Did running a Steemit giveaway dramatically affect my followers? Spoiler alert: YES

Steem Followers

I really like this site, created by @shaunmza: https://steem.makerwannabe.com -- it shows you a graph of your follows, unfollows, and mutes, over time. I'll include a screenshot of my data, below.

Steemnow is another great site

Another site I use to keep track of my voting power, and how much an upvote is worth, is https://steemnow.com/. It has a nice clean interface and updates automatically.

Voting Power

Three days ago, I noticed my voting power was nearing 100%. I haven't really read the following, but it's something that I thought a couple weeks ago: if my voting power reaches 100%, and isn't used, then it "stops increasing." In other words, the time that it's below 100%, it's increasing by 0.01% or so every so often (30 seconds or so, I think?); but once I let it reach 100%, it stops increasing and just stays there.

Now of course, any time that it's under 100%, each upvote is worth less than if it was at 100%. So then if I use my voting power, then it starts replenishing as soon as I've upvoted once (as it goes below 100%).

I don't know the math on this, but I have a feeling that it's more helpful to be voting people up so that your voting power is constantly working its way back to 100%. (Please let me know if I'm mistaken, here; I still need to read the whitepaper.)

Giveaway

So when I saw it getting close to 100% yesterday, I decided I'd give away some 100% upvotes. I wrote this post and waited until it got responses.

It sure did! :) I gave away the 10 x 100% upvotes in short order, and then gave a 10% upvote to everyone else who commented. Even some who commented more than once (nobody was "gaming" it for an extra upvote, I noticed as well).

I also commented most of the time when I did a 100% upvote, showing my voting power before and after, as well as the amount the comment was upvoted. (These metrics can now be mined, although perhaps it'd be simpler to just read the algorithm, if it's open source.)

Results

Although it takes 7 days for a post's rewards to pay out, this contest is effectively over since I've given the 10 x 100% upvotes.

Earlier today I checked my Steem Followers page, and noticed a dramatic rise on the day of the post and the day after: that day, 59 followed and 2 dropped; the next, 17 followed and none dropped. It doesn't list a daily average, although perhaps that's a good idea -- I will mention it to the creator. Eyeballing it, my daily average seems to be around 10 or so; meaning, that giveaway was 6x the average, and the day after was almost 2x the average as well.

My Link

To see the live data for my user, click here: https://steem.makerwannabe.com/index.php?username=libertyteeth

You can hover over each part of the chart and it'll show you the exact number, of follows, mutes, or unfollows.

My Chart

Why not? :)

My voting power is now at 93.46%, so I think I'll do another giveaway. This time, I'll keep upvoting at 100% until my voting power reaches 50%. Stay tuned! :)