Why Steemit post/replies per day is decreasing [My own case + Global Analysis]

in #steem8 years ago (edited)

Overall Analysis & Study of my own case

July was an awesome month

We were all extremely excited about Steem possibilities and how good content would be rewarded on Steemit, how it could revolutionize Online advertising and good content creators, as well as curation rewarding and strong commitment.

Following the enthusiasm generated by several excellent information provided by @dantheman, @ned and Steem team, All developers and entrepreneur started to work hard on projects.


It started this new synergistic approach that motivated people to build things together and for the community

  • The first info was announced : Steemit is open source ! And Piston/Piston.web (from @xeroc), as well as couple of API (SteemJS / SteemAPI from @svk @fabien) were really exciting, 
  • The second info explained how it was possible to build custom applications on top of Steem, also using the power of Subchains. Key benefits to subchains on Steem, and Graphene technology that inevitably results in creativity, entrepreneurship, project maker moves :
  1. Advanced Account Structures
  2. Pre-validated Account Authorities on Custom Operations
  3. No Transaction Fees
  4. Fast Block Times
  5. TaPoS (Transactions as Proof of Stake)


That was the most exciting new project's start-up I've ever seen, as a serial entrepreneur, it means something ! All these worldwide brains associated for the same cause, sharing almost the same philosophy combining anarchism, free market vision, and entrepreneurship...


People started also to realize that the Steemit Marketing posts and good introduceyouself could really Pay ! 

We had this full self-marketing phase when whales tried to the incentive on people getting involved in the community, by introducing themselves and feeling in the family enough to be paid to advertise Steem by doing Marketing or build tools and services that could improve the community and bring in new members.

This strategy aimed at enhancing competition in content rewards and improving the overall quality of content and increasing considerably Steem's popularity with all the marketing done by steemers.


This is the HYPE Phase.

HYPE attracts people, money, development, but it takes times to create product and value.

Remember that STEEM is in BETA test.

August stagnation and decrease of activity

A new opinion would claim that Posts/replies per day are decreasing for several reasons mostly negative ideas. 

  • A lot of debate on Steemit being a Ponzi / Pyramid scheme, see bitcointalk topic
  • The problem with whales weight and other Steem limits underlined and recents changes on Voting, Debate on @dantheman Negative voting topic that had a lot of downvotes
  • The Steem value, (0 to 4$ then 2$ in July, 2$ to 1$ even below 1 in august)
  • and Synereo or other competitor arrivals


In my opinion, these assumptions are legitimate and quite rational for a new disruptive project on crypto-world. Steem birth is nothing common. We are like one the biggest "Foundation" working on a disruptive idea and project that could change the world, and things are going very fast on this Beta. So people needs to slow down and breathe. Gets elements to give deep analysis before going further.

The problem with this claim is that it tends to underline the negative side of things based on wrong elements and ignore what is really happening here.

Moreover, Steem is in a first phase Hype, and the challenge is to improve our model, then to scale horizontally to other niche markets. It requires time to enable clearer priorities to be established. Also to recalibrate correctly through the beta , to build teams, and choose the right path before starting the next move.

Begin planning promptly to capitalize on the goodwill and enthusiasm generated at the start up of Steem - and to demonstrate to the community that we know where we are going to. This is the next step.

 So Why Steemit post/replies per day is decreasing ? 

My overall analysis broadly reflects the study of my own case. I will try to explain why I think the activity is decreasing based on my own approach to the first phase.

People are learning from their mistakes

The first month helped Steem members realize what they could do and what they couldn't. Which expected quality standard deserves which rewards, how to prepare their content in significantly more qualitative terms.

Blockchain immutability and its way to fight censorship and also improve content quality begin to take effect. People did not realize how strong the blockchain transparency and immutability could impact the way they use this kind of Website.

As you can't edit, nor delete your content once it's posted, it pushes people to be more careful, as they understand step by step the concept of Reputation building, and Steem aim concept : more quality, more rewards. All in transparency. With the blockchain's transparency, those who prefer profit without work will have no place to run and no place to hide...


@ekitcho own case 

Like everyone, I tried several types of posts and topics to test the UI and getting a good user experience. As well as gets every side of the Steem blockchain to be able to catch the right idea and build an outstanding project. I started to work on SteemDebitCard.com and apparently did not set up the things well enough and was quite naive on how it could work. A DebitCard project involves tons of parameters that require high-security grade project and TRUST as you manage funds. I did post it even before any Presentation or proof of identity. I actually learned that reputation and networking are the keys. If you want to do something for, and with the community, you have to actually work seriously on it and getting involved to gain trust and good reputation. Not only writing a concept the win money and asking upvotes.
I also figure out that I wanted to prepare better content to post than useless stuff that would basically just Spam the blockchain without adding any value to it


For this reason, I think most people try to analyze more than posting. And keep working on their project as well as building links with other steemers.

