Ive seen some backlash from folks about STEEMIT.INC adding ads to their site. While i can understand that people might be pissed about it, i see this as a good thing. I usually have my adblock on (The Brave browser works slow for me) but in the case of Steemit i decided to turn it off. Not only did i turn my ADBLOCK off, i also made a promise to myself to click at least 1 ad a day in case the advertiser opted for a CPC advertising model (Cost per click) instead of a CPM model (Cost per 1000 impressions).
Look, i know Steemit.inc messed up and that its their fault and their fault only that they are in a position they are now. But now is not the time to keep hammering on that point… Repeating the same thing over and over again. Whats the point of that?
Its time to help any way we can. I cant code nor am i one of the cool kids that can get their voice heard by Steemit.inc and affect change that way. I cant do any of that and neither can most of us here….
But dammit, i can click on a ad couple times a day and help out that way!
I know a lot of people are emotional right now and that Steemit.inc is an easy target. I also know everyone is waiting for some miracle community effort.
The community needs to come together!
(I cringe so hard when i hear this platitude repeated over and over again, haha)
How about we just click the damn ads few times a day for a start? How about that as an idea? Thats a concrete thing you can do for Steem and the best thing of all is that you can do it right now, by yourself… Go do it now!
By helping to keep Steemit.inc afloat youre (hopefully) affecting Steem development in a positive way.
This morning i taken a look at the STEEM price and the Steemitblog account talking about MIRA and such. While ill be dissapointed if the SMT testnet doesnt launch on 15th of March its still nice to see them communicating with the community about what they’re working on.
So i was browsing a bit through CMC and thought it would be a good idea to look into some other blockchains with Dapp building potential.
Things like LISK (39th in MC), Zilliqa (36th in MC), ETC (18th in MC). What i found out is that barely anyone is using any of those blockchains. The projects ive looked at for most part havent updated their websites for months. The social footprint is extremely small. There are probably dozens of blogs on STEEMIT that get more attention and engagement then most of these dapps reddits/telegrams/discords.
It very much showed me that while we always talk about adoption, the market rarely considers it when determining asset value.
So i went to take a look at “State of the Dapps” once again to do a bit of comparison with EOS and ETH and i have to say that for a blockchain that has its problems and has a 30 times smaller MC then EOS and 100 times smaller MC then ETH STEEM is doing extremely well, looking at the user numbers.
I mean just consider STEEM at ETH market cap. 1 STEEM = $46. Which blockchain could compete with STEEM in users then?
With all the issues facing STEEM i just have to acknowledge how incredibly undervalued STEEM is right now. And im someone that will point out every single failure of STEEM.
After that i booted up my Discord (Oh, how i love thee) and went on the discord server of another dapp listing site.
DappRadar.
Was interested in seeing when they might list STEEM or if they even were considering adding STEEM to DappRadar. The mod there was pretty nice, considering how many folks must DM them on the daily basis. lol. Which surprised me honestly.
Why would you want your blockchain added besides EOS/TRON/ETH if your dapp adoption is extremely low? Do you want to show that the most used dapp on your platform of investment choice has 10 daily users? (Just take a look at ETC dapp listing site – dappdirect.net)
This is the response i got to my inquiry.
Of course, this could be just a vague answer, but the:
“We are actively looking into it”
fills me with some hope.
I love Stateofthedapps but i still think DappRadar has more detailed Stats and is used more. Even if you look at the Alexa rankings, DappRadar is placed much higher. 60k vs 150k.
I really think that we need to have STEEM compared to “the big boys” as often as possible, even if we STEEM isnt leading in most categories, to show that what they have at billions of dollars of market cap, STEEM has at 100 mil.
So… @oracle-d decided to create another task for us Homo Steemiens to write about. You can read more about it here so i dont go on needlessly. LINK: https://steemit.com/social/@dapplovers/review-a-social-dapp-and-earn-rewards-ft-state-of-the-dapps
Theres going to be enough needless text below.
I was deliberating with myself for a while as to which Dapp i should choose for review. Yesterday i reviewed Trybe (EOS) and i found the current state of it, in reviewer terms (or 6th grader terms), to be “blagh”. Few days before that i reviewed the new Whaleshares look. This time i was going to be smart about my pick. Maximize what i could earn from the review by picking a dapp with a ton of Nedelegation that will reward me for being a jolly good sweet talker.. That is why i picked:
Dlive!
oh wait. whoops
No, no. Its Dtube, im picking Dtube.
The youtube of STEEM with a capital “D”. “D”, because you know they’re packing, good ideas.
Anyways… The review, um.
There are a few reasons why i picked Dtube. For one, its one of the most resource intensive projects on the STEEM blockchain that has an extremely ambitious goal of becoming competitive in the global market of video sharing platforms. This is something that i actually think Dtube could achieve.
