Part 2 will deal with the future... but this one is "Past and Present"

@photogames finale week for Season 2 Challenged us to share two pictures and write some thoughts about STEEMIT and PHOTOGAMES and to talk about the future of Steemit. I'll do this by sharing where we came from to start.

FUTURE STEEMIT
_So enjoy the images for Past and Present and then if you feel like it read through my ramblings about the state of steemit and the future of steemit will be in another post since this one is so long already. It was important to set the past and present baselines first before I get to my thoughts on future steemit and even some thoughts about future @photogames.

DISCLAIMERS
Warning this is a long long post that could have easily be divided into 3 and was originally gonna be just 1 but 2 posts will be fine. Maybe some day I'll re-finish and re-post in 3 parts but enjoy it here now. And know that these are working theories and opinions and I reserve the right to re-think these things and polish them up and I reserve the right to get smarter. As I allow you that right as well. P.s. I also ran out of time to polish it up thoroughly

PAST (Where we came from)

I like to think this was the ancient ancient social media page... "Newspaper Rock" In Utah is thought to be a place where ancient inhabitants came to share their stories / thoughts /news /art. Much like what we do today in a slightly bigger manner with a few more participants

Past will focus primarily on the competitors to steem/steemit but i'll share a bit of my experience and then focus on Present to talk about it more

PAST STEEMIT / PHOTOGRAPHY

I have only been on steemit for about 4 months now. I have seriously enjoyed my time and spoiler alert in my "future of steemit post" i still have a more rosey (though tempered) outlook. I have rekindled a passion for actually blogging my photography something I used to do when I first got into photography. More than views/likes/votes I'm finding fulfillment in creating things of worth, making creations (posts) of worth.

• I have spent time on themes.
• I have spent time educating.
• I have done trip reports that if nothing else I want to revisit when I go back to these places
• I have created content that matters (maybe just to me and a few people but it actually matters)
• I have interacted by votes and comments a TON.
• I have delved heavily into the economics and advanced strategies of steemit.
• I have helped to create a small community with other photographers.

Now let's compare that

FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM CHANGED POSTING PICTURES FOR THE WORSE

Facebook and Instagram changed how I shared my photography, I went with the flow not because it was the best for me and my photography but because everyone else was doing it. A long time ago I learned you could get as many likes/hearts by posting one picture as a you could a gallery or a really nicely written post in a theme... it was then I mostly stopped posting blogs or photoshoot galleries and stopped focusing on themes... I let my blog die because honestly people stopped going to blogs they spent their time on facebook now. So I stopped educate hardly as much... the game and the attention was at facebook so I went there and posted, then on instagram. Where thoughtful content didn't matter. You could post a picture and get X likes/hearts or you could write a bunch or post a gallery and get the same amount of Likes.

INSTAGRAM DOWN HILL

On these platforms (instagram more so) Your time was spent not producing content, educating or inspiring. Your time was spent thinking about how you would get people to respond. Or on instagram on how to curate all those pretty little boxes into a nice appealing "adaptive portfolio" almost like a museum curator aka how all those images in the grid would look when together became just as important or more than the individual content, you had to make sure the next image didn't throw off the feng fung of the rest of the images. Now I'm not knocking those two skill sets... I think they're both interesting and sort of valuable skills. The problem is that on instagram it became and is still way to dependent on those two elements. It's almost as if the best community engagers are also the most manipulative (hopefully in a positive way), they spend their time thinking about what will make people react the most. OR instagram is about how will someone become Insta-Famous. The trend of social media was to let people's voices be heard and feel connection, the problem was that people could hollow echo chambers where people felt this sense of connection and being heard without any real substance needed to be attached to it. So fakers could do just as well. (that's a whole other story and probably a reason why many people these days are feeling the social media burn... because they've had a bit too much shallow connection and are yearning for something more substantial)

INSTAGRAM THEFT IS PRAISED

On instagram the thing is you're supposed to thank the accounts that STEAL your stuff to help you become Insta-Famous (specially for photography) And insta-famous doesn't really happen anymore (not like before) because everyone is so satiated with people they follow they don't follow new people as much as before. AND the algorithms got changed.
So think about that next time you complain about plagarism on steemit. In comparison on steemit it's almost no where to be found. On instagram it's how the site was built, how stars became stars. We're conditioned to thank the curators of big accounts for "making us famous" as they really are the only ones gaining any power off the fruits of our labor. I play the game to I'm conditioned to be excited over there when accounts use my stuff ... but I know now that the accounts using my stuff are the ones profiting ... not me.

