Nice post very educative...sont forget to follow and upvote me

this is what keeps getting interesting

Agreed -- but we should consider utility over time as well:
* Blogs that increase community involvement or increase the amount of original content on the site improve the future utility.
* Encouraging people off platform to join doesn't impact *today's* utility but definitely impacts tomorrow's.

Thanks for the post.

@dcj

Being new to Steemit (only a couple weeks) I spent all the way up until this morning only reading about the positives of Steemit without really knowing about the dynamics of how it all really works. I have to admit I think ive had my head in the clouds about all of it, and while I am still very optimistic about future of Steemit, reading this and others has helped ground me a little bit. 
I have never written content before, and I do see that most of the successful people write about Steemit. I obviously dont know enough about it to write about it. 
Im not sure what the future holds for Steemit, I think that with the additions of Zappl, Dmania, and Appics Steemit might move to a more all inclusive causal social network, rather than a full on blogging platform. 
The layout of course would have to change, as I don't want to use Zappl because I feel it clogs up my "blog" basically, I have no idea what im talking about and im rambling! lol

You make some very good points.  I wish all members of the Steemit community would realize that when they act for the greater good, they are benefiting themselves as well as everyone else.   If they recognize that and act accordingly, the value of Steem will continue to grow and that will help everyone.  I am highly optimistic about the long-term value of Steem and expect SP to eventually hit triple digits.  If members of Steem play their cards right, the price of SP could go well into triple digits in the long run.

@ dana-edwards one of the informative post.

interesting ideas, i think network effects is important especially for a good like information that has increasing returns to scale, perhaps adding a million users wouldnt super boost marginal utility, but i think it will boost aggregate

Thought provoking read everyone should see.

>Many people will state that Steem is about making the world better. My response to these people is that the method of making the world better is through utility maximization. If every unit of value spent produces greater utility then everybody wins. The satisfied customers who buy Steem Power will have a reason to keep buying Steem Power. 

This point sums all my thought and assertions about Steem
Glad I stumbled across this timely.
"More bloggers doesn't mean more happiness per dollar" a clear fact

I totally agree with your insight especially when you say that not everyone can be a great blogger. It is absolutely true. There also other aspect of this platform where it showcase different talenst such as cooking, art, singing and others. And this makes this platform truly great..

I think more bandwidth would really help.

I think you overlooked the utility of a good to HODLers is that it goes up in value, it can have nothing to do with it being used. We've seen that for bitcoin and the less it is used the more valuable it gets. The first rule of Bitcoin club... don't use your Bitcoin. If people stopped using their Steem and just powered up all rewards and sat on every STEEM penny the price would go way up which would make the whales super happy and attract even more buyers.  

So to your statement:

> bloggers are not entitled to rewards, it means the content generated by the bloggers is the reward to the Steem Power holders. If this content provides utility then the Steem Power holders are made happy, are satisfied.

I'd say most Steem power holders couldn't give a damn about content so long as the price is going up. A lot of them are using bots to curate anyway right?

For me it's one of those things with Steemit for me that it's nice that I can potentially get some form of revenue from it, however I simply don't expect anything out of it other than writing what I want to talk about, which often involves spreading awareness of the deaf which itself will evolve over time as well, among other topics of interest to me.

Though, I will admit I have hardware in the IPFS system, 100 gigs of space in fact.  It's not just those pumping money into the system that are contributing.  They invest money and are heavily rewarded for it.  I threw in hardware and I get no direct benefit but a net negative.  So I can't entirely agree with your premise about those that spend money to buy Steem Power being the only ones that need to be happy.  Those of us that invested hardware into the pie also have to be happy.

I dislike it when people fail to realize that it's not just monied interests investing into the system that give any sort of value and not just the content creators either.  Those of us with hardware in the pie are the ones that get primarily shafted, especially so is the case when it comes to these kinds of discussions because we're completely left out of the equation.

Either people A).  Don't know that we exist or B). They simply choose to ignore us.  Without people like me volunteering our hardware and bandwidth, your pictures and uploaded videos (dtube) wouldn't be possible.

And I certainly don't get any Steem Power for merely hosting the hardware and bandwidth, allocating my own personal resources to the pie that people like you get to enjoy.

If you'd like to contribute, consider installing IPFS on your own system.  I have 100 gigs allocated for IPFS and 150 gigs for Freenet Project.

