Discovering The Sites and Apps That Let Us Explore and Create Value on The Steem Network
Please notice that this post got to be a whole lot longer than expected and if all you were after were the apps themselves, you may skip ahead to section “So let’s have a look at some of the alternatives to Steemit.com“.
Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t or don’t even consider it much of an issue, but the past overfocus on what Steemit users call “flags" has been really confusing for many new users and it would seem to me that nothing short of a change in the website design will solve this issue. Especially confused are some users who are viewing the blockchain through another user interface.
Today I want to do a quick write up on the actively developed UIs I've been introduced to, have tested out myself to varying degrees and with varying results. Because the way I see it, one day we should ideally be more independent of Steemit.com.
For this to be achieved, knowledge of the alternatives to the currently most popular site have to spread so that we can get as many new regular users and groundbreaking innovators come forward as possible.
"What? Another user interface besides Steemit? Btw… what is a user interface?"
Yes indeed: These are the apps and websites that let you see what is actually on the Steem blockchain. You are using one right now, through which you get to see this post!
Rather than you having to sort through all the code in the network that you wouldn't normally want to look at, these nifty things pick up the important stuff that the average user would need to know and displays it all in a stylish fashion, thus making social interaction with others accessible to everyone. Not just for the geeks and nerds. - although for us as well.
One of the benefits of a decentralized network
Not all “hierarchies” are in of themselves even harmful at all to a decentralized network; Because after all, of what use would a network be if everyone was equal - like everyone else - to start with?
It's been an absolute pleasure to see lots of new alternative user interfaces (from here on called "UIs") start to pop up from all directions! Great work everyone involved – whether it be by coding, by donating/investing or by being a beta tester!
As I took certain artististic notice of and considered fairly accurately described by @cryptohazard in one of his comments:
"Steem is the basis, the blockchain heart. Then to present it and let users interact you need a interface/website.
Which is why you have busy.org website, steemit.com website, esteem mobile app.
Anyone can build his or her interface on the top of the heart. Hopefully we will see more of those."
I would like to emphasize that the same is true about the whole network. Steem (before that the internet) is the technology we gather around. It can be likened to a sort of potluck, as @fuzzy on a recent episode of Beyond Bitcoin reminded us that @dan had compared it to in its initial development.
Even if you can’t produce a single line of code to improve on it, you can contribute by being a network builder and an activist within the network.
You can build alliances, support the people you think are doing good things and use the Steem based platforms that you consider the best.
You bring and do what you can. It all makes a difference and could create rings on the water, that sooner than you realize it can turn into an outright tsunami of productive work and innovation.
So let’s have a look at some of the alternatives to Steemit.com
While there are actually many more apps for Steem, there are a couple of sites and apps that can truly be considered a full or at least very useful partial replacement for Steemit. Below I will list some of them. All headlines are clickable and will send you to the relevant webpage for the site/app in question.
Please notice that these are only very brief introductions and that I will not be able to make a full review of each one of these Uis at this point. Many of the features mentioned below also overlap and appear on all platforms. I only mentioned specific features because they stuck out on the specific site/app and to give you some idea of what to expect.
When using any of these, unless you like to take risks with your Steem login credentials, always know who you are giving your keys to and try to always use your posting key only. Click here for more info.
Busy
Called the Facebook of Steem. The project founded by @fabien and @ekitcho, sports a more stylized blue and white design. If you're interested in an interface that doesn't collapse or hide messages just because someone downvoted them, you can go on Busy.org and access the same blockchain (posts, data etc) from there.
Though most functions present on Steemit.com exist there already, like the rest of them (including Steemit) this UI is still under development and many functions will undoubtedly be added or improved on in coming versions.
In one of their recent posts the Busy team stated that:
As a decentralized and open source platform in the form of a non-profit organization, we are open to any contribution/suggestion from you. We would love to get the finest resources from this brilliant community to build the best platform ever that can change the world. Our goal is to be able to select and pay every contribution that brings value to Busy. Since the first day we’ve paid every contributor! We're enthusiastically looking for talented people who understand where Busy is going.
It does have a particularily interesting feature, which is the inbuilt direct messagging ability and public chatrooms. However keep in mind that this is provided as an extra feature which is not yet integrated with the Steem blockchain itself.
eSteem
Developed by @good.karma it is one of the longest running projects and constantly receiving new updates. The interface will likely remind you of other common social media apps.
