Blockchain-based blogging and social networking is an attractive proposition.
Contrary to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn who keep 100% of the profit stemming from your activity in their online social network, Steemit (which started in 2016) has a different proposition. In essence, you get paid for your activity by other members (close to a million at the time of publishing this) who like or see value in it.
In my view, it’s currently the most innovative alternative to mainstream social media sites.
Since it rewards authors with payments for their contributions with a cryptocurrency called Steem, it’s a neat introduction to cryptocurrency… and a smart way to be paid for creating informational value. Technically, you not expected to mine Steem with an expensive computer rig but rather by creating and commenting on content, which is then written to the Steem blockchain and stored in a permanent blockchain ledger. Easy peasy!
Social networks are promised to a fabulous future if participants can easily get paid when they create value.
To this day, Steemit claims over USD$40,000,000 of payments to contributors. Seriously, wow. Especially considering Facebook has paid USD$0, a big fat ZERO DOLLARS, since its inception. Talk about a very different model. Distributed wealth with Steemit instead of wealth concentration, with Facebook.
This here, with Steemit, is pure genuine innovation.
Sure, you can create content on Facebook, Instragram, Twitter and LinkedIn and key in some sponsored talking points but that’s an older model. Steemit lets you connect to other members and be paid, through their ongoing financial retribution.
Free
I chose to pay my signup through Steem.ninja to use my PayPal account to authentify, for USD$2,50 which proves I’m for real and not a “bot”.
Facebook is INFESTED with hundreds of millions of “bots” and fake accounts. Because of the smarter signup process at Steemit, it doesn’t happen or very little. Nothing like the Facebook onslaught of non-human activity.
Other than the fact I paid a little fee for my sign-up process to go faster, it’s free to create one account and post content. If you want to create multiple accounts (which theoretically would allow you to post and vote on more content), you’re charged a fee.
Naturally, you must provide an email address and phone number to join. This allows Steemit’s admin to verify that each user has signed up for only one free account. Anonymity doesn’t seem to be discouraged but if you happen claim to be someone specific, you need to give evidence that you’re that person, for real.
No ads but personal data can be shared
Steemit is ad-free, hurray!
It makes the interface less cluttered and you feed won’t constatly be interrupted by “sponsored content”.
But you need to be aware that Steemit will share your personal data if it helps ad partners “carry out work” and as far as I know, the wording is purposely vague. Perhaps the type of sharing will become clearer, over time. Perhaps it’s just to get insight in the metadata of maybe it’s more. At this point, it’s hard to see.
Getting paid to blog is an attractive idea and just for that, millions more will be drawn to this new way of connecting with like-minded people, around the world.
For those who want to know more, the Steemit service is available here: https://steemit.com/
