Esteem; Blog, Vote and Get Paid.

Since the emergence of Facebook, which is the first known social media, hundreds of other social media have been launched over the years. Digital businesses have been the latest trend and the best way or place to reach a large audience to advertise your product or service is on an active and well adopted social media. Many businesses now utilize internet technology to enhance their business activities and social media is the best place to promote such activities.

There is a new technology making the waves known as the Blockchain technology. It is commonly referred to as the New Internet. The blockchain technology has experienced massive growth over the years and now has a broad zone of applications. The introduction of social media to the blockchain by the steem blockchain brought about a new use-case to the blockchain technology. The steem blockchain has lots of social media dapps ( decentralized applications), but there is this dapp that comes with a user interface that people new to the blockchain are already accustomed to, that dapp is Esteem.

What is Esteem

Esteem is a blockchain social dapp where you can create posts, blogs, share pictures, vote and get paid. It is a steem dapp and is powered by the steem blockchain. It rewards its users in steem and sbd (steem backed dollars).
Esteem has the eSteem mobile app for your mobile phones (Android and iPhones) and the eSteem surfer app for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

How To Get Started on eSteem

Getting started on esteem does not require any special protocol, it's the same process as other social media you are used to. You go to the official eSteem website where you can get the direct download links for the IOS, Android and Desktop applications.
If you already have a steem account, you log in either directly or through steemconnect. If you are entirely new to the steem blockchain, you sign up for an account. eSteem still uses Steemit Inc (the 1st steem dapp) as a front-end, so to sign up, you are redirected to the steemit sign up page. Opening a steem account with legit details will take a maximum of 4 days to get verified. Once you are verified, your private keys should be backed up properly so it never gets missing. Once you lose your steem private keys, they are irrecoverable and all your funds will get trapped in that account.

eSteem is currently ranked #9 on the stateofthedappsranking which ranks dapps on Ethereum, Steem, EOS, and POA blockchain. You can view the eSteem profile on the stateofthedapps website here.

How Does eSteem Works

Like I said earlier, eSteem is a platform where you blog, comment, socialize with other users and get paid for doing so. It comes with a user interface you are already used to from Facebook, IG, and Twitter. Let's look at some basic features of eSteem and how it relates to other social media we are accustomed to.

• Making a Post
  This works in almost the same way you make a post on Facebook. There is just a little change with the way the post is arranged. This section on eSteem comes with;
• Title - A field for the subject of your post
• The post body (post content)
• Tags - this is quite different from tags on Facebook where you tag your friends. The tags on esteem should be keywords which your post relates to. It serves as a means of searching for posts under certain categories. On eSteem, you can only mention a user on your post (e.g @tony-duke) and that user will be notified of your mention.

You can add other media files like images and videos to your post also. eSteem currently does not have a direct video upload feature so you can use a YouTube video link to add videos to your post.

• Voting/Liking
  This is how you earn on eSteem. Unlike other social apps where the likes you get on your blog/post does not bring any rewards, on eSteem, voting on a post adds some rewards to the post balance. There is no specific value or amount of reward that's added to a post per vote, it is all dependent on the Steem power of the user that's voting. On the next feature, I'll explain how you can get Steempower.

• Claiming Rewards
  eSteem comes with a wallet. To access your wallet, you go to your profile. The wallet feature is unique to blockchain dapps. After Seven days, the rewards you get on your post will be ready for claiming. You simply go to your wallet to claim.

On payout, you take 75% of the post rewards, this is called the authors reward, while those who liked/voted your post get 25% of the rewards, this is called the curator's reward. Your 75% then divides in a 51:49 ratio to Steempower(Sp) and SBD. For the curators, the 25% curation reward comes in Steempower alone.

Those are two ways you can grow your sp, either through author rewards by making posts and earning or through curation rewards by voting on other posts. You can also get more Sp by investing in steem and powering up to Sp.

• No Censorship
  Decentralization is the major feature of the blockchain. eSteem is a decentralized application and has no third party censorship. None of your posts or contents can be taken down or deleted by the platform no matter its content. You are the only one with access to your private keys and only you can control what happens on your account's blog. You can only get flagged by other users if you post offensive contents and this may lead to your post getting hidden.

These are the basic features that differ eSteem from centralized social media like Facebook. These features are easy to adapt to, every other thing is the same.

Some Problems Facing eSteem

The new eSteem mobile app version is still under development and has been subject to different bugs and app crashing. This has made using the app somewhat stressful. As an old user, I know how well the previous version worked and was very suitable for use. The new users would have to be patient with the app to reach a more stable stage. eSteem is open-source, you can contribute to its development on its Github repository. Contributions such as bug reports and suggestions are welcomed.

Conclusion

The eSteem dapp is a good place for blockchain novices to start their blockchain journey. It's a place where you can easily earn money by doing something that you are already used to doing. The kind of blogs which you see on eSteem ranges on a very wide variety of blogs under art, science, STEM education, cryptocurrency, development, and other random blogs. Spending time on the platform will expose you to many other opportunities on the blockchain, this is why I say it's a good place for starters. For now, I give the eSteem dapp a 4.2-star rating.

Disclaimer: The content of this article is not meant to serve as financial advice, please do your own research.
Images are properties of eSteem and are used for the purpose of reviews.