The app, which is available for Android and IOS, has been translated to many different languages and currently rewards it’s users with upvotes for using it! (eSteem also get a share of the rewards as it becomes a beneficiary in actions you take on the blockchain from within the app)
In this app the voting percentage can be decided in the settings and then applies this same percentage of your full vote every time you hit the upvote button, or you can simply hold down the button and set it that way.
The app also features for example support for bookmarks, a pin code, as well as notifications for everything including follows, mentions and reblogs.
ChainBB
Being developed by @Jesta is probably the fastest developing project currently. It’s a forum/bulletin board view of the blockchain tags that have so far manually been included there by jesta on request.
In order to suggest a new tag/subforum to be included you can go to the chainBB forum section and express any ideas you may have.
The site has been remarkably stable and fast so far! When Steemit has been unreachable and Busy a bit slow, ChainBB has worked excellent as a replacement. Some independent Steem users have decided to reward users of ChainBB with extra upvotes too!
Can we expect to see other Crypto Currency communities moving there and even coin introductions so far still happening on Bitcointalk to start publishing there instead? The future will tell!
Steemd client,Steemd.com and Steemdb.com
Quoting from the very useful Steem Center Wiki (that actually rewards its contributors by the way):
One popular client for STEEM is known as Steemd. Witnesses, seeds, and miners all run this client. Other clients - such as Steemit.com and Busy.org - are not independent clients, but rely on Steemd to function. Steemd is open source and is available on Github here: https://github.com/steemit/steem
But that's describing the original Steemd client, which should not be confused with Steemd.com.
Steemd.com can however be used by the layman to view all of those details that you might not be able to see on other user interfaces, such as changes made to posts or comments.
Steemdb.com makes an excellent alternative for this purpose as well and can be particularily useful when you want to see clearly all of those up/downvotes that don’t get displayed on Steemit.com once you get enough of them on a post!
Steepshot
Considered the “Instagram” of Steem and in my opinion probably the Steem app with the coolest sounding name so far! This app focuses on images rather than long posts. It works well for snapping pictures on the go so you can post them directly on Steem for your followers to enjoy.
You can read more about Steepshot Alfa 4 here and download it for Android or IOs. That post is also where the above picture was taken from, as I am unable of filming apps running on my phone and the Google Play search function in the Android Emulator “Andy” doesn’t find test versions of apps.
Steem.Photos
A Steem site that definitely reminds me of Instagram and similar apps. It looks wonderful!
– I will say only as a slight caviat (this is protocol and far from personal) that I so far know very little about @peugenio who is the developer behind it and that I have not yet used the app with any of my own user credentials.
But he is apparently looking for support and possibly other developers to continue working on the app, so please get in touch with him if you know anyone who fits either description!
Zappl
In early development, I have not actually tested this app, but @zappl is expected to be a groundbreaking app more similar to Twitter! It will likely focus on quicker interactions.
The projects latest post where they write more about themselves and their project can be found here.
Special Apps
Here are a few extra apps you might have use for
https://steemwhales.com/post/ -Useful among other things for posting with “beneficiaries”, which means you can share your post rewards with others!
Streemian - Has a ton of features, such as copying the votes of others or scheduling future posts!
Vessel Steem Wallet – A “wallet” software for Steem developed by @jesta. This piece of equipment easily lets you perform a number of tasks not available in the rest of the Uis, such as “delegating” (lending out) a portion of your Steem Power to your friends or projects that you support.
AskSteem.com - A new search engine for the Steem universe! It was created by @thekyle and an introduction to it can be found here.
Coming Video Platforms
A few video platforms using Steem have been suggested and may still be worked on developing, but as of the publishing of this post I know relatively little about them… I was originally gonna wrap up with, but while I still stand by those words, I discovered a highly relevant post that I had totally missed!
The SteemQ platform that I had previously heard about @furion developing, has now changed name to Viewly (that's a great name!).
The new post provides us with a great story about the reasons behind his work and a new fresh landing page where you can sign up for future updates about the project.
In his post furion also examines the standard issues with platforms such as Youtube today. Issues like a centralized organization choosing to track, censor and demonetize its content creators, putting ads before the actual content that the social media is supposed to be for. “Can we do better?” he asks the reader and promises more to come!
Other posts mentioning such ideas and that as such might be of interest to you, the first in order being a previous post by furion and the second a post by @steemrolling, can be read here:
This is a really good list of all the platforms running on Steem. Thanks for sharing.
