Why Steemit, the new kid on the block, is set to make serious waves in Social Media

So you’ve probably haven’t heard of Steemit yet.

And that’s fine.

Most of my facebook friends have just in the last two years heard about Facebook, and some, are still struggling with the technicalities of it all.

But that’s fine too.

Because I don’t know the first thing about forestry, or building, or mechanics, or a million other trades. Why would I expect my friends to instantly become social media guru’s when their first experience with a PC or smartphone was in 2010?

Yeah. When it comes to the Internet and Social Media I’ve watched it start off as nothing, where people haven’t really paid much attention to it, to becoming the billion dollar powerhouse that it exists as today. And everyone has used one platform or another. After all, we’re social beings.

Take Facebook for example. A billion dollar business. No doubt about it, Facebook makes a serious amount of cash yearly. But where does all the money come from you ask?

Well think of Facebook as a deluxe, central heated, bells and whistles Sheeps Pen. And us?

The Sheep.

We are the product. We are sold ads, games with micro-transactions and a ton of other money making things to our liking.

Billions of dollars. Think of that for a moment.

Yearly.

For things you share, click on, play, or even create. And out of that you make..? What, exactly?

Well, you can have endless fun, I’ll give them that. And it’s very addictive, I’ll say that too.

But this is where Steemit steps in, in an attempt to make serious waves in ownership of content and curation in the Social Media industry.

You actually make money for creating, finding, upvoting and commenting on posts. Sounds crazy right? I mean who in their right mind would give us ownership of our own content, right? And PAY us for the privilege?

Here’s a screenshot of their trending page right now. Check it out.

$3000+ for one post. Sounds crazy, right? You need to be an awesome and talented individual to do that.

Apparently not, and you’ll see if you were to click on the trending page.

Now on a serious note it’s quite hard to reach such a state, and characteristics are completely random, depending on who might see your post at the time. However, whatever you make here it’s still more than any other place. Right?

And it’s not limited to Steemit, if you have your own blog, or writing space it’s an opportunity to send free traffic anywhere you like, whilst earning money for doing it. Crazy.

Now here’s the nitty gritty. Steemit is financed by STEEM which is an altcoin. It’s roughly equated at $3.40 per 1 STEEM at the time of this article. If you have absolutely no idea about bitcoin and altcoins I recommend this as great reading.

So how is Steemit able to pay you? Obviously magic pennies can’t rain from heaven. And you’d be right, they don’t.

I assume like every project it was backed by private investors and at the end of the crowdsale STEEM was shared proportionally between the investors. STEEM was then floated on the market, and since then the price has risen sharply.

People with STEEM in their wallets (any amount) have the ability to vote up articles they enjoy, and in true crowdsourcing fashion, the articles with large amounts of upvotes with huge weights in them can see their posts rocketing to the top trending page. Awesome, right?

This encourages the author to try and create the best content they can, however talented. It also encourages people that like to read content to upvote good articles, because they also get a cut. It’s a win, win situation. And a break from the norm.

Will this see the rise in cryptocurrency awareness and the end of free content? Who knows. Watch this space.

If you’re interested you can check out Steemit here.

Thanks for reading. If you would like to read more of my thoughts please check me out on The Relationship Blogger.

Also, you can check out some of my awesome work on Steemit! Thank you!