Steemit Suggestion - User Stream Subscriptions
You 'know' that you want this! Or do you?
It would be beneficial to both followers and those with a following.
So, what is this about? Let me answer with a couple of questions.
Have you ever wished that you knew 'why' your followers follow you?
On the other hand...
Have you ever wished that you could follow only 'part' of a user's posts?
If your answer to either or both questions was in the affirmative then you are going to like this suggestion.
Its the main reason why 2.15 million people are imprisoned. Here's why! Your resteem would help me spread the word - thanks!
With that done and mentioned - lets get to it!
In Settings, to the right of the public profile information and settings, a user such as myself might spy the 'Stream Categories' section to the right hand side:
What you might notice is that all "streams" look suspiciously like tags (fictitiously already created by myself in the above example).
And this is because they 'are' tags.
The steemit website would require lowercase, no more than a single hyphenation, etc., just as per tag rules.
The main advantage of doing so is that this ties streams in with the existing tags system - and makes it easier to implement.
Making a New Post with Streams
As per usual a user would compose his or her new post as per the user's wishes.
Before posting the user would find that ...
...the default stream category is listed to the far-right of the tag line - and is a drop-down menu.
From here a user can choose the stream category of a post.
This would 'not' count towards the maximum five tags that any given post may have.
This reduces pressure for users to choose a stream name that is also "profitable".
How This Affects Following:
When a user should come across an interesting post by somebody s/he doesn't follow (or follows a different stream), enquiring into following is similar to normal - with a key difference.
And this post may be accessed here. Thanks @unbeaten (followed & up-voted ^_^).
A user has the option of following 'everything' that a user posts, or just one or more streams.
In fact, pressing the 'Follow Stream' button leads to a second pop-up (or a drop down menu) listing all the stream categories of the given user, along with checkboxes next to each and a 'Follow' and 'Cancel' button respectively.
Fictitious cases where this would be helpful:
1 - Dave Donald is a sales person who posts about sales-techniques and marital-problems. Users could subscribe to marital-problems without getting pesky sales-techniques updates.
2 - James Jolly is a clerk who posts about celebrities, movies and books. Users can now subscribe to movies abd booke without worrying about (much) celebrity related posts.
Source
3 - Checkpoint Charlie is a veteran who posts about guns, war, explosives and stamp-collecting. Users could opt for just the stamp-collecting.
4 - Boris Barry is a journalist who posts about games and politics. Users could opt for just games and avoid getting into uncomfortable political arguments with the differently-very-opinionated Boris.
5 - Heck - I sometimes think that 'my' post list could be compared to a mackarel, cheese, peanut and jelly hamburger with a side of sushi and vanilla icecream...with anchovies (I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all my followers for being patient with me - I probably will post more of the "stream category content" that 'you' like, but if I don't - feel free to prod me in comments any time. ^_^)
How Does This Affect Follower Counts?
For every stream that a user has, statistics may be gathered.
While each stream has its own count, each user is given a count of the unique users across all streams.
Source
Hence its perfectly possible to have 100 followers in total, and have 50 persons interested in each of his or her four categories. Those followers just generally like more than one stream of content.
To Conclude:
To be able to offer a user to only sign up for the 'relevant' portion of any user's posts sounds 'very' attractive to me. To know that when I go through my feed I am less likely to come across so many 'meh' or simply uninteresting to me is common sense - and that is great.
Let there be less of an impediment to people following each other. Let people refine their feeds as they wish - and let followers know precisely 'what' they want to follow and not just 'who' they want to follow.
Source
If my post stream is anything to go by, I am fairly sure that users would benefit from such an option in my regards. Surely such is more tidy than a person setting up a dedicated steemit account for every category that s/he wishes to blog about?
But that is what I think.
How about you, the reader?
Do you see the value of this suggestion?
Do you foresee issues that I perhaps do not?
Lets have a discussion about these things down in the comments section. :c)
Also, If you found this post interesting and would like to share this with your friends then a resteem couldn't hurt and would be appreciated.
