SA’s City of Durban to be engulfed by STEEM! The world to follow!

The world’s first Super Spectacular Advertising Billboard, crowdfunded by the disruptive blockchain social media website, Steemit.com, may soon be hitting Durban’s shores in South Africa!

This groundbreaking blockchain funded concept becoming a reality, pends only on the outcome of the support this article (or post) garners from the Steemit.com community in the form of upvotes which will increase the SBD monetary value of this suggestion post on Steemit.com, the proceeds of which will be used to purchase billboard space.

The @steemdrive blog, a sub-blog within Steemit.com, was created by Durban born entrepreneur and Steemit blogger, Ricardo Goncalves; to serve as a ‘real world’ promotion vehicle for the social website which he has beta tested since the early stages and has become familiar with the use and use-case opportunities the platform can provide to both corporate and the individual.

The ground-zero launch of the @steemdrive billboard advertising campaign to promote the Steemit.com social site is set to be in held his hometown of Durban, South Africa, following a successful funding round received from the blockchain community and thereafter scheduled to spread worldwide at a pace to be established by the community voting support received.

For those of you who are not yet involved with, or are new to Steemit.com, it can be described as the first decentralized, immutable (un-censorable) social media website ever created.

Steemit.com, unlike traditional social media which profits off users’ content with advertising revenue; actually pays its users to blog and produce noteworthy content and incentivizes readers to engage and vote on good content (curatorship).

Upon signup, each user currently receives approximately a 10 USD equivalent from the blockchain platform in the form of Steem Dollars (exchangeable 1:1 with the US Dollar) , as gratis starter funding to begin exploring, voting, blogging and best of all … earning revenue for receiving upvotes for content which the community appreciates to be adding value!

All worthy participants are paid in the aforementioned Steem Dollars within 24 hours of posting their content; furthermore, these rewards, if left in the user’s virtual wallet, accrue interest at a rate of roughly 10% pa.

In addition to this, Steem Power is also paid out. Steem Power enhances activity rewards received for curation voting and also frequently compounds in the virtual wallet throughout the day. In a unique customer retention strategy formulated by Steemit.com, Steem Power can be regarded akin to receiving shares in a company, redeemable over a 2 (two) year period in 104 equal weekly instalments into the Steem crypto currency ( the exchange listed Digital Asset ), which has seen its value rise from $0.21 early July 2016 to today’s indexed market price of $3.5 at the time of writing, after stabilizing from a recent peak of approx. $4.4.

Steemit.com is built upon the graphene blockchain of the Bitshares cryptocurrency, not too dissimilar to bitcoin (from a non-technical point of view of course) ; where the underlying blockchain (distributed network) also requires mining to process transactions, nodes to bear witness in transaction verification and an index-able token of value which fluctuates with market sentiment, much like bitcoin.

The Steem graphene blockchain has added industrial performance and scalability capable of processing more transactions every second than VISA and MasterCard combined.

It is important to note that posts compete for a share of a daily pool of funds released by the blockchain itself and voting does not reduce the holdings of the voter, instead merely informs the blockchain of the content which is worthy of receiving a share of the pool

Not all posts win massive revenue and users do need to carve out a niche for themselves to become successful. In saying that however, there have been a great many posts that have achieved between 10 and 150 Dollar payouts; with noteworthy posts earning upwards of this, as high as a make-up tutorial achieving 607 votes adding up to a staggering $26 659.84 payout for the author of the post.

The Steemit.com social concept is in itself the very definition of Ubuntu, a South African term stemming from the Nungi language; which refers to “behaving well towards others or acting in ways that benefit the community.” Apart from the literary novelty of launching this campaign in South Africa, there is an abundance of other socio-economic factors whereby Steemit.com could help improve the lives of South Africans as described by the @steemdrive campaign founder, Ricardo Goncalves in his personal address below:

Public Address - The Launch of @steemdrive

My name is Ricardo Goncalves, family man and entrepreneur, born and raised in Durban, South Africa.

In the crypto space I started out researching bitcoin and various crypto currencies that intrigued me and created a vlog and Facebook group called TheCryptoDrive to share my findings.

