An interesting and probably true thought but this has long been beta and is not going to disappear anytime soon

This has been a long beta has it not?

Good points!! I believe that Steemit is being used as proof of concept for upcoming SMTs. However, the fact that Steemit is amazing at SEO and slowly taking over Google Search, I believe this will be the platform of choice for anyone who is serious about blogging. Instead of hosting a word press blog on your website, you’ll simply use Steemit and get organic traffic that way. Outside of that, I believe there will be much better social platforms in the not too distant future!! I’m keeping an eye on APPICS ICO coming soon! Thanks for the post!

Perhaps you are right and steemit is just a way of showing the world how this blockchain can work, so when the SMT’s arrive, the people will already have an idea about its implementations and features, similar to google and their nexus phones where they tried to show every other company how an android phone should be. 

Maybe this blogging platform and its success is not the ultimate goal for the developers in the long term (prioritizing the adoption of SMT’s), but for now, we are here, building communities and trying to make this place worth a visit to people how aren’t yet on steem.

Very good point
But if this is really just a beta and steemit.com as such is not important then those that have been using it for a while and have not powered down will be in good position to be a lot better off then we were.
The Fiat investments are not for everyone and the option to "invest" by proof of brain will probably change lives all over the world
Because all the steem that we have accumulated will be worth sooo much more...

Either way, we do not know but blogging on is a given for me and I guess for you as well.
So just keep at it, keep powering up and STEEM ON

I've been supporting myself by blogging, writing books, and coaching online and in person for weight loss topics and social media skills for over 7 years now. This is all because of my extreme weight loss at 50 years old and the fallout from that. 

I came here while working to create online courses with the help of tutorials by jerrybanfield. As you know, he went nuts for steemit in June last year, and I am one of the people who jumped. I had already been looking since about March when good steemit posts started showing up in my research and I also have a lot of blogging friends here begging me to come. 

I did not come when I first heard of this because I did not want to learn about crypto. Oh, the irony.

So now here, like everywhere, I have to keep the weight loss info to a steady trickle and when morbidly obese people are ready to change, they will know how to find me and they do. In the meantime, I post into contests and challenge and actually make some money here. Steemit is now a big part of my monthly support and I hope that will continue since I've dropped the ball in many other places and had multiple financial catastrophes lately.

I stay out of chats, I stay away from whales, I stay away from drama. I focus on:
- the gift of the Alexa ranking. Posting frequently, and linking out to all my other work
- the gift of people who actually read my work and seem to care
- promoting steemit as best I can in all my other social media

My guess is the the whales are abandoning ship for the most part. If you where rich and had people begging to you all day, would you stay in that place? No.

The only hope we have is for minnows to succeed in vast numbers. Can they do that in time? I have no idea and I really should get in exit strategy and pay attention to my other work sites so I will not be begging on the street in Thailand if the place dies. 

I have been of at least 5 platforms that died in the last years. One day I was making money and the next day the place was gone. You would think I would learn my lesson but you cannot teach an old dog new tricks :)

btw - I have 6000 content creating twitter followers in multiple genres. They are all real and hand picked since I am like that. I get about 50% of my monthly affiliate sales from twitter when I'm on my game over there. 

I have 200+ people on my steeming twitlist.. I check that feed for posts to RT a few times a day. The negativity, advertising, and mainstream news reposting, runs at about 90% so I don't rt steemers very often.

But I'm still in, still trying, and off to do another mung bean post :)

Is that the grumpy cat's new uniform?

I'd never considered the perspective that Steemit is the after thought. Usually a token provides a utility for a dapp, but the main event is the dapp's functionality. Interesting to turn that on its head and just keep coming up with new uses for the token and perhaps even abandoning the original dapp that established value for the token.

I hope Steemit doesn't wind up abandoned when SMTs come along. I do look forward to communities. As someone who has had there own blog and done a lot on FB, I am hoping to see Steemit be able to replace those tools, while allowing me to achieve the same things more easily. That it's monetized with the token is just the cherry on top.

You've given me a lot to think about here. Thanks.

Thank you so much for sharing an informative article. Excellent thought.

Interesting take, steem is way underrated, the potential here is astounding with SMT's, communities, and third party apps. If this is just testing the waters then who knows how crazy it gets here. I'm excited

I believe you are correct. I have never seen Steemit as the main usecase of Steem, but more as a branding of the Steem blockchain.

![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmfNRJN27AnfgjnucKDWgDBE6fYUN4j8UZRtmmKEfyhK66/image.png) 
Ist schon irritierend! Dein Beitrag regt zum Nachdenken an.

