Let us make no mistake about this.  If there is one blockchain that can withstand disappointing people, at this moment in time, it is EOS.  When you are backed by billions in ICO money plus hundreds of millions in private investment, that buys a lot of street cred.

That said, there are lessons that I see from my almost 30 years in sales, marketing, and promotion.

I will give Dan Larimer credit.  He was able to get a great deal of talk going about the B1 day on Saturday.  Many were speculating what they were going to do.  Dan stoked the flames with his tweets and Telegram posts.  High on the list was the anticipated "Steemit Killer".

Sadly, for many, the substance did not match up to the hype.  And this is a powerful lesson.

<center>![image.png](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmbaqBMDpzraPsyS6RiUBSdhdvVNPE8V7rAVrYc8XdoBTe)
[Source](http://ajjuliani.com/edtech-hype-cycle-use-technology-purpose-world-noise/)</center>

At first glance, the Voice social media application did not overwhelm.  Certainly, that is not to say it is a DOA project.  From what I understand, the release is a beta version and a lot more will be unveiled over the next couple months.

We also saw some very interesting additions from the technical side of things.  There were even a few things that I saw some developers on here mention that Steem should implement.  The back-end stuff can be very beneficial to EOS especially if it does enhance the scaling capabilities.

Nevertheless, most did not tune in to see what could be done from a technical standpoint.  When you host an event in Washington D.C. while tweeting that the Presidential Administration is aware of your project, more is expected.

Hence why I sense many were let down.  Once again, I am not writing this as a reflection upon the project or what Dan is planning.  He may well pull it all off.

I also understand there was a deadline.  The event was set to coincide with the one year anniversary of EOS going live.  The put pressure on the team to offer out as much as it could.

There is an old saying "under promise and over deliver".

That did not happen.

Dan was successful in getting a fair bit of buzz generated about the event.  He also had some things that interested people.  Yet, in my estimation, nothing that was announced was the game changer that was anticipated.

In technology, this is a common problem.  When marketing, be sure the product is able to live up to the expectation.  It is natural for people, in general, to get overly excited about technology.  This leads to the tendency for people to over estimate the ability of it in the short-term.

The Block.One team might have some truly revolutionary things in the works.  In fact, with their nest egg and some of the people involved in the project, I am sure this is the case.  The Digital ID system holds great promise.  Once again, there was little said about this.  

This is something to be very mindful of.  I see a lot of people wanting to market the daylights out of Steem.  They believe that will solve whatever is ailing this place.  While marketing can attract more attention, Steem is not ready for it.  What these people tend not to consider the ramifications if it is successful.

What happens if a marketing campaign is highly successful?  Do you know how much that would harm Steem?

That seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it?

Let me ask one simple question: what happens if suddenly 10K, 50K, or 100K people were suddenly driven to Steem?  How would they get active?  

We see about 400 accounts processed a day.  The on-boarding process was never addressed and still remains a major bottleneck.  The community and Steemit Inc are focusing upon many different things yet I have not heard one proposal of how to solve that.  

How are we going to handle thousands of people signing up in a day?  Or 5K?  Or 10K?

Unlike EOS, Steem cannot handle a hit like that.  The marketing machine going full tilt would only torch the ability for us to get people to use the platform.  Most are not going to get active after 2-3 weeks waiting for approval.  We live in an instant gratification world where people lose focus very quickly.

The on-boarding issue is something that could be catastrophic.

EOS garnered a lot of attention.  That makes it in the spotlight with everything it does.  Dan did well to leverage that into more publicity.  That said, many were left with the feeling they under-delivered.  

We are in the early stages of this industry.  Plain and simple, there are going to be failures.  This is a technological arena meaning a great deal of what we are doing is experimental.  The key is to learn from those failures while moving forward.

Unfortunately, this means patience.  Personally, while I understand Dan's timing on things, I think it would have been better for that platform to announce the "Steemit Killer" when there was a lot more punch to it.  A teaser is a perfectly good way to entice people to a project.  However, delivering a teaser when they are expecting a knock out blow is a misstep.

Blockchain applications do not have the luxury that other newer technologies have.  The reason is there are higher expectations upon them when they are focused upon social media.  Any blockchain application that operates in this realm is going to be compared to the existing applications that people use everyday.  These platforms has more than a decade to get to where they are.  The entirety of Steem is a little over 3 years. 

User experience is critical.  A central premise that exists is that blockchain applications are not up to par with what is already out there.  This will change over time but it is the reality for today.  Marketing can be a double-edged sword.  

We all must keep in mind this is a long-term deal.  We are not going to see Web 3.0 created over night.  It took years for the established system to gain control and they are not going to give up power very easily.  

In the end, I feel certain we are going to prevail but it will take some time.  Each day we are putting another brick in the foundation which will see a lot of amazing things built upon.

We will look back in 5 years and realize how archaic things looked in 2019.

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