Soon after I discovered Steemit.com, I approached Bravenewcoin.com, a Digital Asset market data provider and Expanse.tech an upcoming crypto currency, to allow me to assist them in posting their content on Steemit.com and am now proud to be Community Manager for both on Steemit.

The Steemit community will know me as @thecryptodrive, @bravenewcoin and @expanse. In addition, I will now also be involved in the @steemdrive sub-blog which will be dedicated to world-wide promotion of the Steemit.com social platform.

In the real world (outside of crypto currencies) my background is in Marketing and Information Systems; having graduated in marketing and Information Systems from the University of Kwazulu Natal (UKZN) and later obtained a Digital Interactive Media Studies Diploma from Mediatek (now Vega International School of Arts Durban).

Among other things, I started out in business as co-founder of an IT support and ISP venture and later went on operate an Industrial Parts Heat Treatment company, in addition to this I have 10 years of import/export experience; which will be useful for the global co-ordination of this project. I believe that my overall experience and research has led me to this point to have conceptualized this campaign, which I am uniquely positioned to manage and execute on a global scale.

In my mind, South Africa is the perfect use-case for the launch of Steemit.com billboard campaign!
Since the 2007 financial markets collapse and the recent passing of our iconic president, Nelson Mandela (Madiba) in 2013; South Africa has never quite been the same. Even before these events; our country was plagued with violence, corruption, high unemployment, inequality, crime, unrest and a racist divide.

Relevant to this billboard campaign, Statssa.gov.za provides key economic and demographic statistics about South Africa; most notable is the vast population of 55.6 Million registered people to be reached and in addition to this, there are undoubtedly thousands of unregistered and unbanked persons who will benefit from exposure to an online Digital Currency and earning platform.

The youth as a percentage of population is also a significant factor, reported at 36.2% and the government has since acknowledged that high youth unemployment is currently a national burden and an Employment Tax Incentive (ETI) for businesses has already been issued to promote job creation for youth workers by local industry, but the effect of this incentive will still take a long time to fully bring about change.

Today’s youth are greatly under-empowered, with relatively few job opportunities available for them in an embattled economy.

A large number of young people are already computer and mobile phone literate, with access to the same in one form or another; Steemit.com thus has the potential to become an entrepreneurial platform for the youth to innovate and express themselves and their causes, creating their own opportunities.

Official unemployment figures in South Africa across all age groups remain staggeringly high at 26.7% of the population in Q1-2016, being one of the highest in the world.

With high unemployment, comes high crime rates as can be seen by the murder rates listed on crimestatssa.com , showing South Africa to have the 12th highest murder rate in the world of 31.8 homicides per year, per 100,000 inhabitants.
All other crime levels are also highly elevated, including housebreakings, human trafficking, petty theft, hijacks, unlawful and disruptive riots, drug related crime and general violence and abuse.

Corruption and censorship are also major problems. Corruption is a well-known and exhaustive topic in South Africa, however an attitude towards censorship is recently creeping in, where South Africa recently voted against a United Nations Resolution for “the Promotion, Protection and Enjoyment of Human Rights on the Internet.” seen by the public as a step in the wrong direction.

In further censorship related news events, the top 8 journalists of local parastatal broadcaster SABC, were terminated for speaking out and objecting against censorship instructions.

It is my belief and hope that Steemit.com can help address the aforementioned issues in South Africa by creating jobs for those who have the initiative to join the community and contribute content. The idea is to create and promote this platform as a creative outlet to take the focus away from committing crime and rather directed into the potentially lucrative online experience Steemit.com offers; thus reducing the need to resort to violations of human rights to make a living.

South African’s have a wealth of history and struggles to share with the world, and what better way to create employment than through a medium where the previously disadvantaged, can now uplift themselves on Steemit.com.

Steemit.com is a platform where the local artist can post a blog about his soap stone or wood carved creations for example; local ministries and political parties can evangelize their causes, or where even the traditional story-teller can create an audience to sustain him.

Journalism can thrive on the immutable Steem blockchain of Steemit.com, journalists will no longer fear the suppression of news content where only they control its existence on the blockchain; all-the-while creating self-employment through being paid by the community to host their own sub-blog site, perfect for the promotion of quality freelance journalism.

