There's a lot that's been written about the limitations of Steemit that have kept the platform from achieving mainstream adoption. Initially, signing up was difficult.

• There's a general distrust, misunderstanding, or disinterest in crypto utility separate from speculation and payments.
• The Steemit website design leaves much to be desired, both in terms of functionality, and in terms of user experience.
  -- This includes straightforward issues like lacking a modern responsive front end design
  -- as well as more cultural elements like the fact that we have a global community of users, but no good way to personalize the experience to a certain language, time zone, etc.

As a career product manager with coding experience, a degree in computer science with a focus on user interface design, and a current software engineering trajectory with a vision for collectivism, cooperativism, and positive change I have a bit to say about each of those points. It hardly seems worth digging in, though, because there doesn't seem to be an active enough development community for Steem that resolving any of these issues would be easily possible.

On top of all of that, the payout framework and governance model of Steemit aren't perfect (or even actively being improved). So, in this post, let's stay away from all of that for the moment.

I'd like to imagine something new: chat.

I'm certain this isn't a new idea for the platform, but I do hope my perspective gives my readers something to think about.

There are four (4) main reasons I think chat is a worthwhile direction to take with the Steemit platform:

1. it's easy to use
2. the timing is always good
3. communities are foundational
4. market fit

Easy

Lower bar to entry

It's easier to produce smaller bits of content

In general, it's a little difficult to create long form post, especially for new users. It's more than a little difficult for users to do so in their non-native language, and on topics they are not familiar with. And neither the Steemit interface nor the Steemit community concerned with new user adoption encourage short form posts a la Twitter, Insta, Snapchat, Facebook, Tik Tok.

In other words, users who are interested in finding a new outlet for social posts are more likely to choose other platforms for reasons beyond the simple popularity of the platforms themselves. There's a high bar to get started with typical posts on Steemit!
Chat would offer to lower this bar

Good timing

Be active when you want to be active

Engagement on your posts is tough to get. You need to find the right Steemit community, and be active in that community to get the most action. Some communities have compulsory prerequisites, or ongoing requirements for post authors to formally or informally qualify to receive full benefits from the community.

It's also difficult to tell which communities are appropriate. It's hard to know how active or serious a community is, and there is no good way to truly understand whether your content will be a good fit.

A simple chat interface would solve a couple of these problems. At the times a user is able to be actively using Steemit, they could see what communities have other users actively chatting. Immediate feedback would help authors learn which communities would appreciate and respond to their content best.

Community!

Developing communities is a foundational element of the creator economy

There are a couple of ways this plays out:

1. individual creators can develop a community on one or more of various social platforms that offer community as a service
2. creators can engage with others on social platforms that offer community building as a feature set

In order to remain relevant in the social platforms of the future, community building and community management need to be a part of any social platform's roadmap. What I've seen on platforms that don't offer chat features is that community developers and community members will migrate elsewhere (like Slack, Discord, or Reddit) to connect with one another. Sometimes it works well. Sometimes it doesn't.

Market fit

Steemit hasn't kept up with major developments in either the social network sector nor the crypto world. One way to attempt to remain relevant would be to try to break into a new market segment. In terms of popular feature sets for social network communities at the moment, live engagement is right up there with community management. New platforms are popping up regularly with text, voice, or video chat as the primary modes of use, and larger networks are beginning to incorporate text and video into their service and product offerings.

A simple chat interface might give Steemit the opportunity to finally carve itself the niche it's always fancied for itself.

In general terms

Here are some of the metrics important for SAAS platform business:

• Churn (users leaving)
• activation and retention (users successfully getting started, and staying)
• customer engagement or DAU / MAU / NAU (your platform getting used; "active users")
• recurring revenue (subscription money)
• NPS or referrals (net promoter score - i.e. would your users tell other users to use the platform?)
• LTV or CLV ("(customer) lifetime value")

In addition to the benefits in individual categories above, an engaging chat feature set would help on all accounts in SAAS metrics. Reducing the bar to posting will temper churn, and help users get started more quickly. You want a low time-to-value, and that's how these two metrics improve.

Active users would improve because of ease of access, but also because the nature of chat is more engaging than long form posts and likes.

I'll think of recurring revenue in terms of the Steem blockchain, which to me means you're looking to increase overall stake ; not as the only metric, but it's a big one. Obviously, there's some simple math involved here: more users who find value, and stay active because of it means more opportunity for users to stake their accrued tokens. But beyond that, while I haven't given much thought to the exact accrual system that a chat framework on Steem could look like, there are multiple stakeholders that would benefit from a thriving system (individual producers, individual readers, community managers, accounts with large stake in a community... ), which means tokens could be traded for value in new and unique ways. That's not what revenue traditionally looks like for a SAAS, but I think the elements of what that means for a SAAS are present in the token accrual and stake framework.

The last two, referral potential and customer value address the value of an engaged user, and the value of that user recommending that other individuals use the product too. Hopefully, a more engaging feature set in the form of text, voice, and video chat as well as a meaningful stakeholder framework would incentivize user sticking around, developing a stake in Steem (or being a mechanism for others to stake based on their engagement), and tell other people to come along!

A few final notes

I mentioned the lack of active development; obviously, new features fall victim to the same dilemma as features that have been well documented as ideas already. So if there is no robust development community to actively work on responsive design and the value accrual framework, then where would the developers for chat features come from? Alas, I'm really just brainstorming. I don't know that a post like this can really have an impact on the Steem ecosystem.

Value accrual:

This is tough. I'm not sure how chatters could receive their due, or how the platform could calculate how much value to pass around to whom, and so on. But, I believe it could be done.

What do you think?