Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 11/27/17> Fishing the streams and ponds of Steemit…

The long holiday weekend is over now and it is time to get back to the normalcy of life, which means earning some money. So, before the weekend ended I determined that Sunday morning would be a good time to go fishing. The preacher isn’t going to miss me and youngest boy, there will be plenty of folks in the pews, besides, it’s not like the whole family is skipping out, my wife and daughters will be at Sunday school and the church service.

When I woke Sunday morning Shortie was already up, that little sweetheart had even brewed a pot of coffee for her old man. So with a cup in hand I decided I would take a quick trip around Steemit and see what was happening since I posted my daily dose the night before. My dose had 3 up votes and 2 comments so half my normal readers had already checked it out.

There are a bunch of features and tools on this platform and I don’t know a fraction of them, so with it still being dark outside, I had some time to explore.

A question that has always recurred in my mind as I use Steemit is, “how many people are really on here and participating?” As bright and talented as these app developers and code writers are I knew that somewhere on here there had to be a tool or app that would give a real time look at what is happening here. Now my task was to find that darn thing.

I went to the little magnifying glass thing and typed in a search for “real time Steemit user activity” and clicked the search button. The first search result that came up was a blog post from @roelandp from some time last year announcing a new tool he had developed and a link to his site called SteemStream.com . Sounded just like what I was looking for from the description he gave in the blog so, let’s give it look, and I clicked the link.

Let me tell you; you had better to be able to read fast. The page is set up in a scrolling format showing everything that is happening in real time, and the stuff is moving fast. Luckily for folks like me who are slow readers, he has a linear graph at the bottom of the page that is a hell of lot easier on the eyes and you can at least process what you are seeing, not like the scrolling action, which left me with the onset of a headache.

The linear graph covers a whole host of items on a time line that is blocked in 10 second increments. Those items include; upvotes , downvotes, comments, posts, sell orders, money transfers, new users, and “all TX”. I took the “TX” to mean all transactions, not just transactions from the great State of Texas, which is abbreviated as TX.

Now, in anybody’s book that is a whole load of useful information, and I spent quite a long time on the site just watching the graph time line on the bottom of the page. Most all the graph lines were showing peaks and valleys as one might expect to see and the lines are colored coded so it easy to know what you are looking at.

Before I knew it I had spent over an hour on that site watching the scrolling and watching the linear graph lines. The thing that stood out to me was the “yellow line” on the linear graph. That line shows the number of new users per minute, “0.0/M” was the number displayed the entire time I was on the site. Not one new user logged on in that hour which meant either that data wasn’t available or the site wasn’t getting any new users.

The latter of those two scenarios is the concerning part, or should be at least to whoever is piloting this boat as it sails the seas of the internet. Yes, it was early on Sunday morning in Texas, but it wasn’t early in all the other places around the world. To boot, despite all that information, I still had not found the puzzle piece I was looking for.

So, I did another search and found another site called Steemit Pond, that sounded right up my alley, I was going fishing anyway when I got done, so I ventured over there. The page is set up kind of like you are looking into an aquarium; the upvotes are signified as “little air bubbles” floating to the top of the page. Downvotes are signified by something sinking to the bottom, not quite sure what thing is that is pictured, but it was the only thing I saw sinking.

Comments are represented as fish coming into view from left side of the screen, there are five different types of fish, I don’t have a clue as to what the types represent. There are whales, and those represent new “Top Level Posts”, I don’t know a top level post from a hole in the ground, but my guess is, that it is made by the author and a re-steemed post. My other guess would be any post would have to start as top level since post earnings couldn’t be taken into consideration, I mean it’s real time and new, so there wouldn’t be any earnings yet.

One thing I didn’t see was the dolphins. According to the legend key, Dolphins are new accounts created, and just like over at SteemStream there weren’t any dolphins playing in the water for the hour I spend at the pond.
This site does have a neat feature and I haven’t used it, but I might, and that is you can track users with it and see what they have been doing. I might give that a shot some day, but not then.

The wife and girls had headed off to church and I was still working the Steemit Pond trying to catch the information I was looking for. I had been at it now for over three hours and I wasn’t having any luck.

What I am looking for is something in the form of the number of users logged into Steemit.com in real time, it could be in the form of a world map, showing each user a little “dot” on the map or it could just be a single line graph or even a “counter” like a lot of websites have that says “number of registered users online”. If you by chance know of such an app, tool or site please let me know in the comments below.

Four hours of searching was enough, I gave up, and by then my headache was in full force so the real fishing trip was scrapped. I should have just taken my cup of coffee, set on the porch and watched the sun come up. Next time I won’t make the same mistake, I really need to work on getting my priorities in line.

Until next time,
@sultnpapper