STEEM is a Reddit-esque social media platform. What is Reddit's problem?

http://www.recode.net/2014/3/3/11624114/still-in-the-red-reddit-to-donate-one-tenth-of-ad-revenue-to-charity

Reddit's problem is that even with a massive userbase their costs are too high and their revenues are too low.
After ten years Reddit is still a loss making business model despite being the 14th most visited site in the US & 36th in the world in 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit

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As of 2015, Reddit had 542 million monthly visitors (234 million unique users), ranking 14th most visited web-site in US and 36th in the world.[6] Across 2015, Reddit saw 82.54 billion pageviews, 73.15 million submissions, 725.85 million comments, and 6.89 billion upvotes from its users.[7]

So for STEEM to be an improvement on a Reddit-esque  platform they would have to find a way to drastically increase the revenue and/or reduce the costs of that business model. STEEM have done the opposite...

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Reddit hypothesized that its platform would be improved if everyone who contributed to reddit.com by posting stories, adding comments or voting were rewarded with a fair share in Reddit, Inc1. Steem aims to support social media and online communities by returning much of its value to the people who provide valuable contributions

By paying users for popular content and even for comments/voting they've drastically increased the costs of that business model. Reddit earned <$10 million in 2014, which wasn't even enough to cover expenses. (Crunch some numbers using the wiki to see why it's not worthwhile paying for content on this type of platform and/or how much you'd have to increase revenue by to justify it.)

STEEM also reduces potential revenue per user as their initial user-base will be even less likely to give up personal info, allow targeted advertising or the censoring of board content to make it more advertiser friendly & I won't even go into the differences in the PR approaches.

In practical terms this means STEEM's burn rate (monthly expenses) will presumably be extremely high (paying to acquire users and for their content) but it will achieve no/low revenue and no meaningful longer term valuation from serious investors because the potential value per user, is if anything likely negative, so it will likely run into financial issues very rapidly. 

(It also deliberately went against all the crypto-currency community's cultural regulations, which is fine, but means as a result it's unlikely to be popular/adopted as a crypto-currency in it's own right.)

This is just a personal opinon, feel free to disagree and or make counter arguments especially those more familiar with the business model and future plans but I don't see a Steem merger being an issue as I don't see it being around for long.

(Other than keeping an inflated value for long enough to justify a high percentage stake in some sort of merger I can't see the point.)

One idea that comes to mind that has been mentioned before is the large online gaming space.  Video games that use a built in currency or credit system.  These could  be replaced and powered by BitShares where the "currency" can live outside the virtual world.  People play these MMO games 24/7 and buy/sell virtual items inside and outside of the game itself.  A game such as World of Warcraft or Everquest where there is virtual Gold, Silver, Copper, etc... why not have this run a blockchain issued by the game developer?  This takes the community to push these idea's to "real world" companies.  BitShares does offer quite a bit over other crypto that is simply a transfer of value.  Real time worldwide Dex, smartcoins, UIA, and the list goes on.  Each of these could span countless real world products.

But it's not fair. Mommy, it's not fair. That mean man won't let me get wealthy without work, creativity, or risk. It's not fair. Doesn't he know who I am? I am a MINER. Mommy! I'm an INVESTOR. Mommy!
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The following was released by Bytemaster well before the steem mining began:

How to Launch a Crypto Currency Legally while Raising Funds

"Perhaps the Bitcoin Communities cultural regulations are a blessing in disguise. By intentionally violating every one of their expectations you can minimize your token’s value at launch while still legally mining a token for minimal cost."

"You just need thick skin and the ability to ignore the Bitcoin pharisees and the angry mob they incite to nail you to a cross for failing to sacrifice your creation to the prevailing mining gods."
http://bytemaster.github.io/article/2016/03/27/How-to-Launch-a-Crypto-Currency-Legally-while-Raising-Funds/

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Sometimes the stench of entitlement around here is just nauseating. Yeah I'm looking at you.

Quote from: gamey on May 17, 2016, 07:49:27 pm

Speaking about these things.. I saw a transcript for a hangout on Steemit and I believe it was where BM claimed he only worked on Steem because it didn't compete with Bitshares.  Then he turns around and tries to get all the users of this forum which is probably Bitshares' best asset at the moment to abandon it and chase his latest pipe dream.  And it isn't like Steemit will be labeled "Bitshares".  No, Bitshares would be relegated to a sub-forum ! 

Looking out in Bitshares interest as usual. sigh

It appears that the best potential way for people to get funding to work on BitShares is now by posting about their plans and progress at steemit.com. There they can be upvoted and will be PAID, based on community assessment of the value of the post and at zero cost to the community, to carry out such development.

Also, this Forum is not under the control of the BitShares Community but under the control  of BitSapphire who have been extremely unresponsive to suggestions and requests. And posts on this Forum are curated  by individual Moderators rather than by the Community as a whole through voting.

I am amazed that you have not seen this. Sigh.

Quote from: gamey on May 17, 2016, 06:11:44 am

https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@dan/is-the-dao-going-to-be-doa

Bytemaster wrote a great article on this over on steemit.

(I'm 100% against the blanket poaching of BitShares forum users to the subforums of a vaguely related project. However.. that article above is a good read.)

I saw a great article on PTS/AGS before written by a Bitcoiner .
I wish I had believed it . 

however , if you think about it , everybody can write something on why something can not come true , especially in the crypto world .
you're bound to become a good predictor if you bash enough projects .

I do think some bashing is needed to properly analyze the validity of some non-sense BitShares based tokens like xxxx-non-sense-new-money ......

Quote from: gamey on May 14, 2016, 06:11:44 am

Quote from: btswildpig on May 14, 2016, 01:56:32 am

i think i'll pass .
I have much nightmare about putting my money on programmers and let them spend it to invest on something they thought was cool .   

AGS/PTS/JL777 .......

Your mistake is correlating negative issues with people being 'programmers'.  From what I can tell Chinese education system doesn't produce many programmers so I am not sure what to think but it explains the problems.

IMO your problem is you chose the wrong people. It has nothing to do with them being programmers. Bill Gates was a hardcore programmer... As were a ton of founders.

One needs to always judge their mistakes appropriately.

And I'm not sure how I should response to your question about China ....because nowadays the saying is , "Even if you throw a stone in the street randomly  , you'll hit a programmer " .

Just , most programmer with great skills don't speak English well (nor that they have much time to do so ) . So it's not common for you to encounter many Chinese programmers on line .

I wish the word "China" could be used to expain everything ..... but it doesn't really , aside from sometime glith in the networking environment .