similar idea would be good enough. I k ow steem works well and as a bonus it pays according to steem power which you can invest into. So you can invest directly into your own articles. Best of all if something else similar to steem comes along we can be early investors and maybe whales ^^

Every scammer knows and will try to take advantage of this. ^^^

Because steem doesn't allow them to make quick copy paste scamcoins they will have to find a workaround to this I guess. 

I guess no one yet had cloned steem ever since? I thought newbium was just one.  Maybe you guys are requesting a clone to a wrong crowd, there are hardcore programmers can do this in less than a week. its the money talk that can make it work, how much would someone pay for steem.it clone by the way?

Did you forget Ark.io?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1695981.msg17016728#msg17016728

There is a Russian clone called Golos (which is licenced by steem). But yeah, most wannabe clones haven't launched yet, so at the moment they are just vaporware.

Most clones i believe are much better though and that is because most of those that developed it already have found flaws and solutions to the original one.  Some of the products or coins with same concept are better too, example of this is zcash which has same feature with anon coins but they tend to be better.

Why do we need a Steem clone?

The original is always best.

@iamnotback I didnt know Ark.io was similar to steem? I read all their website recently (ARK's) and it just sounded like they where making another Etherum to me, but maybe I got it all wrong.

Steem made several major errors in design, marketing, and launch/distribution. The original will not be the best.


I think it is based on Graphene, so the same DPoS consensus for the blockchain. I haven't looked in much more detail beyond that. I read they were offer rewards via voting, which IMO was one of the major blunders of Steem.

I heard Dan Larimer is working on improving Graphene and launching a new thing. So Ark and Steem will be using an inferior technology.

Sorry, my original is always the best comment was sarcasm, but sarcasm is hard to get over the internet should have written {sarc} afterwards.

Monero is not the original ring sig crypto but its overtaken whatever was the first one.

I'll forward your thoughts on Ark.io to the person I know who was thinking of buying it. Whether they pay any attention or not is up to them.

Also yesterday or the day before I sent you a PM you still haven't replied to you might not have seen it :)

I'm too sleepless to notice.

We need more of this.

The op's idea is good. But this is better! I meam damn bruh! This should be how developers in the cryoto world think and should be the way to compete with other rivals! This will not only make their rivalry interesting and thrilling to watch, but also make their projects worth investing and actually doing something good to the crypto world.

Everyone should look up "Bazillion Beings" and check out STEEM/Steemit Bots, this is how Robots will earn everyone money in the Future. Stop worrying about robots taking your job.

https://steemit.com/bots/@personz/a-new-voter-bot-newer-smarter-freer
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@steemitprime/steemit-bot-2017-increase-upvote-and-follower-100-working
https://steemit.com/steemit/@cerebralace/how-to-use-the-steemit-voting-bots
https://steemit.com/steemit/@hoschitrooper/bots-bots-and-bots
https://steemit.com/steem/@heimindanger/don-t-use-vote-selling-bots-use-promoted-instead-a-bot-that-upvotes-you-when-you-burn-money
https://steemit.com/guide/@bitcoinparadise/do-you-want-to-run-you-own-voting-bot

How about as we start getting the Steemit Clones and everything out, we make them more and more Bot Friendly. And we create threads like this, where we can all talk about creating Bots that will vote on each others posts. Maybe we can even create a Bot that reads a thread, and looks for usernames in the thread, then if you hook up your account to the Bot, it just votes on everyone in the Thread automatically for you. And does it for anyone who uses the Bot, so everyone is getting everyone's votes.

Here is an example of a Steemit Fork
https://github.com/Someguy123/understeem

Well, but that forks only the Steemit website, not the Steem cryptocurrency behind it. The latter would be, as far as I know, a license infringement because Steem is not open source (it's "source-available" or "shared source", but it forbids you to create a clone with a new genesis block).

I have an idea of a re-implementation of a similar (but a bit different) content monetization scheme, based on an already existing coin. But it will take some time ;)

I guess no one yet had cloned steem ever since? I thought newbium was just one.  Maybe you guys are requesting a clone to a wrong crowd, there are hardcore programmers can do this in less than a week. its the money talk that can make it work, how much would someone pay for steem.

I don't think that just cloning a coin is good idea. Simple clone would never be as popular as original design.
What you want to is introduce EEE doctrine. Which means - embrace, extend, and exterminate.
This is known strategy Microsoft uses as main way to conquer the market; they first copy existing idea, hone it to the perfection and then you can kill original idea and control and monopolize this idea.

it is based on Graphene, so the same DPoS consensus for the blockchain. I haven't looked in much more detail beyond that. I read they were offer rewards via voting, which IMO was one of the major blunders of Steem.

Ohh my freaking Goat! Really bad offense dude. This will really net you bamned. No question about that. You should've known better than to copy paste the posts of others.
I feel sad for you, but sad to say, you deserve it. People like you do not belong to this community. You are making this forum look bad.

I'm sorry i had to say all these things, i just couldn't stop myself. Specially when what you did is too obvious and has been done twice on the same thread .. tsk tsk..

I have a website which is another take on quora or stackoverflow which is basically explaining things with use of analogies. If someone has knowledge of steemit and would like to work with me to create a similar concept i am all ears :)

Steemd the backend of the blockchain was made opensource long ago.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/steemd-is-now-completely-free-to-use-with-an-mit-license

https://github.com/steemit/steem

Considering golos is a steem clone and there is another as well that used steem code.

Thanks! You are right, this license change was in April 2017, long before I wrote that answer. I had visited the code repository, the last time, somewhen in late 2016 or early 2017.


Looked at Golos briefly. It is Russian-only (?) and seems to have been started in 2016, before the Steem license change?

For those interested:

https://golos.io/
ANN thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1624364.0)
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/golos/  (Rank 500+)

If you remember the other Steem clone, I would be interested if you post it. The simple reason: A Steem with less whale power would be an interesting project, although I'm still not convinced of the concept of storing everything on the blockchain.

I also found this old Steemit article: A Comparison of Steem/Steemit Clones and Competitors and Why They Made Me Invest More Here (https://steemit.com/steemit/@contentjunkie/a-comparison-of-steem-steemit-clones-and-competitors-and-why-they-made-me-invest-more-here). But none of them seems to be a real "clone".

Yes, they had a direct deal with Steemit Inc.

Since the license is now open source that isn't necessary for future forks.

Its not purely Russian people from other lang's can post as well they just don't tend to earn as much.