How will Communities work for you?

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Out of curiosity, I thought I would ask a question concerning Communities and how people are planning on using them. At this point, they are much like "owned tags" that seem to work a little bit like subreddits and due to this, I am hoping that a great many transactions are going to be created on the chain once they don't appear in the main feeds.

My hope is that the type of content that gets committed to the chain starts to become more conversational and shareable, more human. I am one of the ones on the chain who is not overly suited for this kind of content because for most, I am TLDR, so it is a narrow niche I operate in.

But, with a subreddit-esque type setup where there is separation based on theme, there is the opportunity to create content pools that are highly attractive to some people and communities that are built upon time relative content in the same way that "trending tags" are on Twitter. What this means is that there is the chance to have a more dynamic flow of content on Steem and still be able to have the separation that means user experience can be smoother.

What I do think is going to be a key aspect of communities is the ability for the applications that utilize them to introduce interesting ways to sort, group and combine communities to make a more configurable and personal experience for end users. This will of course introduce SMTs into the mix also and again, I think that the methods of integration need to be imaginative and consider users.

From here on out, the tokenization and value of the blockchain has to be end user focused and through that, there will be the interest developed from investors in various ways. Some might want to invest directly into certain types of communities, some will look to invest into applications that are buit on them, and some will invest directly into the Steem blockchain infrastructure level.

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One thing that the Steem developers really need to get a handle on is how to integrate analytics into the blockchain experience, as in the online world, this is a massive part of the gamification experience. Each of us will find different kinds of numbers important to our journey and being able to have access to these numbers without having to have coding knowledge is important. Perhaps one of the communities will be made up of analysts that are able to write scripts that can be used to give one-click access or dynamic rolling analytics on an individual user or, an individual community.

This has to get past the "value" mechanism alone and start introducing a lot more of the user numbers because much like Dale Carnegie said a hundred years ago, the most powerful word in any language is our own name. We like to be able to look at ourselves and compare our results with others. Steem has only really looked at this from the token side as the other numbers are near impossible for a normal person to pull - which leaves each of us reliant on others to provide the service.

This will be up to the applications to provide and those who are able to give relevant and in demand feedback will likely attract a decent slice of the user base. With the ability to tokenize, an interface might use a subscription model for access and upgrades even though the token itself might not be worth anything to sell.

A Premium experience could offer levels of configuration that can enhance a user's usage and give the potential to increase engagement or eyes on content for example. Once the separation is made away from the Steem pool, the ability to use tokens for ranking becomes much more sensitive to the type of user base.

while I am not sure about how all of the utilization is going to manifest, I am looking forward to seeing the developers get creative in their approach and start building highly compelling UIs and UXs that the user base will love. The tokenization through SMTs is another layer of differentiation that will provide value, and I hope that the distribution models have learned from the past.

For now, what I am interested in is finding out what others think is possible and the various use cases they might see for communities. At this stage, developing a pool of ideas that could be leveraged by community builders might be rewarded with some innovative combinations that not only make Steem users happy, but attract attention from outside the Steem ecosystem.

This is the goal of course and communities are a great way to start pulling in "off-Steem" users by getting them engaging with a narrow slice of the blockchain through a topic theme. From there, they can start pulling in like minds from their current networks and each will start exploring further and deeper.

So, how do you see Communities working for you and for Steem?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

Onboarding



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21 comments
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I think one important use for Communities will be the discrimination of region specific content. For example, there may be very important news surfacing, and they only matter to individuals in one region or country. Another examples would be events and culturally specific ideas. I can see communities easily being created around national territories.

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I think one important use for Communities will be the discrimination of region specific content.

Yes, I think you are right here. I am also hoping that this is included in the tokenization models so that there is less conflict at the STEEM level.

Another examples would be events and culturally specific ideas.

Yep, as well as themes of idea and short-lived content like news topics.

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I was definitely thinking of creating a community for my country. It's where most of my interest is online and while there are not many Irish here right now it wouldn't take much to get them interested once people were posting opinions about what is going on here n a daily basis.

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Excellent Idea!

That's why I mentioned it. I also am in a distant country, and it is an interesting paradise. Honduras. Of course, very few citizens present on steemit. I do believe there are many, but the search and hashtag protocols of steem are not "ideal" for finding geographically near individuals.That is improving of course.
We can all agree that communities certainly make the network much more "social"?

