Steemit Curation based Quarterly Churn and Retention levels
A month ago I had published an article about Churn and retention of users on Steemit on a quarterly basis, though I had missed posting the retention data in it.
Since a financial quarter came to an end, I decided to revisit those queries and check how Steemit is faring this quarter.
This month saw a whopping 50000 new additions to Steemit. I had picked up these queries last week to publish this article when Steemit was about to get it's 400000th user. But it's main web server was subjected to a DDOS attack last Friday. However, the Graphene blockchain was not affected; users were able to access it through other websites and apps showing us a realtime example of the benefit of a decentralised storage system.
What is Churn here?
Churn rate is defined as the percentage rate at which users have stopped subscribing to a service. It is 'Likes' for Facebook, so votes are the equivalent here since articles depend on votes. Because without votes, steemit becomes an echo chamber with each user posting his articles into oblivion while no one else notices it.
Here we are looking at Quarterly Churn which means that a user has refrained from voting for the past 90 days.
What is Retention rate?
Retention is the opposite of Churn indicating that a user is still using a service. Mathematically, retention rate can be defined as 100 - churn rate or 1- churn. the retention rate shown here is for the last quarter.
User levels:
I am using the same user category definitions as in the last month's Churn article so that we can get a clear picture of the Churn and retention levels of users with varying vesting powers.
| Vesting Power | Category |
|---|---|
| Above 1000 MVests | Whale |
| Above 100 MVests | Orca |
| Above 10 MVests | Dolphin |
| Above 1 MVest | Minnow |
| Below 1 MVest | Plankton |
To find out how many Vesting shares you can visit https://www.steemd.com/@username and replace your username in the url.
Tools used:
- Blockchain data is sourced from steemsql.com by @arcange.
- The data is compiled and charted on Google Sheets - an excellent online alternative to MS Excel. Check out how it is done here.
The Method:
- The category of the user is derived from the Accounts table along with vesting shares.
- The last voting date by the user is taken from the Acoounts table.
- For chart, the category is matched with the voter of the post.
The Results:
Churn and Retention rates:
- 50.55% or nearly 5 out 10 Steemit users have stopped voting in the last 3 months compared to 41.5% when I ran the same queries last month. However the user base has grown by 14% this month.
- Steemit is able to retain Orcas, Dolphins and Minnows effectively as around their retention rate is in the 70% to 80% range.
- 17 of the total 44 whales has stopped curating content in the last 3 months.
- 1 out of 2 new users or the ones without much vesting power have stopped using the service.
Vest power and User base Distribution:
See how the user base and vesting power is distributed in the blockchain,
- 98% of the users fall under the Plankton category and hold 2% of vesting power.
- Whales hold 71% of the total vesting power and constitute 0.01% of the total userbase.
Conclusion:
The situation looks grimmer when compared to the last month's charts. What is more disconcerting is that the 50% Churn rate comes after the addition of 50000 new accounts, in reality 58% of the users who were available last month have stopped voting. I am sorry to sound like a pessimist but unless Steemit finds a way to sustain and encourage new users it is going to have a tough time ahead.
Check out some of my other posts:
How USD became the world's favourite reserve currency?
Hourly and day wise analysis of how posts get votes till the first payout.
Votting pattern of a top curator in the first hour of a post's publishing.
I am a part of the Steemit Business Intelligence community. We all post under the tag #BIsteemit. If you have an analysis you would like carried out on Steemit data, please do contact me or any of the #bisteemit team and we will do our best to help you...
Join the fabulous Steemit Blogger Discord community:
https://discord.gg/e5XFZKa
Cheers and happy steeming,
dbdecoy
This is a very effective way to show this data, and really highlights some of the issues well.
The only ray of sunshine I would add is that we have not at any stage had a sustained period where the rate of user growth has been increasing, so comparing the last 3 months is measuring against a period where there was a large upsurge in users. We may just now be back to more regular levels of user growth.