As you can see, clearly, by simply rereading your own article, it's a thankless task.  Perhaps it's just assumed that the Steemit developers do all the hosting themselves rather than offloading it to a decentralized network? =\

I think you are definitely on to something here. We are a community of app and content creators, but most of the content that is being produced is sitting on the sidelines unread.

But I'm not sure how this can be mitigated really...

excellent blog..........your information is very usedful.......thanks for sharing a blog......@dana-edwards

Good thoughts. All social media platforms should have utility in mind ideally, but I think it's especially important for Steemit, since it's so directly monetized and in such a burgeoning space as crypto. Since users are tasked with the prospect of both authoring and curating content, utility can present itself in a wide spectrum, as gaining useful information, being entertained, or simply earning more rewards. With this high experiential diversity and exponentially growing volume, perhaps a solution lies in more focused bottlenecks of users, creating more well-defined channels for real quality content, then perhaps some more talented bloggers can prioritize content creation, while others can curate or adapt to other Steemit-based platforms like dMania or dLive. I'm not sure what all this means or where it's going, but thanks for your thought-provoking analysis.

I really like your idea of applying marginal utility to Steemit. The way I think of it is the marginal utility of an **_interaction_** with Steemit. That interaction will be different if you are an SP hodler, a creator, a curator, an app developer, a witness ... And yet, if we think about what's essential in the long run -- it's the greatest good for the for the people demanding and creating demand for SP and SBD. In the end, the underlying currency is inextricable from an measurement of utility around here.

I see the criticisms of the reward pool, the concentration of Steem from the premine, and whales that game the system for their own benefit at the expense of others. These chip away at marginal utility of interaction for creators and curators, but there is an even bigger issue (for me) that seems relatively easy to solve:
## Posts are worthless and invisible after 7 days  
<br>I just did a write up about this yesterday, [7 Days to $0](https://steemit.com/steemit/@seanlloyd/7-days-to-usd0-those-worthless-old-steemit-posts). The more I think about it, the more it bothers me -- and the more I don't understand why people don't discuss this as a problem. This is solvable, whereas the wealth concentration will take more time (if it can even be solved). 

When I think about people spending a lot of time and research to produce a post that is valuable a year later -- 7 days is ridiculous. 

When I think about a curator sifting through the piles of posts -- 7 days is ridiculous. When was the last time a curator outside of Steemit limited themselves to 7 days? You don't find gems when you constrain yourself to an arbitrarily short time frame.  Curating with a 7-day limit isn't curating, it's slave labor.

* 7 days makes people post frequent, shallow content.
* 7 days makes curators concentrate on what's recent and ignore everything else.
* After 7 days -- upvotes = $0, no resteems. The post is financially dead and effectively invisible to readers & curators.

You're right, we can only consume so much -- especially so in 7 days. However, expand that time frame and we can do a lot more. For example, I was active here for several months before I found you. I've enjoyed reading your posts. I've gone back and read older posts, posts older than 7 days, older than a month -- CRAZY, right?! And I gained tremendous value from reading them. My only options are to send cash directly to you or encourage people to follow you. My upvote is worthless (beyond emotional support), I can't resteem your post. Now imagine that with your next 5,000 new followers. It adds up, especially across the entire network of minnows who sometimes posted their **_best stuff first_**.

Combine this **7 Days to $0** with extremely poor discoverability on the Steemit website, and I argue that you can't make older posts any more worthless.

For both creators and curators, especially minnows, the marginal utility of an interaction is extremely low. In the end with this marginal utility for all these people being low, they have very little invested in staying here. When the next big thing comes along, they'll leave. Steemit has 1st mover advantage, but it is still relatively easy to replicate. And if the financial rewards are more fair elsewhere and people can also earn income on older content (as a creator and curator), people will cash out and leave.

And when people leave, the demand for Steem currency drops, price drops, whales care, Steemit Inc cares. So in the end, probably the healthiest thing for all of us is a competitor to Steem.

that you share is very interesting. i really like it

Dear @dana-edwards, your basic assumption is that people behave rational. In such a case they would do utility maximization. But are people rational? Even in investment decisions where you wouldn´t expect it we constantly see irrational behavior. Buying high, selling low - the classic. Bloggers which are incentivized by micro-payments and still deliver (fortunately) good content even if the time would be spent more profitable otherwise. Some are believing in the future of Steem and put irrationally more money into it than advisable from a risk minimization perspective. My point is that the economic theory that decisions are carefully judged based on ROI or utility maximization, this theory has severe limitations.