<div class="text-justify">

We are all familiar with the concept of *pay-to-play* where there is a cost to participation and a lot of people consider that Steem somewhat became this with the introduction of RCs. However, this is also an attention economy where one's ability to be able to attract participants is a vital component of the system.  

https://i.imgur.com/G0c8rlZ.jpg

Over my time here, I have had waves of engagement with peaks and troughs, I consider that at the moment, I am in an engagement trough but, it has often been brought up that the only reason that people comment is because I reward comments with a vote of some value. While I don't believe that is the *only* reason I get engagement, there is merit to the statement yet, it is said as if this is a *bad thing.* It is not.

The concept of *your stake is your voice* doesn't seem to sink in and people do not realize that stake has attractive power, whether it be at a dApp level with millions of SP, or an individual account level with thousands, all are going to have a gravity. In combination there is even more value as there will be staked individuals who will also support staked communities. 

We like to talk about *visibility* on Steem yet we limit it to the Trending page as if that is the only place people get seen. 

![image.png](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmSDGm1y26WAVkUXR6uLQZmnpXZobm2U5sDfDhyLbBqFgF)

This is me on steemfriends.org by @magicmonk. I am currently ranked in the top 500 of Steem Power holders and only have 44000 SP. While this might not be a resource many people use currently, I wonder how many of these types of *account profile* type pages will pop up once Steem has millions of users, a much higher price of coin and could be an advertising channel of various kinds. Will an advertising firm look for support there? This is visibility too. 

These are going to be created in various ways that are going to look at applications, communities and of course individual accounts that can potentially be leveraged for all kinds of purposes from advertising to investment potential. But not only will the accounts with high SP benefit, the entire *Steem community* will benefit because attention matters and the world of media is going to have to increasingly turn toward a *paid-to-play* model where users of various kinds get rewarded for their attention.

I have spoken about this many times already but Facebook is going to struggle to monetize their users at the same level a blockchain like Steem can as they are a very top heavy organization with a board of directors, thousands of employees and investors who expect a return on their investments that is attractive enough not to put their resources elsewhere. Most of the companies that work in their ecosystem are similar. 

While we aren't quite there yet, this is an opportunity. Because Steem is decentralized in ownership and the onus of return is on a very wide array of individuals and activities who act in their self-interest, the platform ill become more balanced with less peaks and troughs over time. However, it will be able to continually reward users at some level because there will eventually be very little extraction that goes to a very narrow few. This will be aided by SMTs, Oracles and applications who play around with various distribution models, not just with Steem, which I see as an investment token. 

This means that Steem can offer a highly diverse range of experiences through applications and communities, feeless transactions powered by the witnesses and incentives paid to users for their participation. At the moment, a business will pay for advertising to reach their customers through a centralized platform but in the future through blockchain technology and open data, the same business will be able to pay the user directly, instead of the middleman platform taking a cut. 

Of course, they can also target influencers with their message and products and  on Steem the future of influence is going to be both character of person and their ability to attract attention, and stake of account which can attract attention in and of itself. This process has a lot of potential but one thing I will mention is, *how does Facebook monetize itself again?*

Oh, through the sales of user data to advertising companies of various kinds and the sale of advertising space on their site. If an advertiser can circumvent the middleman, they can instead reward users for their participation which demonetizes most of what Facebook relies on for its operation. But, Facebook has investors who rely on a return to keep themselves invested as after all, they are not their because the love using Facebook. This means that their investors start to jump ship also because they are no longer able to get a return at a high enough rate but, where do they go?

As I see it, eventually the smart money investors will be the first to see the potential of blockchain interaction and will make the switch. Even if the rate of return is eventually lower than they had in the past, it is likely still going to be the *highest* out there in the future because it is going to get to the point that this is where all the consumers are consuming, regardless of what they are consuming. 

Even the gaming companies that are raking in billions a year are going to start integrating *actual value* tokenization into their systems in order to be able to compete. While maybe not the whole experience will be blockchained, the economic components will and they will leverage this in an attempt to attract attention. Do you pay 50€ to play Battlefield or, get paid 50€ to play Battlefield?

Because of the competition of service and product, the companies will continually have to find new and innovative ways to undercut each other which means an increase in spread to the user base as that is what consumers are going to start demanding at an increasing rate. While highly disruptive early, over time this creates an ecosystem that is much more stable and healthy in its distribution with potentially less chance for monopolistic behavior because users will continually change in their demand meaning it will be hard for any one group to continually maintain attention, especially when so much of the data they used to collect and sell is now freely available for anyone to utilize. 

There will still be variation in return and higher reward for skills and products that better satisfy demand but, the organic nature of the demand will mean that there will be much more ebb and flow. That means that the top-heavy business models that control the economy and governments from their authoritative power structures, will have to increasingly relinquish control and bleed investors so that even the investor groups are much more decentralized in their structure. 

There has never been a chance to shift the economic models of the world in such a dramatic fashion and while it will not be easy and will take time, there is a huge potential to not reset the system to have it all cycle again, but restructure to create a model that is continually improving for the best of the group, rather than the empowerment of the few.

While your staked voice is worth something. So is your attention. 
Start demanding return from the centralized experiences like Facebook.

*It will eventually break them.*

Taraz
[ a Steem original ] 

 </div>