Someone please make a steem clone

[smooth]

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.

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.

Does your (or a groupthink's) judgement of value add the most value to Steem? I argue no.

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.

[iamnotback]

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.

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

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.

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.

Even if so, I posited that the quadratic weighting will still influence blog posts towards a groupthink. 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)

Does your (or a groupthink's) judgement of value add the most value to Steem? I argue no.

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 thought of that too (and even mentioned 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.

[smooth]

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

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!

I thought of that too (and even mentioned 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.

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.

[iamnotback]

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.

[generalizethis]

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

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.

[iamnotback]

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

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?

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.

[generalizethis]

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.

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.

[iamnotback]

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.

[generalizethis]

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. 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...

[smooth]

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.

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.

[generalizethis]

Makin' a living

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

[iamnotback]

Achilles Heel of Steem

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.

I replied:

I don't see why 'flatter' is incompatible with the game theory; 'flat' would be. Would n^1.5 rather than n^2 be a disaster?

This is a complex question and I might mess up the analysis, because frankly I am not even confident I know what the current algorithm is. I've seen mentions of curation rewards being a function of both total author reward (which is afaik a function of the square of the total votes) and of that the earliness of your vote matters in some non-linear way (note for curation rewards and afaics not for author reward). That seems to indicate that a whale who votes for his own content will earn the author reward of at least the square of his/her vote power, regardless of how early or late the whale votes.

But the overriding factor seems to be that the debasement of STEEM POWER is apparently less than 4% yearly (and note I'll probably be making a blog post soon on the precise math), so there isn't much incentive for anyone to vote for themselves because offseting that debasement by voting your share to yourself for whales is not worth the cost of failure to the system it could cause. And for dolphins, the 4% is nominally so low that it is a pita to vote for anything other than your conscience.

So it seems even a linear weighting might be safe, except there is the consideration of the power of compounding in that whales who can automate to offset say 4% compounding advantage versus whales who vote their conscience, will over time become the controllers of the system (all other factors being equal, which might not be the case).

We also have to consider that upvoting drives other voting by raising ranking and thus viewership. Thus whales can influence which content gets the most rewards, thus upvoting their own content seems to make the most sense if that content is of otherwise equal potential to receive upvotes as any other content. Thus the game theory seems to be a power vacuum that will suck in the controller who can organize stake to vote for successful bloggers (to obfuscate this from other whales who might downvote the phenomenon) which pays back some % of the author rewards to the organized voting stake (power).

From one perspective the quadratic weighting seems to make this game theory more profitable because the one who captures even a slight advantage in this power vacuum can take exponentially more of the author rewards. However, the quadratic ranking also means that the dolphins can't benefit from organizing themselves to vote for their own posts collectively, because they would be at a quadratic disadvantage compared to the whale controller.

Thus I conclude that the quadratic weighting is necessary to squelch dolphins organizing to game the system, but it hands the control (and eventually the entire system) to the deviant whale who realizes this is a winner-take-all paradigm. We end up with a system of serious bloggers who work for the master whale and the rest are subservient minnows and dolphins who are beholden to the groupthink control over economics of the system.

That is why I have redesigned this concept so there can be linear weighting which the dolphins can't profit on by organizing themselves (as I add a cost to voting but not taken from the user's wallet, yeah that will really make you think!) and which whales can't game either because I squelch whale voting power (everyone becomes a dolphin in terms of voting power); and note this depends on very strong Sybil attack resistance on account identities and that whales won't trust other people to hold their money for them.

Additionally in my design for a Steem-like system, I have also added another reward vector which greatly reduces the incentive and ability to take control of the system by gaming the voting reward algorithm.

Edit: to clarify that with linear weighting, the dolphins would be incentivized to band together in order to upvote each others' posts in order to get amplification of rewards due to raising the attention their posts get. Of course if users band together then they lose the relative amplification effect, but that is the point that the game theory incentivizes them to band together until there are too many banded and then the site's voting is one (or several) groupthink(s).

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

[iamnotback]

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.

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.

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 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:

Some serious superstar bloggers (e.g. @dollarvigilante) will seriously dedicate to Steem now, especially if their demographics fit to Steem's thus being winners in the quadratic weighting algorithm. But I currently believe the vast majority of serious bloggers will not see the incentive to switch to Steem. If serious and diverse bloggers are disincentivized to move to Steem, this is likely an Achilles Heel of Steem as currently immutably structured.

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, 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:

And Facebook is adding in-app content (blogs, etc).

For a Steem-like concept to really compete and sustain (and not end up another Ello and goodbye), 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.

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 is very important, because we can have skyrocketing hype (and Alexa rank) 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.

[generalizethis]

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

[iamnotback]

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.

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 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.

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.

[generalizethis]

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.

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 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.

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."

[iamnotback]

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.

[generalizethis]

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...

[AlexGR]

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.

[iamnotback]

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.

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.