The Steem Blockchain as a "Benevolent" Platform for Internet Services
Shortly after I wrote about Storify’s impending paid only move, an article by The Verge’s Kaitlyn Tiffany caught my attention: TinyLetter is a perfect platform and it is probably not dying.
The article dealt with MailChimp’s ownership of TinyLetter and another period of uncertainty over whether TinyLetter would be kept as a stand-alone and free platform. TinyLetter users aren’t strange to such hubbaloo and as usually, the storm wouldn’t have filled a tea glass and the news is that TinyLetter will continue to exist as a stand-alone platform. At least for now. Minimalists and kitchen sink features haters like me, rejoiced
What particularly caught my attention in Tiffany’s article was the following line:
The fear that there is no such thing as a truly “benevolent” and reliable platform is a founded one...
Tiffany arguments this with several high-profile examples of online properties which have been shuttered, absorbed or outrightly killed because of sheer stupidity by their overlords. Each time resulting in users losing a platform they loved and liked.
Sometimes a fight back was staged victoriously such as in the case of Patreon when Patreon increased the fees and users argued. While writing here on the Steem blockchain, obviously, I have to disclose my utter disdain for Patreon as a model, or rather platform, a platform which serves only the largest creators using it and those with an already large user/follower base. For anybody else, for every small time (content) creator or hobbyist, Patreon is pretty much only for the breadcrumbs. With much less chance to be discovered than minnows on the Steem blockchain have.
Which brings us to the Steem blockchain. And indirectly to SMTs too.
When writing about Storify I wondered:
Could an existence on the blockchain have saved Storify and reduced its operational costs sufficiently to continue to operate as a standalone tool, even if owned by a commercial behemoth like Adobe?
Would a future Storify clone, complete with Steem rewards upvoting mechanism, become a more popular tool?
Imagine TinyLetter, a minimalist newsletter operated by one of the goliaths in the newsletter scene, were built as a free platform on the Steem blockchain, making use of the almost to the Steem blockchain unique beneficiary feature.
The platform would send emails to all recipients and receive a share of the rewards of each post.
Each newsletter operator, mailer, would benefit their own archive, just like TinyLetter does as well. Example: comic author Kieron Gillen’s newsletter archive at TinyLetter.
As Steemians we all know about the benefits of creating and publishing on the Steem blockchain. Contrarily to serving as a reason to pay a monthly subscription, a perk, like on platforms like Patreon, the content created is public and visible to everyone and every Steemian can reward the creator. The SMT/platform takes a share of all rewards, incentivizing them to find high quality and high profile authors, whose networks they can tap in and can contribute to the platform’s popularity and possible virality even.
The more creators a platform can get, the higher its reach. The higher the profile of those creators, the higher the possibility that new Steemians may also invest in STEEM (power) and the higher the potential revenue of a platform operating on the Steem blockchain, without needing to resort to advertising revenues or fees for premium content.
Creators themselves would be rewarded as well, possibly much more than most ever can earn from platforms like Patreon. Because of the more passive cost of Steem upvotes.
The Steem blockchain has already several platforms operating on this concept, making use of beneficary in order to cover costs and development like DLive, dTube, DSound and several more. Many more to come this year and in the coming years.
Most of those platforms operate with 15-25% beneficiary, which can result in generous rewards for the most viral content. Even at these early stages in the Steem ecosystem(*).
The question now is whether the Steem blockchain could even operate as benevolent platform and cover additional, third-party, expenses a service operator may have in order to operate their platform. For example the expense incurred from mass mailing and also marketing efforts.
While I am aware that the Steem blockchain isn’t free as such(**), my question remains the same: Is the Steem blockchain the benevolent platform the Internet currently doesn’t have?
I think the Steem blockchain may surprise you. Maybe you should give it a try. Even if this post can not currently provide an answer to your observation, at the very least the Steem ecosystem is a worthy subject to investigate and cover on The Verge. If you don’t want to wait for the default account approval, give me a buzz on Twitter before signing up and I will gladly provide the SP required to get your account started without approval delay.
(*) Sadly enough @jesta hasn’t been able yet to bring back the reports for Steem Clients in the SteemDB Labs after the DB migration
(**) Bandwidth comes at a cost (SP)
The world unfortunately seems to have more and more situations like these. I can't help but think it boils down to everything being "about money."
Of course, I have nothing against money; what concerns me is the ground approach: There is a huge difference between saying "I'm going to start a business because I want to make lots of money!" and saying "There's a need for this service, so I'm going to start a business and hopefully make some money."
In one, money "leads" and the service is more or less incidental; in the other, the service "leads." and money is merely a consequence. The functional manifestation ends up being HUGELY different.
Money gets a lot of undeserved criticism because it's where a society's diverse values and priorities are made clear. Almost any time two people find that their values and priorities are in conflict they can blame the problem on money, because money is the intermediate step between one person's priority and the other's.
People who let money lead don't understand what money is, and they aren't likely to earn or manage it as effectively as they could with a better understanding. A society's money is its most objective measure of the values of its people, and acquiring it legitimately requires producing what people value.
This is also why it's so dangerous to allow a monetary system to become corrupted and manipulated. Corruption of the money leaves a society with a distorted and warped value system and tends to have a corrupting influence on individuals as well.
I have been giving this topic a lot of thought recently, and had only considered the advent of SMT's, being unaware of the beneficiary function. I have high hopes that Steemit can spawn platforms possessed of it's potential to serve the functions of a voluntarist government, without the demeaning overwhelming dedication of it's rewards to the ROI of whales.
As @troglodactyl points out, a society is much more than an economy. As long as society functions in that light, great things are happening. When the entire focus of a society is on it's money, people become commodities and society becomes adjunct to commerce.
Followed.
Awesome thoughts.
Thanks!