South Africa also has an abundance of sporting talent, many players of which are grossly underpaid by international standards; who could benefit from exposure in Steemit.com and possible sponsorship by the community and blockchain itself.

Having previously hosted both Rugby and Soccer World Cups and a potential candidate for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, South Africa is a noteworthy country in its own right and with the proper stimulus could become great again, as Africa’s biggest economy.

The Campaign

The campaign will operate fairly simply, the popularity of this initial post will determine the feasibility of this venture, while the current payout model is in place, 80% of all liquid Steem Dollar (SBD) will go towards purchasing billboard advertising space to promote Steemit.com.

• @steemdrive has obtained preliminary prices and even if this post achieves only half of what the make-up tutorial paid out, we will at least be able to afford some decent exposure. The higher the value of the post payout, the longer the billboard(s) can remain in flight, and the greater the number of sites that can be rented.

• Should the post be a phenomenal news-worthy success, we will further engage with local radio and print media to cover the story.

• @steemdrive will also motivate to the various billboard agencies to offer us extended rental of the billboard spaces in exchange for the promotion of their brand on the @steemdrive Steemit blog.

• Eventually billboard agencies who accept payment in Steem Dollars (SBD) will be favoured in our campaigns, thereby increasing adoption of the Steem Dollar Digital Currency.

• Weekly progress updates will be posted and once the billboards are erected, photos will be posted, inclusive of proof of expenditure for transparency to the community.

• On an ongoing basis, we will post renewal and new site campaign offers for the community to vote on.

• Active sites will have their own post within the @steemdrive blog on Steemit.com with the title prefix “Active”, eventually the website steemdrive.com will go live with a gallery and details of each site, and showing expiry dates for renewal purposes.

Taking the Campaign Global!

Following a successful initial launch in South Africa, we will launch globally and be looking to partner with international Steemit community members to be our liaisons in their respective countries and states to scout for local billboard agencies, assist in translation, obtain quotes and make recommendations to @steemdrive for billboard placement, provide verified proof or site installation etc. (In the United States we will most likely need one liaison in each state)

Liaisons will be paid 20% of the Steem Dollar (SBD) payout for the post related to the campaign they are involved in facilitating.

I would like to propose the following liaisons for the regions listed below; these are people I will find easy to work with, due to my existing relationship with them:

Australia – bravenewcoin.com ( @bravenewcoin ) a crypto media publishing and market data powerhouse, headquartered in Australia and with satellite offices in New Zealand.

France - @cryptoctopus – esteemed Facebook and Steemit marketer and co-author of the Steemit 101 e-book and first mentor on Steemit; @clement data marketing consultant, analyst and really nice person.

New Zealand – bravenewcoin.com ( @bravenewcoin ) and @cryptoiskey a very supportive and creative Steemit friend.

Romania - @razevanelull all round great guy.

Portugal - @kanoptx – a good friend of mine and the reason I was introduced to Steemit.

USA, Michigan - @madhatting, enthusiastic Steemit supporter and writer for hongcoin.

USA, Tenessee - @fuzzyvest, good friend and founder of @beyondbitcoin weekly hangouts.

If I haven’t mentioned some of you which I often liaise with, it is mainly because I don’t know or can’t remember where you were from, or because you are a Steemit developer and your time is stretched already.

All potential applicants in other countries and regions please motivate in a reply below why you should be selected as liaison and include your Slack name or other contact detail. Alternatively pm me on Slack @thecryptodrive .

Disclaimer:

@steemdrive and its operator(s) reserves the right to amend the terms of future campaigns based on operational feasibility. All billboard artwork shall be copyright of @steemdrive and its operator(s).

In parting I leave you with these images of what could be potential Steemit advertising sites if enough support is garnered for this and future @steemdrive upvote events. @steemdrive welcomes your support and assistance to make Steemit.com great and change the world for the greater good of scociety!

https://steemit.com/money/@steemdrive/sa-s-city-of-durban-to-be-engulfed-by-steem-the-world-to-follow