People are networking, building team and reputation, finding their niche

Steem model is not built to work alone, posting without any followers hoping some whales to catch your content within the first 24 hours. 

It requires good networking, building links with other steem members and create/join existing Teams and project, deep understanding of the model and which direction we are taking, and reputation building.


@ekitcho own case

I've been working on several projects. My main project is a new disruptive app based on Steem, solving social media matters like Synereo tried to do. We are building a strong team with @fabien and have a prototype working on the Steem blockchain. We have the support of @ned also @bitspace team with @clains and couple witnesses and devs. We are going big. Also on the market part as well as internalization.
I've been working also to open a new Steem Foundation to help people start their project and every niche. We are building links with @fabien @clains @cass and other people to try to make something really useful for our community. 
I've been building links with CHINA and JAPAN community and plan to go to Japan by the end of this month to make a presentation of our different projects based on Steem and open to the Asian market. I have contacted all the Chinese members and start working on some ideas with Japanese too. Some VCs and startup founders I know in Japan are waiting for me. We plan to host Conference and Hackathons there !
 I have pause the SteemDebitCard project to gather more information and bring more people in this to build this in a more collaborative way, and full transparency approach. I've discussed it with the @steemdrive team and @thecryptodrive or @instructor2121 and they try to help on this for a while to make this project happen and build a reputation. I had confirmation of a Chinese friend who will invest in this project in October and is building a Hong kong corporate company to manage this. Still figuring out how to handle all these germinated seeds and may pass it to the Foundation to get more trust.

Everyone is now busy building strong links and team and try to figure out what is the next step. So we have less time for Posting. That also means big projects are coming.


People are analyzing more deeply after the hype, and waiting for more a new exciting event

Things are moving fast. We see Steemit UI changes. Almost everyday You will have a new commit. We all realize that we are adapting fast to the problems and the Synereo vs Steemit debate, did actually Steemulate the activity. We now have Promoted content and Boost payment.

But that also means that we are not really stable. As well as Steem currency which tends to be quite unstable during August (4$ to less than 1$ a STEEM)

As Synereo is launching this month, (9th September they have their Conference Start in Vancouver), @stellabelle did come with a now-famous debate that tried to disrupts the global trust around Steem. In my opinion, Synereo is a good competitor. They solve some problems we still have to figure out on Steem. In Synereo, people are Paid to read. That quite interesting because if you read a content and put time on it, even if you don't vote for curation, you somehow generate value like you do on Facebook or any website and should be rewarded for it.

People are observing what will happen with Synereo and also waiting for Steemit to stabilize our model and decide more clearly about Negative votes, Vote power, Promoted posts, and fix a good U.I/U.X according to the features.


@ekitcho own case 

With all my project I don't have enough time to read all commits comments or updates on Steemit. It's also hard to catch all debate about those important topics and try to build new teams, apps, at the same time.
I just realized also about the voting power which I agree with @jesta, is quite difficult to understand how it's really working. even for us.
 I do also wait to see what Synereo can bring and how we should react to their start up. As I should go to Japan after the 20th September, I feel like these 3 weeks will be crazy and hectic !

***

At first glance the chart looks bad, users continue to sign up but activity has fallen or remained flat. The post/replies per day decreased for some normal reason, and it's not negative. I see that as a very positive transition to something bigger. Better content, less crap, new Steem app, Subchains projects, and Free market using ESCROW transfer that is just released as a new feature, as well as Saving accounts for more security.

September and October will be decisive and I'm very confident on what's happening inside the community as I take the time to discuss almost every project with active members.


If I did some English mistake, you'll have to excuse my french :)

Thanks for your support !


Sort:  

Thanks for the analysis. The Steem world moves quickly huh. I've been reading a lot about voting and the more I read the more it mystifies me. With this latest change and people debating this way and that I've decided that I'm just not qualified to have an opinion on it.
In terms of voting and payment there are 2 things I feel would make a better experience.

  1. Being able to upvote/downvote as much as I want without it effecting me financially. I don't think it makes much difference for me as a minnow but I'm assuming it does for the whales. I think there's maybe an issue with trying to earn money vs voting for quality. I assume many people vote because they think something will be popular rather than liking it.