We have seen time and time again that any video sharing platform that would even try to challenge Youtube would fail tremendously. They would fail for the simple reason of not being to take off because of the magic circle of: Creator-consumer-advertiser.
All 3 need to exist on the platform, for a platform to take off, be sustainable, but unfortunately no other platform could achieve the trifecta no matter how much they would reduce their cut of their revenue.
Dtube is different, not to go into a lot of detail, because it uses the power of the STEEM blockchain. There is no complete dependence on advertiser money and the wealth distribution is such, that while in “legacy markets” the earning potential existed only for the platform+Creator, with STEEM consumer is added to the mix. Monetizing their attention and engagement. But you already know this so lets get into something else. The user experience.
Oh boy.
Content placement.
Ok. If im being completely honest, i have never in my one year using STEEM clicked on Dtubes “Hot/Trending” page. Not one time. And im someone that (from another account) uploaded dozens of videos to Dtube and was using dtube almost daily for 6 months. Still, never once did i look at the trending page. Ill try to explain why that is as simply as i can.
When the content placement depends on vote cast by “1 person + DTube”, then what users of your site are seeing isnt “the wisdom of the crowd” on the trending page but rather the_autovoter_ preferences of a whale and the continuity rewarding tendency of the DTUBE curation team. In a way, there is more centralization in what im being told to watch on Dtube then there is on Youtube.
And this is not something that is hard to change. Dtube has control over how it wants to show its content.
Design.
There is really not much to say here. The design is basic. As i said in the intro, i made a Trybe review yesterday and i pointed out a few things that bothered me. The site itself had some terrible design ideas, was extremely convoluted and it ran poorly. Dtube does not run poorly and is not convoluted, on the contrary, but it does look extremely basic and does a poor job explaining what anything is about.. Take this for example. Dtalk-Push my Dtalk key on Steem.
A person clicking on the Dtalk tab will see this and think:
What is Steem? What is Dtalk? What conversation?
Its very unintuitive and even though you could say that Dtube is early in development, the fact remains that you can always add a few sentences of explanation. That excuse does not hold.
That is something i dont only see with Dtube but rather where ever i look in the crypto space.
Not considering what a new user sees/understands when they are introduced to new information.
I could point out a few other things but its just the same criticism that stems from us forgetting what a new user experiences once they arrive to STEEM.
Mowing lawn!
Folks would probably assume i would talk about the videos that are “gone with the wind” in a few weeks, but theres really nothing to say. @johalfiles (a whale that upvotes Dtube content) a few weeks ago pointed out in the Dtube discord that exact thing and the reply was basically: “It is as it is.”
The problem is that folks dont understand that video hosting is about the most expensive thing there is online. While there are ways for you to keep your videos online indefinitely by running your own IPFS node (my knowledge is limited there) most creators wont know how to do such a thing so providing that service on platform would be a great way for Dtube to gather some funds if they explained whats going on with your videos (when uploading) and provided an easy way for you to keep your videos indefinitely (for a fee) without having to educate yourself on IPFS hosting and every other single thing that has to do with Dtube. The name of the game is not Football, ole ole, we are the champs. The name of the game is: “How to explain complex topics in the simplest of ways”.
There is really not much else to say here. Uploading works pretty well and is about as fast as uploading to Youtube. The video quality is inferior to youtube but you dont really notice it most of the times. When was the last time you used 4k on youtube? Im assuming theres a dtube node somewhere close to Croatia since i have no problems viewing any videos.
At this point the success of Dtube is pretty much dependent on the success of STEEM. The time of the Dapps has not arrived yet and the majority of investment is still going into “infrastructure”.
Example: Projects like LISK are 38th in market cap (10 above STEEM) and i dont think there is a single person using any of their dapps. _I looked into it._ Once the market matures im certain that many projects that arent driven by hype but rather user numbers will start getting a lot of attention from investors, Dtube among them. The focus will eventually shift towards “what has real world application and what do users want” instead of
“i got this cool idea!”
Substratum had a cool idea.
And thats about it for this review. Thought i should mix it up a bit.
I think we need to be realistic at all times. We hype up everything and partake in tribal behavior without ever taking an objective look at the limitations and the potential of a project. Realizing the limitations and potential is extremely important in cases like this. @ned dropped a million STEEM delegation on Dtube.
Was that foolish?
No. Because i dont think Ned saw Dtube “changing the world”. He saw that small advantage i talked about in the beginning existing that could make Dtube a “contender”.
Dtube cant re-invent the wheel but it sure can rock the boat.
Conclusion
I give Dtube a rating of π/fleml. Read what i actually think. lol.
And there you have it folks. Let me know what you think. Was i too harsh, was i not harsh enough. Ill take it on the chin.
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