Embracing the Benevolent Beneficiary 66.6% Life, AKA #11percenter
For months already I have often posted via other than Steemit SteemApps. Like many I have regularly used Busy.org, commented on mobile via eSteem (legacy) and Partiko, sometimes I post to the Steem blockchain via SteemPress, but most of the my contributions to the Steem blockchain are made via Steemhunt.
As an active hunter, and also moderator for Steemhunt, it is the app which gets most of my time and I post most through.
At times I also contribute to Musing.io and even dLike.
All apps improving the Steem ecosystem one app at a time.
And most apps, living the “curation rewards” life to find any business model, often via beneficiaries. Busy and SteemPeak do not take any share of the rewards for a post.
Recently I have started to switch my Steem reading habits to the newer Steeve app, an app powered by AI discovery to feed my filter bubble to the topics I care most about or upvote most frequently.
There’s more to @steeveapp but so far the experience has been positive and I haven’t sufficiently used the app to be able to deliver a complete and worthy review.
I’m a nerd geek. One of the first things I do on any platform, with every app I install or sign up to is dive in the settings.
Steeve app’s settings are rather simple because a lot of it can be done in the general sections and the AI takes care of the rest. You can set your favorite Steemians and categories/tags while browsing your feed or the Explore section. Which is a great UX and keeps the settings kitchen sink free.
Thus Steeve app's settings are simple and focused on few things only:
- Language
- The recently introduced vote beneficiaries
- Story benefeciaries, which is how much does Steeve app earn from the rewards posted through it’s interface
Steeve app is very polite in this, and in other settings, in the sense that it doesn’t make any beneficiary compulsory. This is something found throughout the Steeve app experience: the user always has the choice.
My dislike for Partiko’s shoved down my content link is known. Laziness occasionally wins over editing my comment and removing that spam “Partying like it’s 1999 Hotmail link”.
Steeve app is different. When commenting or posting through Steeve app, I decide whether I want to promote Steeveapp by including a footer.
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Which is a beautiful freedom to enjoy. The desire of the operator to promote their app doesn’t get in my way.
I am left to decide. Not forced through any hoops. The freedom of choice is mine. Lovely.
Thank you, @Steeveapp!
Which got me thinking about Steeve app’s beneficiary option and how do I approach app operators.
I regularly write, at length but not as TL;DR demanding as @tarazkp, about decentralization and about how it’s all about the bApps (blockchain apps). It is what I love.
Most platforms Steemians contribute through also offer upvotes in reward. Or at least come with a possibility to receive an upvote. Steeve app recently also made that a possibility - for its most popular content - but as users we shouldn’t focus on that.
For most, and to most, it is important that we don’t forget that a lot of the Internet’s content was built upon the principle of “social capital”, and site operators could make content transactional. That often with advertising as the business model. Some manage to also include events and services in their transactional value makers but they are a minority.
The largest amount of content created online is social capital, posted to social media platforms more often than not. For usually $0.00000 in return.
All while being the product, the product advertising and possible upselling is targeted at. Not too interesting a prospect if you ask me, yet I have contributed in the form of social capital for decades already. Because I love geekery, I love discovery, and I love reading. And, while I’m not too great at it, I love writing. I love writing much more than my innate BS filter stimulates socializing.
Did I say I love commenting? If only you knew how active I am “BTL” on the Guardian! For jack all.
For $0.00.
Queue @Steeveapp.
The “Benevolent” Beneficary Life
Steeve app aims to make my Steem discovery a more enjoyable and relevant filter bubble experience. A premium experience.
To deliver me regular updates in my feed, and also an “Explore” section, the [computational] operational cost per user of Steeve app is higher than for example the operational cost of SteemPress.
Each time I load my feed Steeve app works to deliver me new related content, as well as my feed. It serves, and ranks, my feed each time again using AI. While I hope that Steeve app stores “siloed” profiles for its users, and thus is optimized in operational cost, AI uses many more computing units then when Busy serves me my feed.
It also delivers a premium experience, a much more enjoyable and related feed than... trending. Alright, I admit, that wasn’t setting the bar very high. But to users who come to the Steemhunt blockchain, ecosystem, and may discover it some day through Steeve app first the blockchain life without “Trending” is definitely a more enjoyable first impression than with.