  2. Posts having an expiration date. Currently payouts are at 24Hr and 1Month. Why not add payouts each year as well? I think I've written some interesting stuff that hasn't got much attention. I'd like to keep working, building networks, producing more content and hopefully getting better at what I do. It'd be great if people could discover minnows and then look back through their body of work, vote and earn money from that. I think it makes it so much harder for minnows to break through when they have so much pressure to find a whale's vote in the first 24 hours. It becomes complete luck. And if Steemit wants to uncover hidden gems then some will need time to be found. Maybe that would increase the quality of content as well.

Posts having an expiration date. Currently payouts are at 24Hr and 1Month. Why not add payouts each year as well?

The main reason is this:

@theoreticalbts commented 17 days ago

Anything related to payouts is consensus, so post objects have to be kept in memory as long as they could potentially be upvoted and paid out. The reason for the 30-day window is to allow old posts to be archived -- get them out of the database. Our memory usage is already getting uncomfortably large; requiring everyone to keep everything back to the beginning of time will be counterproductive.

https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/267#issuecomment-240443565

But the good news is that probably @xeroc had a nice idea to overcome this problem and open the doors to older posts to get paid also !!!

From what I understand, the main motivation of limiting payouts to 30 days (max) is because those posts need to be kept in memory due to being part of consensus. Having an unlimited time would cause high memory requirements for full-nodes.

How about we re-introduce maintenance interval? What were the reasons to remove them to begin with?
With a maintenance interval (say every 4 weeks)

  • We could still reward posts after several months
  • We could allow nested comments with more than 6 levels (by saying that the recursion of depth 6 is considered in real-time, while the rest is considered only in the maintenance interval)

I am probably missing something but I felt the need to clarify that.

https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/339

Thanks for the reply lion. Perhaps we could just keep 5 of our posts that we could feature as part of a profile page? I guess it's a pretty massive amount of info to keep to the chain. What happens to our archived posts?

The problem in my opinion is that we need to encourage new users to Use Steemit,
but as we are calibrating and adapting several features, it's now quite hard to understand the meta game of Steem and how it actually works. Even 'old' members have some doubts about their voting power and how they should use it.

It impacts so much total average payout and people are discouraged to post because of these low rewards while other are auto voted by Bots. It will mostly create frustration

I think all these questions are being brainstormed everyday anyway
thanks for your contribution though

very interesting post, I've been watching those stats myself

but I think this is the biggest problem; dan and ned are developers, not politicians, they don't understand how important perception is.

they have to stop telling everybody that anybody can make money on steemit, as for most people that's simply not true and once the people figure that out ... they're disappointed ... of course!

this while there are plenty of other advantages that steemit has to offer, the quality of the content and even more so the behavior in the comments which is incredible polite, well behaved, civilized ... it's really remarkable

if they were to promote those 2 aspect; the quality of the content and the quality of the people ... then new users will no longer end up disappointed, because the quality is good and the atmosphere is overall just absolutely amazing

but ... dan and ned are not politicians ...

they keep tweaking the mechanism, thinking they can solve the problem that way, but they keep creating the wrong perceptions

take the new voting rules for example; because they reduced the total of full weight votes to 5, without pointing out how important the voting slider is in the use of it ... people now think the whales have even less votes, so for sure they will not get any votes for their comments ... which is not the case, the fact that bigger fish can now give 10% votes makes a huge difference, as the big fish can now up vote 50 times at 10% ...

or ... this is what I do;

I got the voting slider default on 10%, so I can vote a lot, like on most comments made on my own posts, while if I do that 30-40 times per day ... which I do, I can then still use 1-2 full 100% AND this is what most people don't get ... those 100% will carry more weight than they used to do, so when I see a really good post that didn't get much $$$ yet ... I can then give a 100% vote, which is worth 4 times more than before ... while I already votes for 40 minnows' comments that day ...

the new voting system is in fact better, it will lead to more votes, but ... did you see a news letter from dan or ned to explain that properly? because I didn't ! and that's the real problem ...

that's why so many people get the wrong perception and leave!

yes great comment up voted at 27 percent !! ; - ) I love the slider gives me far more flexibility !! Helps me throw a few coins or actually blast a post when it turns me on !! So i had reticence's when i read the, as you put it so well, perception that we had just five votes a day. Now i can dose my love and spread it further and too more diverse style posters !! So this new feature i am totally happy with !!

Yes it's coming :)
We're still in beta and a lot of things to fix. We can expect a lot of new updates in september

You're right. But they will come back. If you stop use an App for a while doesnt mean you wont use it anymore. People are just trying to get their own perception. I do agree that frustration is real for most people thinking they could win but end with 0.02$.
About Ned / Dan / they do listen the community opinion for sure...

