Here comes all the 'im leaving steemit because of the ads' posts... Funny, I reported about the changes before the official blogs!!
https://steemit.com/steem/@sn0n/breaking-news-steem-wallet-changes
Love it. Keep up the good work guys. Don't focus too much on that Fiat monetization though... Kinda goes against the grain and not in the good ways. Ideals man.. ideals. (;
Posted using Partiko Android
Thanks for the feedback. We're not focusing on fiat monetization as much as focusing on ensuring that the organization can survive while continuing to put out free and open software. Blockchain developers ain't cheap yaknow ;)
I say get in where you fit in. Ideals don't pay the bills.
Hey, that rhymes....sort of.
Can we get updates on MIRA soon, and some decent tutorials on how to set up a witness / node using MIRA, RocksDB and all those wonderful pieces of engineering that have been going on, so that, as a community, more nodes and decentralisation can flourish, thereby reducing your costs on nodes? :)
Survival mode is never a good place to be, I totally get it. But blockchains are supposed to be cheap ya know, for the people by the people and all that..
I love steem, I love and appreciate steemit, more than letters on the screen can express. But I feel a lack of focus.. and maybe that's because of the whole Ned and Dan drama, maybe Dan was the real visionary and Ned was a marketing guy, I don't know, most of that history is long before me, and it really doesn't matter. What matters is now and the future.. the blockchain doesn't need steem inc, steem inc needs the blockchain. If costs are overloading steem inc, shut down some nodes and ipfs shit on the aws side of things, and offload it to the greater community, sure, it'll suck for some days or weeks, but the community will figure it out. We need a "RIP steemit inc, long live steemit inc!!" moment....
Anyways, I'm ranting... I'll leave it at that for now. But please, don't take any of what I'm saying as an attack on steemit. Just another perspective from my stream of consciousness. Namaste.
Another way to look at it is that putting more fiat into the hands of people who are likely to put it back into the blockchain is never a bad thing. For what it's worth, I would be more in favor of supporting those sponsers to swnd a message to the world that this blockchain deserves attention and investments.
Hey, @sn0n.
I'm in agreement with the ideals part. I don't know what the answer is myself, but there are folks here who are all for the ads, so maybe there will be some helpful return from it. As for myself, I'm not quitting Steemit, but I am using the Brave browser until they decide where they're going with the ads. One of the reasons why I came to like STEEM is because ads didn't seem to be apart of the experience, but there's still choices on how to access the STEEM social media platform, so while that is still the case, life goes on. :)
Ads shouldn't necessarily be part of the crypto or blockchain experience imo... but steemit isn't steem, it's a platform on top of steem, so I can see how they might have a splinter group in marketing saying "we need ads",... To each their own, as long as ads don't bother me, as they are currently not on mobile as far as I can see, it's a non-issue.
I do understand having to diversify their income, but I'd rather see collaboration with other blockchains for deeper integrations, instead of a focus on fiat. I haven't looked into steemincs finances, but I'm sure there is a lot of room for infrastructure improvements, outside of the blockchain itself, on the http and physical world side of things...
Posted using Partiko Android
It seems like they're main focuses have been reducing costs (layoffs, reworking of code, adding things like RockDB and MIRA), and finding something to generate income, and have at least begun with the ads idea.
It's true, Steemit is not STEEM, but I'm in full agreement that it does go against the grain. Whether it's actually fiat money being earned or not (which undoubtedly a good portion must be), it just seems part of the old system of earning that the blockchain and the new attention economy is supposed to get away from.
re: ads not on mobile
Well that's something. On the website, on your personal feed, it will show banner ads at the top, one on the left and a smaller one on the right, and then there are more ads in the feed. If you go to your blog, there will actually be a banner ad on top and others where your blog posts are.
Yea, this is the current mobile experience..
And with desktop mode enabled, you'll see the ads like this..
Ads not being present on mobile is nice. As for the desktop, there are far better options then steemit,... Including desktop applications. Which steemit inc should be promoting, so they can offload some of their server side work to other nodes. Which will enable them to start the cleanup process from AWS and maybe towards a better community hosted ipfs or whatever system. The more steemit promotes steem and it's plethora of dapps, the more it will benefit as a whole the steem ecosystem. Collaborative measures. I mean, they are already running public API nodes, so they are enabling them.. may as well help them run full nodes also.
It's a business it needs to generate income to cover costs and to hopefully also increase the value of the steem coin. Otherwise Steemit is just a major sink hole of money flowing out of steem. I fully support ads as long as they are not super targeted and taking peoples information.
Why are there so many content creators on Youtube? Because they get paid big bucks from ads on their videos.
I have a feeling 95% of people would rather watch an ad to support a content creator then fork up $2 of their own money.