And, of course, If you have some other feedback for me then feel free to share your views in comments. A civil conversation can go a long way.
Sincerely,
Previous Post: Easy Step-by-Step Image Editing - Re-Angle & Fill-In Tricks for Steemit Posts
I like this suggestion. I don't like when I go to someone's blog and find 100 resteemed articles and have to go halfway down their feed to find a single original thought by them. Kind of drives me crazy and this might help with that. You could have a button where resteemed articles could be checked or not for each person you follow. I like it!
Thank you @apanamamama, both for your up-vote as well as your comment.
You know? I didn't even think about resteems! :c) Yes it would be interesting if one could filter out some or all of the resteems of certain persons (especially those who resteem so much that the value of their resteem is... meh). /:c)
A good add-on suggestion. Thanks. ^_^
:) I've seen accounts where all they do is resteem.
Wow, thanks again my friend! I learned something new today!! Gotta try it. :)
Um... this is just a suggestion. Its not implemented yet. :c)
Seems like you like it though. ;c) Thank you for the up-vote and for stopping by!
Yes I do as I always use both the minnowsupport and whalepower tag and at times no room for all that apply.
I've actually thought about this with Youtube playlists months ago and wondered why it wasn't on Steemit when I became one of its users. The idea in itself is really good but it obviously needs more refinement, which is totally normal. So the two improvements I would make to the idea of streams are the following.
Being able to put a post in multiple streams
I'm not really sure about this one but it could only be better I guess. Let's say I make multiple series about gaming and other unrelated things on the side. I will put a different stream name for each serie but if my viewers are like me, they are lazy. I'm not sure viewers would go on my account to see if I make other gaming content. I could put those series all in one big gaming tag to be sure they see the other series but then some series in this tag would not interest everyone. It's in this kind of case that the multiple streams come in handy, I could put a games reviews serie in "games-reviews" and "gaming" for example.
Notifying all the followers when a fresh stream has started (with a post in it)
This one must exist if Steemit implements the idea of streams in my opinion. If it doesn't, that would be a huge flaw in the system. Let's say a user follows you on one stream only. If you create a new stream for a new serie, he will never see it except if he randomly clicks on your profile one day. Notifying him that a new stream has started by putting it in his feed and maybe adding a little notification on the top right would at least make him want to check what the new serie is about.
I'm happy to see that you have the overall same ideas I have about what you call "streams". Your posts are really thought-provoking, I love that !
Thank you, @ragepeanut, both for your up-vote as well as your excellent comment and set of improvement recommendations! :c)
It is also a good sign that you were thinking along the same lines, as I like to think that good design is something that people gravitate towards. ^_~
Now, to your suggestions. :c)
Placing a post in multiple streams:
This is certainly 'possible' but I would suggest that only one of them is "free" Otherwise people might be inclined to abuse the system and create stream tags that are purposely similar to the top-paying terms.
In truth I'd also been toying with the idea of having an exclusion list barring the top 25 or so paying terms from being used - but then I figured - "Meh - if somebody wants to have a "life" stream then why not?".
fresh stream notifications
I am of two minds about this. If I choose to subscribe to @ragepeanut's gaming feed then I may not want to be bothered by notifications of a new stream on raging peanuts. ;c)
There 'are' other ways for a person to notify users of other content. Its kind of like how I advertised my other post in this post. Through allocating a section of the page - users who otherwise 'avoid' politics know that I posted a political post. Likewise I could have stated that I have a new "political stream category" and to go to my profile and 'Edit Following' to sign up for it if interested.
An alternative would be to upgrade the user interface to have users be informed by the user interface upon log-in that one or more of the persons they are following have new category (with a post in it). Clicking the notification could take us to a page dedicated to managing one's following, highlighting those with recent changes (and specifying the changes).
This way notifications needn't be committed to the blockchain. Such would be static.
Thank you again for the support and your suggested improvements. :c) Your enjoying my materials means a lot to me (I like your materials too - gaming-related especially).