The voting system is not clear for anyone so people tend to vote 10% and never 100% yes they afraid it would spend all the voting power in one vote
It really requires proper explanation or we will face a lowpayout phase and lack of activity for sure

you say that; About Ned / Dan / they do listen the community opinion for sure...
but you also say; It really requires proper explanation or we will face a lowpayout phase and lack of activity for sure

where's that explanation? where's dandy dan's post to clearly explain it all?

I mean they listen to us. doesnt mean they do a perfect 100% job.
You will always see many things to improve as it scales bigger than the Steemit tech team does actually scale.

About voting explanation i did not look for it, I'm sure i can find some explanation but i already admit it to you, real lack of information for sure; They need to work on a proper way to communicate all informations on Steem features

I can only speak from my experience: Two months ago or so I joined and wrote a couple of posts, and put a lot of work into them.

None of them picked up, and in the mean time a lot of (very frankly) poor quality content was trending day after day.

I'm currently giving this outlet a second try, but it doesn't seem like it will be any better the second time around.

Probably you need to work to get an audience. Right now the best way to get rewards is to get a lot of followers. Best way to achieve that is to produce more than a couple of good posts. If you have several good posts and you promote yourself by leaving intelligent comments to other posts, you might have a good future here.

Your audience isn't going to pop up magically, you have to do something to attract it first. Of course miracles can happen sometimes but just wishing for them isn't a good strategy.

Totally agree @samupaha. In my opinion it's not clear for new users. They think they can win without networking and promoting correctly the post. Building an audience remains a key point in this new economy as innovative as it can be, you still have to promote it if you don't have followers, otherwise it will mostly be invisible, or you need to be lucky

Thats how i explain the post activity decrease because of this new phase. People start to understand and prepare their strategy rather than posting quality content that will end with low payout and frustration

Well that's a real problem. But i do still believe in steem in the long term. And how we can solve different problem in the old and boring economy.

Look when i see some useless content auto-voted by Bots doing 100$ after 1hours, when my post is right now at 43 votes, 0.68$, I don't care. If i do 1000$ it's great (maybe even not deserve that much), and if i no 2$ whatever, What you build here, is reputation, commitment to a long term project that can disrupt an old model. I'm pretty confident that if you keep being consistant with good contents and build your network you will be rewarded.
Otherwise we would just have to move on other platform like Synereo to try. But i think Steem will adapt fast. For now the voting power feature is a problem. People think they can't vote 100% because it will waste their entire power in only One unique vote...
So average rewards/vote as well as total payout will get lower and lower for a few days until it's fixed

Thanks for your feedback @psychonaut, appreciate

Totally agree @samupaha. In my opinion it's not clear for new users. They think they can win without networking and promoting correctly the post. Building an audience remains a key point in this new economy as innovative as it can be, you still have to promote it if you don't have followers, otherwise it will mostly be invisible, or you need to be lucky

Thats how i explain the post activity decrease because of this new phase. People start to understand and prepare their strategy rather than posting quality content that will end with low payout and frustration

I've studied the platform here extensively since I joined a month ago. While some of my posts have been pretty successful, not all of them have. Since I write in a pretty consistent tone and use a standard format of paragraphs of varying size, sub-heads, bolded and italicized words, and colorful images in my posts, I wondered what made some successful and others not so much. It was often the ones I least expected to be moneymakers that took off, while ones I expected to do well did not. After looking at the trending posts, the users who consistently HAD trending posts, and other things, it became clear to me that networking really IS key to getting good results from most of your posts. I've started trying to do more of that, kind of like building my brand on here. But, it's difficult. People mostly don't comment back when I comment on something of theirs, so it's hard to get a conversation going. I've been to the chat room, but with so many sections, it's hard to know where to go to strike up a conversation. I've tried a few times without really being able to engage anyone. I do have some followers, and people who upvote my posts consistently, but I'd like to increase that number, and I seem to have reached a plateau with what I can do without networking more. Learning to network properly and get people to engage with me more here is something I will be studying, and will hopefully learn the secret. :)

The secret is Whales. Since you can get an upvote which worth more than 100 other minnow votes... (in rewards i mean)
So you should get whales upvote, but you cant force them to vote for you or to spam them with useless content or non-targeted ones. Because most people try to do it and its annoying for them.

