It will go up from here imo.

Correct.  I'm not involved with Steem except as a future power user.  I've only shared what I'm working on with a few of our most trustworthy forum personalities (and my possibly fictitious secret sauce recipe guard dog, Duke), but they ain't talkin'.

Quote from: abit on May 18, 2016, 10:08:36 pm

Quote from: tonyk on May 18, 2016, 09:40:56 pm

And most importantly...they already have (as one of the first orders of business) the bots to auto vote up or down posts by accounts they like/dislike...one of the parameters is even to do such burial in 0 seconds after a post. It is a no brainer that such automation on account and not posts voting, is so simple and easy to 'improve' to next include new accounts to be destroyed for simply voting 'for' a post by an account on the blacklist of the vote-masters...  Now each poster not only should not express a different opinion, but should restrain from even voting for something that the masters might not like, for the fear of being auto-blacklisted.
censorship automation nice steaming touch to the already existing total control  monopoly...

Why did you know so much, Tony? When you started to hate sth, you look into it to find more reasons to amplify the hate? Why not save some time & just ignore it?

Trolls can't ignore, they have to feed on something or else wither and die.

This appears to be true. On July 4th the big amounts people are receiving right now will end. Dan said there will be ~$2,500 per day after 7/4 and assuming the user base continues to grow I would guess the top post of the day may receive between $5-$10 and the average post would receive a few cents for the next few months. If the site continues to grow then most all post would earn next to nothing with a few standouts grabbing a buck or two. Perhaps my math is incorrect, but comments are also counted in the payouts, so I don't think it's wrong.

It's also possible that the user base doesn't grow significantly or that people align with each other into some kind of voting club (looking at someone here, you know who you are! =b) that goes around voting up each other's post so they dominate the payouts. Which honestly is not real different from what is going on now. There's one person in particular lately that's got a nice scheme going where they  have 10-12 accounts either of their own or friends that upvote all of their post, no matter how inane or trivial it is and it pulls in $200+ each time. The big mining holders of STEEM and Dan appear to be taking the vast majority of the $2 mio that I thought was supposed to go towards new user adoption. At least Dan is making worthwhile post to get his cut but the majority of the other large holders do nothing special and just upvote themselves big payouts.

To be fair, it's not as bad as it was a few weeks ago. They do appear to be making some effort to upvote a new users worthwhile post and spread around the upvotes a little better, but I do know for a fact that there are coordinated efforts to pool votes towards the favored few. Also, I'm sure many of the big holders have figured out by now that it's not in their best interest to bring new users to Steem until after July 4th. Why bring in others when you can take all of that money for yourselves? Wait until the big payout, then invite new users at will! I'm just assuming that's why we don't see these people going around doing much promotion at this point, but perhaps I'm wrong. However, seeing how they are coordinating into voting clubs early on appears to indicate they are well aware of this tactic and are likely adhering to it until 7/4 to maximize profits. It's no different than mining I guess. If you find a tweak that gains you more hashpower you use it. You're certainly not going to discard the tweak because you don't want to take more than others.

I like Steem/Steemit. I just don't like how money has turned the idea into a big cash grab, influenced votes to be selfish, created insider clubs and make new users feel like it's pointless to post there because they're receiving a few cents for their post while others are grabbing thousands. I'll take a quote from Buck's review hit piece on Steemit ...

If George Carlin were to review this social media platform I imagine it would go like this, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it!”

I think that sums up the opinion of Steemit for most outsiders very well and that's sad to see. In my opinion that stigma seems to follow any project tied to BitShares, it has a very insider feel to it and outsiders just don't feel welcome. My opinion is based off of comparing BitShares related projects to other communities projects I've been involved with where it seems everyone is welcome and the air is full of synergy. I'm not saying one is better than the other in the long run, as toast has pointed out the group trap can hinder things at times. But when it comes to acquiring a large user base and eager participants quickly, BitShares seems to be tainted in the minds of others.

I wonder how much money I could earn expressing this opinion on Steemit? 

I think the future is pretty clear for BTS:

1. work out the kinks with Steem
2. merge best parts of steem + BTS into a next generation DEX
3. sharedrop + dev allocation

It is just a much longer roadmap.