I also think that Steepshot is the coolest name so far :)
Thanks. Yes, but Viewly is a close second! =)
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Super post. I actually use, or tried, most of the apps you mention. All have their good things but also their not so good things. I doubt if it is a good idea to try and combine blogging, instagram, and twitter type of services in the some blockchain though. They are all specific services and eg in SteepShot you cant see the text, but the first image of each post is presented. SteepShot users will now vote for an image, while the vote is actually applicable for the whole post, including the text. This can lead to many votes given to images that the SteepShot user would not have given to the entire post! This is just one example. Depending to what Steem/Steemit will evolve it could very well be that services and frontends like SteepShot and Zapple HAVE to seek for their own blockchain and reward models, investment they make in the apps maybe worthless. I can imagine that many of the Steemians regarding single image posts as no quality at all. This may lead to community wars, with flags everywhere and counterflags everywhere. But only time will tell.
@edje wow. Flag wars would be terrible. There has to be a way to incentivize good behavior. Maybe Steem can consider giving minimal voting power if someone doesn't even click to view past the first pic and allow full voting power if they do click through. category of minimal voting power.
Either way, Steem is going to get a whole lot of new users so it's good to have these discussions.
Nothing would be worse than flag wars because of the negative energy it sends out. People get defensive. I really believe people will stop bad behavior or leave if the community doesn't encourage them or the compensation doesn't pay them.
Hmmm....
Keep in mind the SteepShot app is not build to show the post, it is Instagram on Steem, ie 1 image + comments. When I tested SteepShot some time ago, it would read all posts on the blockchain, so also all those that are created in eg Steemit UI, or Busy.org, or eSteem, a post with text and images but showing only the first image of the post due to the nature of the service. The nature of Instagram and Twitter (Zapple on Steem blockchain) is so different to the posts on Steemit UI. It does not fit together on the same blockchain, unless SteepShot, Zapple and normal Steemit posts can be filtered per services, ie SteepShot interface only shows single image posts that does not contain any text. Zapple shows only posts with a little bit of text and a link. But I dont think that is a good way forward. I honestly think SteepShot and Zapple do need their own blockchains, or they die at some point in time.
That is noble thinking, but the reality is different as we can see. Abuse is growing in our community. I see people who want to the good, also turning to abusive methods. Question is: what is abuse and what not. But for sure, more and more accounts are becoming abusive (eg creating 100 meaningless comments on their own meaningless post and then self vote all those comment). Some of them are countered by flags from whales, many of them are not. Ans what about all these self curating services popping up. They can be used for the good, ie give some other author an extra reward, but I'm afraid most of their power is used for self voting. As long as this is profitable, that type of behaviour will continue and grow. I think more people shall flag those who show bad behaviour, but I also believe we shall determine what bad behaviour is as a community, since what I think is bad behaviour, someone else may not think so. Anyway, difficult topics for which it is extremely difficult to get alignment in the community since we have many users who believe that whatever is possible by technology, cannot be defined as abuse or bad behaviour.
I guess that baffles me, is there a way that someone that just creates meaningless comments to their own meaningless posts actually get paid? I had a thought. Why don't we give it voting weight based on the number of other voters... meaning if only meaninglessposter is the only one that is voting on his stuff and voting on his comments, that it's less than minnow power. But if meaninglessposter posts something good and more Steemians comment and vote, then meaninglessposter may not be so meaningless anymore so his vote could count for more.
Interesting idea. Keep in mind all these kind of things can be gamed. For instance, anyone can get a vote from eg the minnowsupportproject vote train, it is a free to use self curation service, meaning you send your URL to them and the vote with their followon vote train, generally 50 votes. Users can also get 2nd and 3rd account and let these vote for each other. You can also make agreements with other users to vote for each other. Some initiatives are already started; I received one or two invites in private chat from those who are setting this up.
On topic of meaningless and meaningful: this is very subjective; ok, some posts may be meaningless to everybody, but maybe SteepShot generate posts could be meaningful to SteepShot users, but meaningless to Steemit users (those who go for quality writing.
Wow @the-ego-is-you, everyone needs to see this! You did a fantastic job giving us amazing options to use in the Steemit blockchain. Thank you so much for this amazing write! Resteemed!!!💥💥💥
Thank you so much Karen! =) I will keep writing now that I've gotten started, but probably make the post a little shorter next time ;)
Janitor unit thanks @the-ego-is-you human unit for much data in post. Janitor unit has written new subroutine to seek out unit suggestions. Much pine sol. Resteemed human units post. Janitor has completed cleaning of unit's post.
Nice post
Just want to say hi!!!