Monday 1st, What Better Day to Communicate?

Yesterday was the 1st of July, following a Steem Witness Forum on Saturday and a few days before the 4th of July, the National Day in the USA.

So, it was the beginning of the month, also Monday, and before a short vacation, I assume.

It was a well-chosen day for a communication push, especially that it included a post reporting on the financial status of Steemit, Inc. and the extensive specifications for Hivemind Communities, for which feedback was requested, unfortunately met with a barrage of spam from a bot net, to discourage real comments.

One of the benefits of the communities, as they will be implemented through Hivemind, is they will leave tags alone, to be used for... well, tagging, and not to denote a special community.

That is one drawback I saw in the communities implemented in the Steem-Engine style, that they grow the number of "fake" tags, representing a community, a dapp, etc., rather than the topic of the post. But that was a simple way to get the ball rolling and communities out, without waiting for their implementation via Hivemind.

And we must admit it's pretty damn cool to have a form of SMTs and communities without having SMTs and communities! And we have to thank Aggroed, Matt and the team for that.

Now, I listened to Eli Powell carefully at the Steem Witness Forum. Here are a few highlights I remember from her intervention there:

• they need and seem open to help from the community
• they have someone helping with their social media accounts voluntarily now
• she promised she will push that more of Steemit employees will use Steem on a regular basis
• I don't know if it was a hope or a commitment but she said something about SMTs and before SteemFest

Following the release of the Communities Specs, and also remembering an earlier communication from steemitblog that they (SMTs and Communities) will be worked on in parallel, I think we would need some sort of clarification and deadline estimation for them soon. And if this plan to work on them in parallel is still the way it will be done, or not. Because in the previous steemitblog post the key words were "the Steemit blockchain team has shifted their focus entirely to completing Steemit’s Smart Media Tokens protocol". Are there still any non-blockchain team members to focus on Communities?

Communities also involve major changes at the user interfaces level, to introduce them, and developers of the UIs will put a great deal of work themselves to make them happen, so this may take some time before we have them.

I believe we will have these clarifications in future communications.