When Zuckerberg first launched ‘The Facebook’ in 2004 on his campus, “Within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students had signed up, and after one month, over half of the undergraduate population had a profile. The network was promptly extended to other Boston universities, the Ivy League and eventually all US universities.” - Sarah Phillips, The Guardian

As much as we disagree with Facebook’s privacy policies and lack of concern / ability to protect our privacy, there are applicable business lessons to take away from their initial growth strategy. They explicitly targeted universities and we all witnessed exactly how effective that was. We believe the Facebook phenomenon can be seen again with Steemit in 2018.

The college students today are the future of tomorrow, which is why we’re investing our resources into bringing them into the fold. We created @steemcollege to introduce the Steem blockchain to students one campus at a time, starting with the University of California, Los Angeles. To welcome UCLA students back to class for Spring 2018, we spent over 13 hours preparing this scavenger hunt. On game day, hints were given every hour.

steemucla.com redirects to steemit.com/@steemcollege/welcome-to-steemucla

We’ll walk you through our day at UCLA

We started bright and early, it was still chilly when we got to campus. The first thing we did was begin hiding the dollars we prepared beforehand, at specific locations around campus. As students began pouring into the campus for their first day of class, we began speaking to groups of students about Steemit and our scavenger hunt. They were also informed that hints will be posted at Steemucla.com.

As the scavenger hunt began, every hour on the dot we posted hints about where "Steem dollars" were hidden around campus. Here are the hints below (We didn't include the pictures of course).

10:00 AM “Scavenging for Steem dollars would be easier on two wheels.”

11:00 AM “UCLA is more than what meets the eye, we lead to something beneath the surface.”

12:00 PM “Grab a bite to eat, you might find what you seek.”

Bonus Hint “Mr. Murphy and his friends have gifts for you.”

1:00 PM “We only wake up at night, but you can find some Steem dollars around our resting spots.

2:00 PM “Look up, there’s something green!”

3:00 PM “Tired? Take a seat”

4:00 PM “We hope you’re not skipping class, Steem dollars can be found at all of the Halls!”

5:00 PM “Before you leave, Royce Hall is the place to be.”

Throughout the day, we continued to hide "Steem dollars" to ensure that there were enough for the groups to find. We also continued to speak to groups of students lounging on the lawn or chilling in cafes about Steemit and the scavenger hunt. While doing so we bumped into Jason, a member of UCLA's blockchain organization, and was happy to connect with him. We hope to be able to work together to better inform students about blockchain technologies and Steem in the future.

We were also uplifted by the enthusiastic reactions from most of the students we spoke to. Of course, there were also a few who could care less, but that was to be expected.

The last hint lead the students to Royce Hall where we handed out balloons with dollar bills inside to those who showed up. We then were able to speak more in detail about Steemit and invite them to sign up and join SteemUCLA.

It was a fun day and even the campus kitty wanted in! 😄

A few weeks ago we were setback with the rain and had to postpone, but we’re super excited that this finally happened! Thank you to all of the students for running around campus and participating in the game with us!

*****

A special thanks to @steemitla for inspiring us to do this with their promo done in the streets of Los Angeles as seen in this post.

Until next time!

Rob Chen, CEO

@Yensesa is developing the first-ever exchange for Steem and Ghanaian Cedis to eliminate the need to go through multiple exchanges which takes time and adds fees. With direct transfer, @Yensesa enables a wide-spread adoption of STEEM in malls and even help parents outside of Ghana be able to buy food, supply, or anything for their children in Ghana. They are currently looking for influencers to help promote their project. Do you want to earn up to $2,437 for helping them out? We look forward to chatting on Discord.