Quote from: smooth on May 22, 2016, 07:42:41 AM

Quote from: jwinterm on May 22, 2016, 07:23:01 AM

Quote from: americanpegasus on May 22, 2016, 05:11:18 AM

So I just became aware of this concept of token-powered decentralized social networks tonight and am doing some research. I see two main contenders: Synereo and Steem. When all factors are considered: fairness to content creators, ease of use for lurkers, fairness of mining... which one do you think will win the impending war of decentralized social media?

Why would you think either one has a chance of being remotely successful? Facebook has literally 33% or so of the world's inhabitants registered and using their service, making a good profit doing so, and the vast majority of people have no qualms about handing over their info to be a part of the network. Reddit is apparently barely profitable, but the mods and content creators of major subreddits can certainly monetize their moderating power or rep for producing content. Why would anyone invest or commit their time to some convoluted "social network" that relies on some third-party token that was completely premined or instamined and is lacking the content and connections of widely used services such as facebook or reddit? Call me jaded, but I'd say neither.

The Facebook comparison is not really valid. Other than sharing the word social there is little resemblance. Steem is somewhat like reddit, also somewhat like a blogging platform, maybe a bit like youtube (the channel organization and commenting features; Steem is not a video hosting service, although videos get linked there regularly). The functionality is nothing at all like Facebook. Whether or why anyone would use it I can't say. The token won't really matter and isn't even particularly visible to end users though, since the content rewards will be paid in a smart coin (USD pegged).

EDIT: The above is about Steem. I don't know enough about Synereo to comment on whether it might be more related to Facebook or whether its token has value.

If you want to limit the discussion to reddit, the point I was making is that there is already an entrenched and very widely used service that mods and popular accounts can monetize their activity on (not too mention the people pushing their arts, web video series, indie video games, etc., half advertisement and half how it was made or something). What does steem offer over voat (where users can get paid directly in bitcoin for their contributions) rather than some more convoluted steem dollar payout, besides some vague promise of decentralization that apparently 0.000001% of the world cares about? And voat is basically a ghost town. People generally use what is popular, and I don't see a great reason why people would prefer steem over something like voat, which has already been tried (and still exists as a simpler alternative to steem if you just want to get paid - bitcoins are simpler than steem dollars/vests/its/whatevers).

Reddit is very popular, and the network effect is powerful. If people just wanted to get paid, why not voat? Unless you think the magical decentralization fairy is what people are really craving, why would people use steem? (And I would argue that steem is really not very decentralized since the founders instamined 80% or whatever and can dominate the voting in their security model anyway.)