This does beg the question why haven't we had sustained growth in the rate of new users?
We may have to wait for another 6 months to see if this surge in user base is of any real use.
Thank you so much for writing this article and answering one of my most pungent questions about this platform. How long have you been on and how do you find the platform so far? Also, I promoted your content as I believe that your insights are crucial to the more knowledgable community members. I recently wrote about Crypto, perhaps that'd also deserve a #BIsteemit tag?
Thanks for the promotion! I've been around for a bit more than a month. You can post any analysis on Steemit's data in the BIsteemit tag.
Very valid points you make. It is crucial that newer people are brought into the mix. This is up to those who are on here longer.
The question is when was the last time you (the general you not specifically you as one individual) upvoted a newcomer....when did you have a discussion with him or her?
It is easy for us to get caught up in our own circles. At the moment, Steemit is so small that is requires us finding those who are overlooked.
You are correct. Perhaps the geography of the new users also plays a big part in this problem. Most of the new users are from asia and africa. Not many power users operate in their timezone hence most of their posts get buried without proper appreciation.
What is interesting is that, people from those parts, can be most impacted by a bit of an upvote.
Those from the third world nations can do more with a couple dollars than those of us in the west. If we can get their posts to earn even that, it will make a huge difference in their lives.
Probably the power users should work in shifts :) or the trending and hot algorithms need a change based on the location of the posts . Steemit does not emphasise on location, that is a major drawback.
Everyones marketing it as a place to make money, 95% of people won't ever make more than $1 per post, when they realize that they're gone
You are correct, most of the whales are steemit people or exchange service accounts that rarely curate. So we have a top that does not contribute to the ecosystem making things worse.
Very interesting.
I'm new to Steemit and still trying to get my head around the system and how the mechanics of it work. Defiantly a step clearer.
About your "Conclusion" I joined for various reason's and I wonder if some of the new users see the post values and feel disappointed that they don't get a Cent. Over sold at the point of joining maybe?
Anway thanks for putting the time in on this post
Upvoted & Followed
Thanks for the follow and the vote! We may have to wait and watch for the next few months to see if the situation improves. It is really difficult for a new user to get dollars out of their post now.
Your right it is difficult to get Dollars from a post, I know myself. On the flip side of that if it was easy to get Dollars I bet the system would be flooded by junk orchestrated by people that just want to scam as much out of it as possible.
Already there's a lot of spam and scammers floating around. Guess it's a Catch-22!
Catch-22 for sure
Thanks for a great post, even if news is not so good. In marketing they say a new customer costs $10 keeping one costs just $1.
Steem is getting them in the door, but then loosing them just as fast.
I was thinking that curation (comments) needs to have a greater value. Not just votes which are limited in number & value for plankton.
or perhaps an increase in the volume of votes avail to plankton?
perhaps via faster regeneration that tapers off in correlation to vote value?
Might help balance up the whale centric environment.
And encourages plankton to be more engaged at the same time.
$0.02
Also I've been trying to find a way to generate a report re global distribution of postings ie popular country areas & also in what time zones / ranges are greatest volumes posted. If Steem is to be global, then it shouldn't 'sleep' when the USA does. $0.02
I had the same thoughts. Curation awards should be increased in value.
Probably the advent of communities might increase the state of content discovery and help the new users.
I tried getting location information and failed as the blockchain does not store exact location eventhough a feild is available.
I thought that re location. Do you think a "timezone" report would be useful re determining posting patterns? I'm wondering if there is a better time of day to post, & get better rewards.
Re curation, I'm still thinking that a REGENERATION speed increase for plankton would work best to keep involvement as well as speeding up profile growth. The speed could be tapered off as needed, once people are 'engaged' with the platform. $0.02
Already did an article on that. Check for my post titled voting pattern last month. I started scheduling my posts after seeing the results.
img credz: pixabay.com
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