THE BATE AND SWITCH SCAM OF FACEBOOK (and instagram)

I've said it before Facebook and Instagram let you create your audiences and you could depend on their views and interaction to some extent. Then facebook specially changed everything with their business pages, it was a few years ago that they just pulled off their scam. We spent years of effort building our business pages and then one day they came around and said we're changing the algorithms and basically you had to start paying money to get your stuff in front of people. So most people I know gave up on their pages. I know I did after years of hard work. Now a page with 8k will get like 100 views if I post something there. It's basically dead... and believe me I am not the worst case scenario and i let it die really early on. There were pages getting hundreds of thousands of views that went to a few thousand views. Content producers helped build facebook and facebook rewarded us with the ability to give them more money. I understand it... but I don't have to like it or spend my time there.

TEMPERED RESPONSE

I owe facebook a lot... it has made me and maintained many many friends over the years. It has led to a grand majority of my wedding photography over the years. It still is a great way to remind friends that I do photography. Sure the business pages were a scam tactic and sure the algorithms in general are manipulative and sure they don't play nice with outside sites and they penalize me for posting steemit and I understand why... because they're gaurding their site. But i'm thankful for facebook i've been on it for 13+ years which is a long time. Instagram never really added much value in my life, I got more photoshoots from google plus than I ever did from instagram. I still get nice interaction ... and at 50-60k followers I'm not sure if that's insta-famous but it's not gonna happen now. I'll stay on facebook i'll use messenger, I'll interact with my friends and I'll keep just plugging away on facebook but I also have to make a living and not sure if facebook is the place to focus on for that anymore.

THE FLIGHT

I know lots of very very successful social media creators... primarily in the Youtube world. The other day in prep for a project a counted it up. I am friends with over 20 people that have 1 million+ subscribers on youtube. I listen and I know that they're on edge, youtube and facebook have proved time and time again that you're moments away from being shut down and sometimes for no reason at all. You can loose your monetization or have bogus copyright claims and you're done. They keep an eye out for what's next because they know youtube isn't the solid ground they need it to be. They can't keep their eggs in one basket. They may not just ditch youtube but they are keeping an eye out for what is next.

In the next section I'll share why it is steemit is not right for them.... YET...

PRESENT

Friday night I did a family shoot. They just had a baby addition not long ago to their family which was already 5 childrend strong. But this time it was a little baby girl, yep there were 5 boys under 11 years old and now there is a new little girl. I grabbed a candid of mom and her new little girl.
The point is that this is also an analogy... steem/steemit are pretty dang new. Things are early and there is lots of room for growth. But I see potential somewhat like how this mom sees her daughter's potential but is working hard to nourish her present

PRESENT STEEMIT

Let me share my own experience as of right now on steemit and contrast it to how i thought it would go.
Yesterday I was talking to my old friend @derekkind , he was the first friend I told about steemit and has came here and done immensely well. He just got a new job so he's settling in on that together with a move but we were talking yesterday and reminiscing on these 4 months. He complemented me and said Steemit played out just as I said it would. Then he asked if I thought it was going as expected. Yes... but no. Truth is with all the compliments i'm about to give steemit the truth is it did kind of what i expected but the rates of growth are getting slower not faster. (we'll touch on that later)

I'll recap how I sold it 4 months ago. I said I envisioned It would grow steadily and our earnings per post would slowly grow. That minimum per post would grown and really good earning posts would just stay sporadic and just be nice side-perks. I said we would all grow and help eachother out and the boat would rise. Our boat would rise together.

RATING STEEM POST SUCCESS

I think too often we rate our success by how many posts get the big viral-esque bumps and we look at the peaks for our validation.
I look at those posts as perks but they are not my basis for success on steemit.

I look at the baseline. What do my posts get at the very minimum. When there are no random passer-byes to throw a few dollars my way. When it doesn't get noticed by @photofeed or @travelfeed or @cryptoctopus.

MILESTONE
I think i've recently hit a big milestone ... I think that amount is now $2 (it means the average is much higher because some posts hit 3-4 and sometimes they get boosted to 10-20) but you can't focus on the peaks. Focus on your baseline.
That baseline is all about consistent growth, not just increasing your follower count but increasing the number of people you have even better connections with. Being a part of a community.

