With all the recent revelations and confrontations about corruption, censorship and manipulation of the established social networks there is no doubt that savvy entrepreneurs see a chance to disrupt this business.

The value proposition to users is easy to make – why keep using the likes of Facebook or Reddit where other people have absolute control over what you are allowed to express and only they profit from your content, and not switch to a new social media platform? And what better technology to power such a new system than the distributed ledger – blockchain.

Indeed we have seen a number of new ventures aiming for this space, such as Synereo for example, but today one attempt is jumping ahead of the pack. Steem launched today its real payments system which is generating quite a positive buzz.

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Unlike Synereo, that focuses on leveraging blockchain for privacy, Steem mainly promises to use the technology to pay back users for their work which is the source of monetization for these type of sites. By actually sending Steem cryptocurrency to bloggers who use the new platform, based on the amount of likes they got, it is creating an added incentive to lure users away from venues enjoying massive network effects such as Medium.

Steem was created by Ned Scott and Daniel Larimer, the founder of BitShares. The Steem cryptocurrency is available for trading on the US-based Bittrex and on BitShares’ OpenLedger. The news of the payments really being sent out as promised led to a higher price today.