STEEM front-ends should allow users to post without a STEEM account.

This is a very straight forward idea and it is how you fix the big on-boarding problem STEEM has right now. It wouldnt completely fix it, but it would do a lot to alleviate the problem.

There are a few obvious things to point out first.

  1. People like to test out services/produts first before spending money on them.
  2. People will rather not pay for something if they dont have to.

This idea plays on those two things. When someone hears about STEEM and the fact that you can earn money here the curiosity gets them and they come to check it out.
Then that person tries to make an account for free, because not everyone will be willing to pay for something they havent tested out. And what do you know, it takes 2 damn weeks to get a free account by which time you forgot all about STEEM, your curiosity was peaked by something else and you dont care much anymore.

A potential user is lost.

Heres how you keep the person interested and wanting more to the point that he would wait for those 2 weeks or even buy an account from @steem.ninja :

You allow for guest accounts on STEEM front ends. @steemit, @steempeak, @busy, @dtube…. etc.
You let folks log in through their emails.
What this does is two things:

  1. It lets the interested guest user be engaged with the community.
  2. It lets him/her test out the platform for free.

This is good for STEEM for a bunch of reasons. It can increase adoption, it increases engagement, STEEMs internet footprint and it most definitely would affect the Alexa rating in a positive way.

The guest user this way would be able to engage with the community and test out the platform. See what its all about. It would allow for the community to “tempt” the guest user through directly interacting with him/her and even if the person decides not to buy an account right away, the time till the free account lands in their email wouldnt have to be filled up only with waiting.
And thats the big advantage here.

But lets take it further!

After setting up the above option the front ends could continue adding features to it. Example:

Create an escrow account that would hold all upvotes collected by guest users. Do they want their earned $$$?
They have to make an account! Tell me a better way of encouraging someone to make an account then dangling a bag of coins in front of their face.

You would add restrictions ofc. Stuff like: No posts, limited number of comments, post author can delete the comments at will, comments would be written to the blockchain… etc.

Let me know what you think…. Is this a good idea or a great idea? 😀

@ned, make it happen!

Why I Say “TURN OFF THE TV”! $AAPL $SPX $QQQ

The TV and talking heads on CNBC, from an intermediate to longer term perspective, may be some of the worst real time advice that is available to the mainstream today. You have to understand that they are making money off your clicks, and off your views and even the “Best” are mostly only good at “buying and holding” Let’s take a look at $AAPL over the past few months.

I have marked an area of $AAPL that, infamous Buy and Hold investor, Warren Buffett claimed to the world that the iPhone was greatly undervalued. Berkshire Hathaway is now currently 25% long