Steemit: The Social Media Platform That Pays You to Be Social

February 7, 2017 5:00 am
Steemit, the Social Media Platform That Pays You to Be Social
(Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)
Steemit, the Social Media Platform That Pays You to Be Social
(Courtesy of Steemit)

 

By now, if you don’t have a Facebook page or Twitter handle (or both), you’re either part of a doomsday cult or living under a sizable rock. But that’s actually OK; let your friends at RealClearLife introduce you to the only social platform that you’ll ever need. Besides, it’s way better than those other guys. It’s called Steemit, and it actually pays you to be social.

If you’re now picturing shaking hands with your cubicle-mate and hearing the opening of Pink Floyd’s “Money,” Steemit doesn’t work exactly like that. But it’s close. The blockchain-based platform rewards users for creating and curating content—pretty much exactly what RealClearLife does all day, every day. The currency you’re paid in is called “steem”; and you also get rewarded for mining, trading, or holding the crypto currency.

However, you don’t get to keep 100 percent of that digi-cash; 50 percent of it goes towards “steem power,” or a way of giving you up-voting power in the curating/creating scheme (you win rewards based on this); and “steem dollars,” which according to the company, “drives their use.” In other words, it’s exactly like Bitcoin; you can use it to pay for services rendered and send it to other users, if you owe debts. (Because, you know, a Lannister always pays his debts.)

Steemit, the New Social Media Platform That Pays You to Be Social
Bitcoin (Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images)

 

The way Steemit sees it, this isn’t just any old social platform. Theoretically, it could serve the needs of the two billion people in the world who lack access to bank accounts. In the process, Steemit would become its own world bank.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. The site’s still in beta. However, if you’re doubting how all of this operates, take it from Rolling Stone/New York Times contributor Neil Strauss (who also wrote one of the greatest man-centric books in history, The Game), Steemit actually works. Six months ago, Strauss posted two scanned sheets of a handwritten letter he received from Phil Collins, attacking him for a bad concert review he published in the Times in 1997. (The pop star scrawls “f—k you” twice over the course of the note; read Strauss’ original review here.) For the post, Strauss has already earned $10,451.90 in steem dollars. While we’re not entirely sure what the author-journalist will be doing with all that e-cash, our guess is he’s gotten something out of it—at the very least, a little social revenge on Mr. Collins. And at the end of the day, that’s a hell of a lot better than a “like” from the girl who you sat next to in high school, right?

—Will Levith for RealClearLife

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