We Now Have an Official Post Views Counter, Though Numbers Aren't Very Encouraging
A couple of days ago there was another official Steemit UI update and for me personally one of the most important new features was the addition of an official post view counter. This counter (the number after the eye icon on the bottom of your posts) shows the number of times people have read your blog post, so it is really important for the people that actually care how many people read their posts and are not interested ony in the votes and rewards they get.
As I have suspected the number of actual post views is pretty low, so low that in fact it can really be discouraging for authors that spend hours or even days preparing something and then seeing that just a few people actually have read their post... even if they do manage to get a decent reward on the post. Here is an example for one of my recent posts that has passed over 24 hours since being posted and was fully covered by the views counter - Adding an SSD Drive to an HP Microserver Gen8 Can be a Challenge. So far that post has received more than $14 SBD reward, 103 votes, 2 comments and JUST 7 views... so actually only 7 people read that post... I know it is a bit more specific, but just 7 people!
So I got on to the trending page to see what the most popular posts on Steemit do get in terms of post views along the reward and number of votes...
| Post | Votes | Reward | Views |
|---|---|---|---|
| Need Your Helping Hands for Hacked Steemit Member | 332 | $239.50 | 278 |
| Dakota Access Pipeline protestors win a victory - or do they? | 346 | $235.22 | 103 |
| Miss. Opinionated : You know what really grinds my gears? | 386 | $168.16 | 189 |
| Adapting to Market Signals - Steem Sports | 704 | $164.84 | 325 |
| [SFHL] Week 8 Preview w/participative Upvoting Rewards | 89 | $153.53 | 48 |
| SteemSports: [UEFA Champions League] Celtic F.C. v Manchester City F.C. - Mass SP Distribution Game! | 812 | $133.59 | 172 |
| $STEEM/BTC Daily Poloniex+Bittrex Technical Analysis / Market Report Update #121, Dec. 4, 2016. | 315 | $114.97 | 49 |
| $ICN/BTC Technical Analysis Dec. 4, 2016. | 320 | $114.74 | 48 |
| SteemSports: Toronto Raptors Vs Cleveland Cavaliers - Mass SP Distribution Game! | 758 | $107.76 | 113 |
| The Daily Curie (3rd Dec to 4th Dec 2016) | 529 | $103.33 | 56 |
The above table shows the top 10 trending posts at the moment... the number of views those "most popular" at the moment posts are getting is really disappointing considering that your posts are most likely not in the trending page and you should be getting even less views than them. It seems like Steemit still has the issue of a lot of users posting, a lot of bots voting, but quite a little number of people actually reading posts.
Getting very little views for posts is really what can be the deal breaker for a lot of people that are not writing just for the rewards, but just want to share some interesting information, experience, useful knowledge and want it to reach more readers!
If you have a question or want to add something, then please leave a comment below.
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If Facebook had a view counter that only worked if you actually opened up the post, most peoples Facebooks would be full of 0's
If you make a Facebook post or tweet that gets zero replies/comments chances are nobody really read it
Although I am happy to see the view counter, being at blogging for awhile now, low numbers don't concern me. Personally, I am glad to see any "real" views, but I don't begrudge upvotes that don't view.
This explains why noob writers struggle, there are so few real people reading and the bots only vote for established accounts.
I've noticed the low view count too but the other day I had more people comment on a post than the so called view count so I'm holding off on deciding about it.
It does only track views through Steemit.com. Some users read and interact with posts through other interfaces, which won't be counted.
This is what I have noticed too. I suspect it is indeed early days!!
I also thought it was acting weird, not sure how often it updates even.
I think there is defo some tweaking to be had!
It's called early days...
I agree with Gavvet, it's early days, behaviour will adjust. Mine has already, I'm trying to read more posts before I vote as I was just voting some of the time to encourage people or because I generally liked their material....I feel a responsibility to curate because I'm a dolphin but really struggle with the time constraints. In the future, once there are more people, the posts are better organised and stake is more widely distributed, i adjust and focus more closely on my interests.
Yup. Different time zone and I'm time-constrained. I use a bot to support people I like, and I try to catch up on the reading, plus do some resteeming and commenting - but I have to admit it's getting tougher for me.
Hi,
I just send a post and I saw the counter till it marked "3", but now it just disappeared and I can't see the eye or de view counter.
I can see yours marking 49 in this post, but it's not working in mine.
Is it normal?
I observed a factor of 5 for my last post (which was a TIL and not one of my usual long post). I was not expecting this factor to be so low, to be honest. I still want to find the time to write a longer post to double check what is going on, but this week is hardish.
This post has been ranked within the top 50 most undervalued posts in the second half of Dec 05. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $7.68 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Dec 05 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
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Thanks for creating a table of the highest trending posts. That helps put my own low views into some better perspective. Nobody is getting a lot of views. It's so interesting to watch this whole blockchain ecosystem experiment unfold.