Because the USD value of steem fluctuates so much (which is completely normal for a crypto currency and should surprise no-one)
I tend to look at the STEEM value of my posts not the dollar amount it shows you.

PERSPECTIVE
So i look at where i came from ... starting off at a few cents of steem and now hitting about 1.5 steem as my baseline. And part of that strategy has been to invest in things myself and use my vote but even without that it's still over 1 steem.
So the 100x growth has been great but obviously a ton of work I've spent a lot of time on lots many many posts, tons of voting and commenting in the photo community and lots of @photogames organization. Steemit is not a free ride in my opinion, I never did view it as fast and easy money. I think @derekkind and @caseygrimley can attest to how I pitched it. From what I remember I said it would be slowly gaining more and more steem as we all rose together.

VALUE IN THE SYSTEM - The 4 Cs

I think people expect that if they post something awesome or breathtakingly beautiful they should automatically be rewarded in a direct comparison to what they see in trending.
They seem to say "My pictures exhibit more talent than what I saw in trending and thus I should be rewarded more than they" I'm not sure if they got the memo that there are other things that provide value in this system.

This system values:

• Content
• Capital
• Connections
• Commitment

I would say that Content has no more power than any of the other 3. You will not succeed if all you focus on is one of these 4 things. You need a bit of each of them... or a lot of each. Perhaps I'll expand on this in another post where these ideas don't just get lost in my super long post already.

PHOTOGAMES IS PIVOTAL

I am going to make a big statement. I think @photogames is one of if not the most important Photography Community on Steemit. I don't know enough about other tight communities on steemit to compare it to others but in the photo world of photography @photogames has made and will continue to make a big impact. I'll talk about why @photogames has been and will continue to be so influential in the FUTURE section of this really long post.

But in short recap @photogames has brought together the most active photographers on the platform connected them with eachother and empowered them. It didn't pull in every photographer like @photocontests or @photofeed does, they have greater numbers but @photogames brought the influencers together the active posters and interactors and it put them together and helped create stronger connections. If we are to revisit an analogy it put them all on the boat together that is rising with the tide. In my future section I'll talk about how this is the group that will have lasting effects on the future of photography on steemit. They will be born from these simple @photogames ... regardless if @photogames lasts the test of time.

PERSPECTIVE
At this present moment the number of photographers on is small... really small. That's just how it is. I spend lots of time on #photofeed and from time to time I check out @photocontests and #photography feed. The truth is that steemit is a really small place and the number of photographers on this platform is just really small. That's just how it is. And though I am biased my biased review says that the majority of the most interactive and influential photographers are on @photogames ... and that's some power when you put them together. I'm not gonna say if @photogames made them the best and most influential or just attracted them. That's some chicken and egg stuff and to be honest my assessment would be overly biased to be very real. There are certainly plenty of great photographers on steemit that have never interacted with @photogames. There are plenty that just focus on post a picture contests or have little groupings of their own. But I'll explain why an early adopter site like Steemit is not a very good place for a lone wolf type person.

STEEMIT = EARLY ADOPTER SITE

At present moment Steemit is text book early adopter site. And maybe after 2 years you had hoped it wasn't ... but it is. There aren't even 1 million subscribers. Many of you may have experienced a bit of Early Adopter sites but I bet most of you who read this have never really been on a early adopter site like this before. Or maybe I'm preaching to the choir because you're on here now. I was one of the first million people on facebook. I was there back when it was a struggle to find a single friend to connect with. Back before it was public back before facebook was a namebrand, before every person knew what it was. Back when I had to explain the concept to people. Now people just know what it is. They also know what youtube is and instagram. But there were days where those had to be explained and were foreign. I was on facebook in early adopter days.

WHAT EARLY ADOPTER MEANS

• You have no friends there
• You had to go out of your ways to connect
• You had to be a sort of ambassador and educator of the system
• You had to have a type of faith it would last
• You had to believe some day mass adoption would come
• You had to find value in the present just in case it never did.
• You had to survive through a thousand changes to the site, half of them kicking and screaming.

We forget history to often. We live in a time where facebook rarely does anything drastic. But back in the day there were many many times facebook changed things drastically.

