Earning from many instances of the same

Yesterday I was writing about relevancy and how important it is for Steem communities to make people feel relevant, and this is especially done by connecting them to the people and content that is relevant to them. This is what communities are looking to provide the ecosystem and hopefully the content and discussion that comes out of some of them is the type of thing that people will be willing to unashamedly share in their other media channels.

While I think this is slowly changing, one of the problems that Steem has suffered from is that people do not seem overly willing to share content from the platform externally. I am not sure if it is because it is crypto-backed and that comes with negative connotations for some people or, if it is because there are financials in play that are open to the public and that makes people wary. Especially since, this is the internet.

For example, in order to know what Pewdiepie earns one would have to read a magazine that estimates it, but for the average monetized YouTuber, that information is very unavailable. There are pros and cons to this, with one "con" being someone like @jerrybanfield who claims all kinds of internet and life prowess, yet apparently is barely capable of managing his own large debt liabilities and life.

Because of the lack of transparency, people base their opinion on what they see and I think that Steem suffers in some way from being able to see everything. Who really wants to invite their friends in here to a place where not only is their wallet and complete history available to search, all of the worst the platform has to offer is also on display? It can be a hard sell, especially when the brilliance that also resides here is drowned in the oceans of shite.

But, the Tribes and communities should be able to better serve their content niches through various kinds of moderation that encourages the quality and attractive content into the light, and dims the light on the rest. While people will feel that this is authoritarian - they would be right.

The thing with communities is that they are founded by individuals who can govern them as they please, however there is nothing stopping anyone else from making the same kind of community in an attempt to poach users. In fact, when it comes to most topics there is space for many multiples and adjacent of the same niche, as long as they can attract enough audience. I picture it like a city or state that has many newspapers that cover many of the same topics, but appeal to different segments of the population.

But, the massive benefit of multiple side-by-side communities is that they can leverage each other's content in various ways, meaning that the best of it gets multiple instances pushed out into the blockchain and the greater internet. This of course happens on other platforms already where there are sites that cater to certain forms or collections of sharable content. For example, while some work might be suitable for Twitter or Facebook like an article, another might be better for Instagram like a photo or meme. Reddit might welcome them all.

What I envisage happening in the future of communities is that rather than individuals alone resteeming, the community are going to bring content in from other sources to better service their user base, and the user base will of course do the same. This means that a conversation for example about politics could be supported by sharing Steem based content directly into the flow of the conversation, or memes as the case may be, without breaking the flow of the discussion.

Layer an SMT on top of this and the shared content can earn from multiple sources simultaneously without the creator even having to be in the room - or know of the room. Multiply this out to hundreds of interface sources nodes and million of users, and a highly dynamic environment would be quickly created where rewards of all kinds can be collected based on the popularity of content through monetized shares, with potentially the person who does the haring taking a piece of the token pie from the share that they made.

And because this is blockchained, there will be a reference to every shared instance that has been made that all ties back to the original instance, no matter where it was created in the ecosystem. This means that for content creators, it doesn't matter where they create it, it matters what they create and where their audience uses it.

There are many possible configurations for the way an application views the blockchain data and serves it to their audience, and a lot of this is going to be trial and error to match method to user. However, the more trial that happens, the leaner, cleaner and less error-prone the process becomes. It is going to be very interesting to see what kinds of design UI and UX experts could deliver in order to maximize user experience and business viability.

Unfortunately for me, I am not a designer nor coder, so have to satisfy myself through the use of my imagination alone. That is ok for me at this point, but I am hoping that in the not too distant future I will be able to get my hands dirty with a group of people who know how to build. But, all creations start from a thought and translated into words before development starts - I don't mind performing the first two.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]