Steemit has seen an enormous amount of registrant’s over the past four weeks. The social media platform enables its user base to get paid in “Steem Power” for posting content and the using the voting mechanisms within the interface.The company says membership has doubled in size every single week since its launch and this has increased its market capitalization from $7 million to $17 million USD.
CEO Ned Scott says he can’t believe the speed of growth the website has seen and says this social media engine will change people’s online experiences. He explains in the announcement:
We have worked so hard to perfect Steemit and give anyone an opportunity to make money by creating and curating good content. Based on reactions from experts and testing from our consumers, we knew that the reception would be strong, but Steemit is so much further along than where we thought it would be. In about a month, the market cap of Steem has increased two and a half times, page sessions have jumped by nearly six times, and the Steemit blockchain is now seeing twelve transfers, posts or votes every minute on average. These are phenomenal numbers and we are excited that our growing community is engaging in a fun and potentially lucrative social medium.
The platform is powered by an open source blockchain called Steem. Additionally, users paid in the token Steem Power get more voting credentials, and receive half their payments in Steem Dollars, which the team says are worth about one US dollar.
Steemit says there are currently over one hundred posts valued at $2,000 USD worth of Steem with the top 20 posts having an average payout of a combined $8,500 for posters and voters.
The platform is similar to Reddit, and the team has recently announced that it is open sourcing its code for the Steem blockchain and social media interface. The reason they chose to do this is “due to the increased number of entrepreneurs building social media apps integrating with Steemit and the Steem blockchain,” said Scott.
The project was also founded by Dan Larimer, founder of the blockchain-based financial exchange BitShares. Scott says adopters of Steem are connecting various other social attributes to the technology as well. He explained:
We are seeing incredible demand from early adopters and innovators bridging the technology to other social platforms such as Reddit, Twitter and WordPress. Having our technology freely available will empower entrepreneurs to extend upon the Steem blockchain and further revolutionize how social media can reward users and creators.
Since its launch, some of the most popular posted content have covered cryptocurrency, politics and technology as the platform has seen a “ten-fold increase” in voting every day.
Scott adds that starting July 4, its blockchain will start distribution with 10% of its token supply total. Users of the new social media platform can also purchase Steem Power via the exchange BlockTrades with Bitcoin.