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Great read. I like engagement.that is why I have stayed on FB so long but I'm tired of being censored so I will be closing my acct this month. ...to find another place where I can get extended engagement.

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Hopefully Steem apps will increasingly offer homes to those who are tired of being taken advantage of.

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I wonder how much they will be used for abuse?

Also, I suspect they will end up being like Facebook groups rather than communities in the broader sense of the word.

I also wonder how much people will not use them as the primary reason for a lot of users posting is to gain maximum rewards and posting to a community might limit the exposure that said post might generate.

Or this might all be mad conjecture from a man crazy on the lack of carbs?

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All of those things are likely, possible and will have to be considered. The abuse will only really happen at the Steem level, so I am guessing that there will be new types of moderation required, or at leas deeper searching.

The Facebook groups are okay to start with, especially since they have the power layer of tokens, but in time I think they can be utilized better and become more experience based as they aren't tied to an individual platform of any kind.

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Dear @meesterboom, @tarazkp

Personally I believe that as long as there won't be an easy way to communicate between each other (sending DM, like we can do via linkedin) - that long communities won't serve any great purpose.

What's the point of being in community, if we cannot voice out much and it's very difficult to get to know other users from within such a community.

Yours
Piotr

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That is possible for applications to do. Applications, not the steem blockchain.

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I agree with you. However if you take few random steemit users and ask them a question if they found it hard or easy to communicate with others on Steemit on personal level via Steemit / Communities - then the answer would be most likely always the same.

I'm not sure if there is anything that could be done to change it.

Thank you for your reply,
Piotr

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Well, since communities are only just in Beta now, it is hard to say what the applications are going to do with them.

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I'm hoping the communities will reduce some of the issues around "Creating Quality Content".

Steem should not be a full time job, it should be a casual landing place for people to share thoughts and ideas and perhaps earn a few cents doing it.

We stifle our users and like you have already pointed out in your post, there is a very small market for those who want to read and write long form posts.

I hope the communities, especially paired with SMTs will allow a much greater diversity and more natural communication. More inline with how people tend to communicate online.

The value add for Steem is the addition of users. Where people gather others come to:

Join the party
Sell things
Play games
Tell a story
Push an agenda
More

If we gather the people the economy will emerge. (The network effect)

One crazy idea I want to try is the DRAMA community, which would allow people to come and tell their internet or real life drama stories (not just Steem Drama)

Also Internally, I'd like to see the idea of NewSteem as a casual brainstorming session for developing a vision and a Rebrand Lite.

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Steem should not be a full time job, it should be a casual landing place for people to share thoughts and ideas and perhaps earn a few cents doing it.

It should be a fulltime job for some, like it is on YouTube, but not for the extreme majority of users.

I hope the communities, especially paired with SMTs will allow a much greater diversity and more natural communication. More inline with how people tend to communicate online.

Yeah, I hope for this. I think it will also free up people like me as I can then do what I do as normal, but spiral out further and have more fun without the pressure.

One crazy idea I want to try is the DRAMA community, which would allow people to come and tell their internet or real life drama stories (not just Steem Drama)

I am hoping for a lot of drama! :D

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Great comment and I'm hoping the same things for communities!

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I would be very interested in using communities to try and onboard more of my sculpture community, For now they all still use the dreaded Facebook. But I have to say it will be a hard sell if a Steem front-end can't integrate a direct messenger. I don't want to have to tell them they also new a Discord and Telegram account to have the full experience.

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Yeah, I am hoping that at least some of them will have a DM plugin.

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Always love a good conversation about communities as SteemPeak is working on the UI... thanks for sharing your thoughts. Keep em coming.

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Steempeak is one of the forward thinking interfaces and I am interested in how you guys will handle communities. I am guessing there is a lot to learn :)

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I would be interested in communities for the sharing of theories and discussion on those theories. Although DM was mentioned as a feature, it is not a show stopper. In fact, I rarely use DM on LinkedIn or any other form of media.

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I only use DM for private conversations with the people I know, but I know that some like to use it much more than myself. I do use discord however for Steem.

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