There is a little devil that keeps telling me that steemit is just "they""them" paying pennies for the same kinda info they have been paying $ for,and all open and easy to see classifie,ect...
I can't say it does not have some nsa or other tracking /monitoring bot ,because I am a non tech.. just a paranoid ,skeptic..
it just sounds and seams feasible to me.
been wrong before,hope I am on that..lol
;-)
namaste

Its interesting that there so many differing ideas people have about what this place is and what it will become.
Dan and Ned literally had no idea what to use it for until Ned's mother started posting social media stuff lol

I'm a strong believer that Steem's economic model can be improved. At the moment, even though there are abusers of the system, people are still creating high quality content on it and at the end of the day, we can treat it as a free blogging platform.

Considering the rapid rise of dTube and the coming SMTs I think Steemit will remain a minor part of the Steem blockchain. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and doesn't prevent anyone from continuing to use it to generate a stake of Steem and SBD. The implementation of other platforms and tokens on the blockchain will also allow Steem holders additional opportunities in how to use their Steem.

So, I don't think Steemit is going away, but it also might not remain the largest user of the Steem network for very long.

Excellent post.  I hadn't thought too much about steemit perhaps not being the main reason for the steem blockchain to exist.  I wish I could have been at the initial concept development meetings to hear what the real plan was.  I've often found it strange that steemit is still in beta.  Now your post is making me wonder if this is planned because they want steemit to be something completely different.

I agree with all this. Really, how can any modern company think steemit.com is even close to a competitor to facebook or any other decent social media platform?

It's not about steemit.com, not about the content we sweat over for hours, not about the whale battles and upvoting and downvoting. It's just about the blockchain, and by extension, tokens/SMT. If that's the ultimate end game, all of us are trapped in the pointless backwater eddies of social media content games while the rest of the world moves on.

I too invested in steem(a little) originally and started blogging just to offset the inflationary nature of steem , then the alts went way down for a long time and steem became a welcome distraction.

steem has a small market cap at the moment  $869,397,910 USD  early days for the currency and the platform. a number of upcomings platform will be either utilising or emulating the graphene 100k TPS with no fees. it's the future and steemit will be here for a long while to come !

I like the enthusiasm and positivity and although I would love to agree, I feel like STEEM is STEEM and not really going to change much in the future. Dan Larimer moved on to EOS and all real innovation to evolve STEEM into something else went with him in my opinion.

If Steem(it) is a beta then it's probably a beta for it's counterpart on EOS, I'm afraid. I [wrote a post about Dan Larimer's remarks about starting an EOS competitor](https://steemit.com/steemit/@pandorasbox/eos-to-build-a-competitor-to-steemit-will-steem-survive-eos-long) not too long ago. 

Personally I love Steemit and STEEM but as long as it's possible to game the system and 'rape the rewardpool' then it's never going to be a serious _currency_ even if it has free transaction times and other benefits. 

I am starting to feel like we need to start a publicity campaign to get @ned's attention and force him to reply to the issues that plague steem(it).

Wonder if placing a social media on Eos is the game: Eosit.....

Sorry but I do not use steem to trade or make money, I use it to post my art , photos, and poetry. I like that I am not censored as FB is now becoming famous for. Sorry all you Midases but coin isn't everything. ![IMG_2965.JPG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVyMTRSeCn1dF4ec8PRBEPLe4ZW8aXpU9hpPtR9n3jaLv/IMG_2965.JPG)

> Even STINC itself regularly refers to a vision of "tokenizing the web." You'll note there is no mention of blogging, paying content creators, or cultivating an online community.

> Is the best use of Steem really a blogging platform? Perhaps not. Perhaps this has all been a large dress rehearsal for bootstrapping a young cryptocurrency, while giving decisive proof-of-concept that it can handle huge transaction load without fees.

Clear thinking here. If you look at the whitepaper from a certain angle it says this more or less directly.

We can also use this platform as an incubator for ideas and find like-minded people to collaborate on future projects! That's what excites me most about Steem, and not the up and down prices of cryptocurrencies...

Fee's in general no matter what the currency been my biggest expense in the  time I have been active trading them. Not a surprise since this is the tech that hopefully will disrupt the old way of banking centralized rule. To your point about tokenization of the web... maybe. I feel like I am at the point in life that I am kind of just watching from the back seat as the younger generation takes over and starts to drive this thing.

Blockchain technology is going to disrupt social media, but it will take years until it only starts to unfold its potential. For me, the question is not if, but when.

Somewhere deep in my cold heart it feels like Steem (blockchain) is the little engine that could. Don’t ask me why, but probably because the chain itself is kick ass. Steemit the site seems like it’s always going to suck, but quite frankly the only reason I stick around is because there is a ton of humor in the shit show of Steem world. I get a laugh in daily and that is enough for me. On a side note, wish we had a little more support for SPL. :)

thanks your sharing

Oke thank for sharing you i like