What is Steemit?

Steemit Overview:

Steemit is best summarised as a content driven platform that rewards its contributors. Rewards can come in the shape of Steem Power, Steem tokens and Steem Dollars.

Pros:

• Post, consume and vote. It’s what you do now on other social media platforms but with the potential of real rewards.
• The ecosystem offers interesting long term opportunities via Steem Power, Steem Dollars and the fluctuating valuation of STEEM tokens.  
• You can power up your influence within the platform. The more power you have the more you reward and earn.
• Steemit is a rapidly growing platform already in the top 1000 websites.

Cons:

• The amount of STEEM tokens on-market doubles each year. Potentially diluting overall value.  
• The valuation of STEEM can and will fluctuate massively so Steem Power earned could drop as well as rise like any investment.
• There is already an economy of bots and upvote exchanges which may damage the long term reputation of the platform.

Official Video:

Comparison:

• Reddit
• Digg
• Medium

Competitors:

• OnG.Social, supported by IBM and established before going to ICO.  
• Akasha, rewards Ethereum rather than it’s own token.  
• Synereo, rewards based on views not votes.  

Intelligentsia:

• Co-Founder, Ned Scott.
• Co-Founder, Dan Larimer, creator of BitShares and EOS.  

Milestones:

• Before Steemit officially launched the platform was hacked. Roughly $85,000 USD worth of Steem Dollars and Steem was taken.
• July, 2016, Steemit, Inc officially launches Steemit.
• March 2017 Dan Larimer resigned as head of technology.
• By January 2018 over 334k accounts had been made.  
• From July 2016 to February 2018 Steemit has paid out over $22m USD in Steem Dollars and Steem tokens.  

Roadmap:

• 2018 has an open roadmap where the company have requested that users provide goals.  
• The most popular goals of 2018 include streamlining the account creation process, adding communities, fiat currency gateways so users don’t have to use crypto to buy tokens or cash out.  

Function:

• To be similar to other blogging and social media websites but where content is saved in the blockchain.
• Blockchain enables voting, comments and posts to be accumulative in power and rewarded.
• The Steem Dollar is pegged to the USD.
• To build a platform of great content that is well curated by an involved and committed user-base.
• To put profit into the hands of it's users rather than the platform owners.

Conclusion:

Steemit will likely become one of the top social platforms on the internet but there will be growing pains. 

Right now it is a platform with possibilities but the more newcomers and existing users utilize bots and upvote exchanges the more the platform becomes about commerce rather than content. 

If it becomes in a user's best interest to buy or bribe their way to success, then Steemit cannot reach its potential because it will drive away content creators.

For example: if it's more profitable to spend currency than put time and effort in, why continue to create good content? It is more likely creators will move to other platforms where time and effort can lead to success.

This is true of YouTube right now and how creators are being forced out. In turn, they take their audience and empower new platforms. This happens when a content driven platform puts commerce above content.

However, it is very likely whales and curators with influence on Steemit will tackle such problems long before it impacts STEEM and Steem Power valuations. With that in mind Steemit no doubt has a very bright future.