Certainly a valuable discussion for us all to be having @davemccoy.
I think Luke is basically one of the good guys in this equation, though. He's one of the few "old" witnesses who does care and who's pretty involved in the community. He's actually a cool "bridge" between the techy and "real life" in the sense that he's a small business owner and no just a developer and cryptotrader. He knows a lot about how life, business and people work.
I can't speak for Luke specifically, but there are quite a few @dan "followers" here... bitshares, Steemit... now EOS. Why is that important? We talk about EOS as a "competitor" but I'm struggling to make sense of the idea that Dan would create a new venture that would directly harm a previous venture. At this point in the game, the stage is still big enough for everyone.
Of course, that has little to do with the retention rate issue. And other issues internal to Steemit.
If there's an assurance it would be nice to have... and perhaps that's where you were going with the line of questioning here... it's that the folks at STINC and the top witnesses aren't just going to bail the moment someone rolls out a social app on the EOS blockchain.
As for "retention," what doesn't seem to get addressed much is that IF the future "down the road" for Steemit involves mass scale onboarding, let's not overlook that the single best "evangelist marketers" are a group of existing active users who all think the platform ROCKS. If most people have left or have a ho-hum feeling about this place, that's going to be a MUCH harder sell.
=^..^=
Hey @curatorcat, I love your reply. I think you know more than me btw ;) .... Who knew cats were that smart :P
Seriously my issue in the comment was about the "management" aspect only. In other words a top 20 witnesses are the only people with a voice to make changes and upgrades. If they aren't 100% serving Steemit only, then the potential for conflict of interests arises. That doesn't mean that they will do anything wrong and I'm sure there are some very fine people that are in this group. But just like in the real world, no company would ever let their highest ranking decision makers also work for their competition. You might be right that they aren't going to compete, but from everything I've read there are already plans for "steemit 2.0" on EOS. That doesn't mean they will win if there is a competition, but it does mean that our top 20 witnesses in both camps will be conflicted. In other words, at best they would have to "recuse" themselves from any conflicting issue decisions; or at worst they can pick and choose which shareholders to benefit most.
Its just messy and unnecessary.
I do agree that people (including these witnesesses) can invest in both platforms. My issue lies solely in the fact that they make choices and decisions that make things work.
Thanks again for your awesome comment! And once again tell your human that you are one smart kitty!
Most welcome sir..
Thanks for the shout out.
I agree, Steemit, inc has a lot of work to do to launch a solid platform that many developers can build on. Even if Steemit.com doesn't attract as much attention as some would like, I'm hopefully the many applications that continue to increase the community of human beings on STEEM will. It doesn't matter which interface we use, it's all the same blockchain and that's where the value is because that's where the user's content, cryptocurrency, and identity is.