• Jarvie Joins Facebook (Early 2005)
• The layout (Changed more often than you think)
• Photos (2006)
• Open to Public (2007)
• Pages (end of 2007)
• Chat (2008)
• New layout (2008)
• Tag people (2009)
• Like button (2009)
• News Feed (2009)
• Becomes a profitable company (2009)
• Communities (2010)
• Design changes again (2010)
• New layout... again (2011)
• Messenger on Mobile (2011)
• Longer posts than 500 characters (2011)
• Advertisements in news feed (2012)

Emojis, Editing of posts, going public, hitting 1 billion users, trending topics, new feed algorithms, FB newswire, keyword searches etc

I remember there almost being uprisings when they made some of their changes. I don't think we have a lot of institutional memory for what a new site tends to go through. We tend to thing that to compete in a world where a Facebook exists that a site has to start on par with facebook.

I think an early adopter should understand that their site is going to have problems and need a lot of improvement. That a good site will grow and adapt and keep innovating. So you have to have trust that a site will keep fighting to stay alive and be relevant and that it has a unique reason to do so.

STEEMIT RIGHT NOW

I think it's important that people are neither in la-la land and that they don't just hear never-ending praise for Steem/Steemit. And I think they should have a solid hope for the future. There's little reason to be here during an early adopter stage without that hope. Otherwise might as well sit on the sidelines and wait until Early Adopter stage is over and Mass Adoption starts. It's like being a market trader, some trades look good but are just too risky if you really don't have solid reasons to get you into the trade might as well wait for more signs and less risk even though that takes perhaps a significant amount of potential value off the table.

Steemit right now has issues. I think we know that. We don't need to expand on them or bash on them. Just recognize it's something that needs to be worked on. I think you'll find my list differs on a few points than a normal list.

• Sign Up process
• Lack of awareness about steemit
• Ease of use for new user
• People's fixation on how trending needs to be exactly what they want it to be.
• Connecting communities
• Design leading towards easier user experience.
• General unfamiliarity towards block-chain and crypto currency. Aka education for a new industry in general.

Each one of these could be a post and I'm sure lots of people write about these things.

So while I know that Steem blockchain and the Steemit app have a long ways to go I am at the same time happy with where i've personally been able to come through some hard work and persistence.

Right now one of the problems is people fixate too much on Trending either as some sort of magic goal or as some sort of barometer for the health of the whole site. I think this is silly. Again a whole other post I suppose. But just note it down that @jarvie thinks it's silly how preoccupied you all are with how perfect a system trending is. (Half of you have already admitted you don't go to trending anyway) For the record I happen to like going to trending and find good articles constantly but it's not my "end all / be all" measuring stick for the site or my experience. And in the "future of steemit" post I'll talk about how in the future we'll find solutions to the things we desire OUTSIDE (and inside) Trending.

PRESENT PHOTOGAMES

@Photogames this last month was amazing, we had great interactions on our posts we had great interaction as a group on our discord

We're about to end season 2 and someone will get a huge payout. If I do well in the final standings it's cool for everyone because I'm putting that money right back into @photogames for future prizes. I loved having a season where a lot of effort and determination won the day. And perhaps season 2 format won't be repeated (at least not regularly) but I thought it was a nice change to have a contest that didn't cater to the laziest of the participants ... it for sure didn't appeal to the casual steemit user. The users that come in every week or so and find what contest they can throw a picture at and then totally forget about it until perhaps they get a notification they won. Those contests are nice to have around but I'm glad we had one that pushed people that kinda sorta separated the wheat from the chaff and congealed a great group of photographers into a core that will be an interesting and pivotal part of the future. (look for next post)

ACCEPT MY SORT OF APOLOGY
I have to go to church and have to cut this short... i've been working on it for a while and can't commit to polishing it up super nice and fixing every grammar error. And to be honest I'm not really sorry about it... so you're gonna have to deal with it. haha

But when I get back I'll start working on the FUTURE POST

THE FUTURE PREVIEW

I think there are some things the developers need to work on of course, I'll talk about how I think that may play out. I will talk about how I think Mass Adoption may end up happening (Spoiler alert... I bet it happens) I'll even talk about the fun side subject of STEEM price and where I predict it going.

I'll also talk about where I see @photogames going but more importantly where the ripples of the impact of #photogames will be felt in the future. (Spoiler alert... It's favorable)

YOUR THOUGHTS / REACTIONS

• I want to hear them.
• I want to use them to adapt and grow and perhaps change my opinions.
• I want to at least refine my opinions and perhaps write a post 3 times better than this some day.
• I want to hear who even read through the whole thing.
• I want to know who's looking forward to the next post.