Building network is the key yes. You should build an audiance according to your topics and also promote your content. People just start to understand that there s no magic in here, good content is never enough by itself, it needs promotion and networking, as well as.. Luck :)
So good luck to you @stephmckenzie :)

ps: by the way you did more than thousand dollars in a month posting on Steemit ;) i do think you're in the lucky ones ;)

Thanks for the words of encouragement, @ekitcho. I've had whales upvote my my content more times than not, which is great. And, I added up my total from my first month on Steemit yesterday, and I actually made more money here than I did at my main writing gig (mainly because I spent most of my time here instead of there), so I'm really pleased about that. I'll keep doing what I'm doing, which is posting high quality content, and commenting and voting on other people's content. What I REALLY want to do is increase my followers and reputation here, which seems to be trickier than getting good pay on a post. But, I'm studying the environment here, trying to engage with others, and working on it. :)

J'espère que vas prendre masse dollars avec ce taff

Je ne pense pas mais ce n'est pas bien grâve je crois toujours à Steem :)

eh bah !! cest quoi ce langue curieux que tu parles la ?? ; - )

I started about 2 weeks ago. At the beginning of minnowunited. Nearly every person I was friends with in the first week are gone.

They are gone because they were brought here by marketing saying they could earn. Once getting here, they were told they were entitled, they should lower expectations, not everyone is going to make money... Etc.

I think Steem needs to evaluation Marketing vs. Reality. It is not just daily posts going down. It is also.. Less active users.

We need to find a way to greet new users and paint a pathway to success, and assist them (me, us) to see the path.

The UI isn't easy, and doesn't have features that people using blogging sites or other Social Media accept. We can only chat and connect on a separate, but related chat site. :) But, yes, I think you have some valid points as well.

I agree. That's why i mentioned what @jesta said in his post about Voting It brings more difficulty for new users to understand how it works.
It's hard enough to suscribe, understand how SBD/SP/Rewards works, now it adds even more barrier for them.

About the fact they could earn and finally end not winning money is a major problem i must admit. I have a friend @najoh who stopped writing because he felt his content worth more than the few cents he did give good Trading analysis. He mentionned also bot voting to other posts that can misleads the new users about earning expectations...

Thanks for your feedback

We all realize that we are adapting fast to the problems and the Synereo vs Steemit debate, did actually Steemulate the activity. We now have Promoted content and Boost payment.

The readers will make wrong assumptions...We don't have these futures because of the debate! They where working on these things weeks before the debate. Except you think they intra-day panic-code futures only when debates like this happens... A good way to have a feeling of coding activity is to visit https://github.com/steemit/steem/ and specially take a look to open and close issues... I don't see less activity prior the "debate"... Correct me if I am wrong.

You are not wrong i did not mean to link both information are independant and correct.
I've been reading every discussion from github for a while (getting all mail notifications)
Of course i agree it does not necessary depend on the synereo debate but the timing is there.
Having promoted content commit so fast in the same time AMP( synereo amplify) bump x2 its value few days before the start.
Quite interesting coincidence though but i dont feel like its intraday panic code features much more a global vision anticipation

Great and usefull analysis! I guess it will be competitors who force steem founders to make long-awaited changes in voting system.

@ekitcho The "pay to read" model imo mirrors YouTube's transition from rewarding (with increased visibility/page ranking) the amount of views on a video post to the amount of time spent watching a post.
I sense Steemit will need to move in this direction also; rewarding time and engagement rather than a quick "upvote/like".
Regarding posts declining, I offer the opinion that this mirrors the honeymoon period in any new relationship - after the initial euphoria, each person takes inventory as to whether this is something they want to commit to longer term or not. Obviously, the "relationship" must remain attractive for people to do so.

The YouTube model has changed in interesting ways, beyond just the amount of views. Now, we are rewarded most (with increased visibility) when we have high continued watch time. That means we get the most credit when we someone starts their YouTube session with us and then continues to watch videos. They don't have to keep watching me, but as long as they keep watching something, anything, YouTube is happy -- because I 'activated' someone who is going to keep their eyes on YouTube. The worst is if someone ends their watch session in one of my videos. That's why folks can make playlists that of other YouTubers' content, even if they never, make a video themselves, and still make money. The goal is to get people to the platform and then keep them there. Our personal videos are just the marketing arm to bring people in and get them started.

I can see an analogy for Steemit. Steemit will want us to bring outside people to look at our blog posts -- and then to stay and look at more and more posts, anywhere on Steemit. And that's where YouTube rewards content that has value over time, because our videos stay active, with comments and earning potential, long after we have made them. That allows more opportunities for people to engage and connect and stay on the platform. People will follow trails of content if they can have interaction with the creator or others in the community.

So I could see Steemit rewarding people who bring in a blog post viewer and then leads them, or starts them, on a Steemit session that could cover many posts. It's that original post and creator that prompted someone to initially engage with Steemit. I have no idea how you would track that, but it would encourage us, as creators or curators, to get people here and keep them here in a single 'watch session'.

thx for compiling all of this data for us!

Thanks if you have any question feel free to discuss

Nice analysis. Thanks.

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