A premium experience.
Unsplash has weird search results for premium. As qualitatively awesome as Trending on Steem.
What is a premium experience worth to me?
As an internet dinosaur veteran I have over the years explored most discovery platforms. Long before social media. Before DMOZ. Before Yahoo!’s directory even. Before Jeff Bezos acquired the Amazon domain name just to rank in the first section of internet directories.
Zyte, News 360, Flipboard... gosh, you posh hipster! We used 9rules to discover awesome content! Before that MeFi. Fark!
Sorry, I’m an elitist community snob. 4Chan and SA never were my community. I prefer by large MeFi’s and Fark’s snobbery. Yes, please.
Salon, Slate, Rolling Stone, Longreads, magenta... TYVM!.
Most of those platforms revolve around me being their product. Because their revenue is more often than not depending on targeting me and my internet behavior. Alright, you are their product because I have long embraced the Post-Google life.
Beer isn’t free. Neither is operating servers free.
Many bApps on Steem depend on delegation or the ever more popular “fairdrops” in exchange for delegation. Curation rewards help them paying the bills and hopefully also development.
Almost as many SteemApps charge beneficiary.
Steemhunt charges me 15%, SteemPress charges me 15%, dLike charges 10%, dTube (I’m not a blogger) charges 25%.
And that’s fine.
A reality [on Steem] is that many would never have contributed the content they now create in the hope of an upvote. I’m going to take a wild stab and say that at least 40% of Steemhunt’s hunters would barely ever never have posted about a product like they do now for a Steemhunt upvote.
Everybody has seen an increase in dTube posts in their feed since Nathan Mars started focusing on distribution for dTubers. Before that, dLive saw many not streams upvoted to it platform because they had 2m SP (delegated).
May SteemPress users never has a WordPress based site until SteemPress had SP and started upvoting its users.
More Steemians use Busy for its “loyalty” upvote than those who use it for its UI. Because the busybot has SP.
That’s the life on Steem. SP attracts contributions like shit attracts flies.
Partiko offers points (a UIA?) in exchange for free advertising.
Steeve app?
Steeve app integrated a new still to be proven business model for content rewards discovered through its platform. If I do not upvote any content Steeve app pushed in my feed Steeveapp earns nothing. That is not necessarily because Steeve app didn’t serve me great content. Maybe I didn’t have any available VP, maybe the article already had solid rewards, and maybe I just was caught by the low contrast difference between upvoted/not yet upvoted.
When I comment through Steeve app on any content, Steeve app allows me to decide whether I want to promote it. Same when I post through Steeve app.
Fiddler Bourbon, the premium Old Fashioned?
A premium experience.
Without charging me for that. An exemplary freemium operation.
What’s that worth to me?
What’s this side-by-side editor I am writing this post in, bringing the hackmd experience to Steem, worth to me??
11%
11% Beneficiary setting.
A voluntary contribution for all my content posted through the Steeve app going forward. Because of the premium experience provided and more so even because of the liberty offered to me to define what I deem Steeve app’s service worth.
PS: No editor was harmed through the writing of this post, nor was any footer link shoved down my throat. Steeve app’s footer below this post is my voluntarily choice. My choice to be an advertising billboard. Because the app is truly great and deserves more promotion.
(*) 11% of 100% of the creator rewards, i.e. little more than 8% on 75%. But 66.6% does sound better.
(**) Damn you, Steem for not accepting tags starting with digits in the tags field.
The option to add a beneficiary is a good one and I suggest more apps do it. I also like the idea of giving them a little of my curation rewards as payment for finding content for me I enjoy. These things are going to be more important going forward as apps have to find ways to finance themselves and the community has to understand we have to fund them in some way and a reduction in our own earnings on posts and curation helps us too.
I do like the vote beneficary experiment. Yet, I’m not sure how big its impact will be given how flat many rewards are and how much is required before it makes a difference to their bottom line.
Leaving one the choice without imposing anything is a very interesting experiment too, especially since it is found only is the settings. I wonder how many care to find it and care to share. I know beer isn’t free and definitely not good beer so I decided to go ahead.
Just found out about Steeve yesterday! :)
Im very curious about how many good articles Steeve will show me.
See you there :)
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