HF19: Who's Building a Following and Who's Relying on Whale Votes?
I posted last night in anticipation of the changes being made in Hard Fork 19. For more details on that, see the official steemit blog.
After the fork, right away, I saw some posts get a huge bump in potential value. I also so other trending posts loose a thousand or more. It reminded me of this:
Some people on Steemit work hard by consistently delivering valuable content to build a loyal following while others rely on a few whale votes. Right as the hardfork went live, we got to see that more clearly.
Trending page before:
Trending page after:
@kingscrown's post went down over $1,000. I'm sure there are others that went down as well, some maybe even more drastically. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. I think those who regularly provide valueable content are still being rewarded quite well for it. The fact that @kingscrown's post is still in the top 5 shows the value of the following he's built. The adjustment to payout also shows how important it is not to rely solely on whale votes for your rewards. Don't go asking for them, instead go build a following.
For some tips on that, read this:
So far, I'm really REALLY excited about Hard Fork 19. Check out the newly created posts. Almost all of them are getting paid something! This is going to be really exciting for people who are just starting to use Steemit. Even their lower Steem Power votes can now equate to real value!
Not only that, "old timers" like me who've been building up our Steem Power, powering up rewards for almost a year now have a new, fresh excitement. I voted up @stackin's latest post and watched it go from $9 to $51!
This is blowing my mind.
Could this impact the price of Steem as more people see real rewards and want to get in on the action of having influence on this network? Steem Power is the way to make that happen. The next few Exchange Transfer Reports are going to be quite interesting.
Or... could more crypto newbies get rewards and cash them out instead of investing for the future to bring the price down?
Time will tell. Strap in for this exciting ride!
Not to rain on your parade, but it probably won't last. There's a huge payment bias right now towards posts that have received votes in the past 2 and a half hours, because of the voting power change. As more of that new voting power gets spread around to new posts, the posts that currently have huge payouts will lose some. Your post is currently at $788.59, but that could easily be cut in half by the end of the day as other posts receive these new extra-heavy votes and take away some of your share.
Ah, that's a great point! The rewards pool will take a while to adjust for sure, along with the new vote weight and the influence of bot voting. It'll be interesting if by the end of the day no one has any vote power left. :)
Well, also, to play devil's advocate to my devil, as people vote their voting power will drain very quickly so by the end of the day they might not have enough voting power to dramatically reduce everybody's payouts. So... take all my spitball predictions with a grain of salt. :)
11 hours later and Luke is sitting at $960.92 with a total of 319 votes. Unless my math is wrong, that is a far cry from being cut in half by the end of the day.
Looks like my second devil was on to something.
You're not completely off though. The payout is going down as the rewards pool figures itself out.
It has gone down a bit though. I imagine the final payout will be lower once it hits the 7 day mark.
I've already adjusted mine downward to better fit the weight I think is fair. I never used to have to even consider it.
amazing post!
I love y'all guys especially dolphins and whales
This is ridiculous!!!HF 19 is the best thing that happened to steemians yet...
I'm screaming like a little girl!
Dial it back a bit, chief
Changes on the comment value, too, hey? haha amazing!
Xx, Kay
I think so as well . I am expecting that on the week end most posts will go low because all the massive upvoting
It's so nice to see the playing field leveled.
Amen to that!
I agree. My posts went up and i am supper pumped!
It is, however I am worried that the "newbie" steemers will take whatever Steem they can get and cash out. Here's hoping for the best! haha
After some thinking I am not as enthusiastic as others concerning HF 19. My preliminary conclusion is that ...
I completely agree that the linear reward curve is a big step in the right direction.
However I doubt that it was a great idea to increase the impact of a 100 % vote by a factor of 4 (whereby voting power would decrease faster per upvote).
It means that you can reward some friends (or some strong accounts from which you hope to receive some loyalty votes back ...or ... yourself ... or ... your other accounts ...!) very rich, but then probably there is not much voting power available anymore for the 'rest'.
However with a fast growing number of Steemit users it may be better to spread many small votes instead a few huge ones (reserved for a few 'loyal' accounts).
Of course I hope I am wrong and both changes will have positive effects ...
For me, it's more about automated voting verses human voting. Yes, votes can be concentrated, but the way it was before (IMO) was that humans vote maybe 5-10 times while whale bots vote to the max. That's my hunch for how things go. Yes whales can still drop a huge vote, but because of the change to linear, it's not the ~1000x influence compared to smaller votes like it was before.
As I wrote, the linear curve is great. Concerning the rest, let's see ... I hope you are right ...
I as a 'human only' always voted a lot (especially also on comments). So at least for me 40 votes were no problem at all (for example I often had more than 20 comments on my chess quizzes and upvoted most of them). I know the changes are meant to help people who spend less time on Steemit ... but of course one could also argue that people who spend more time there may be more dedicated and thus should have a higher influence ... complicated topic, indeed ... :)
Actually I would say it IS the ~1000x influence now compared to ~1,000,000x influence before :p
I think for the 4x increase in voting power if users were really interested in just group voting among friends to reward each other, on the one hand you might argue it's their right to use their SP as they want to adjust the reward distribution, but with or without the 4x increase they could easily automate the process in either case, or if they don't automate, it's realistically the difference between 5 and 20 minutes of work a day which in either case would probably be a good return on investment if they have modest SP.
Just my random thought of the day! :)
This is very exciting! I'm so happy to have reached over 400 followers, since my goal is 10K this year ;) It's all about the following, not just the whale votes (although they're fanrtastic too!). Long term, more followers = more money anyways
Yeah me too @avilsd! This is very exciting times!
Forget the lamborghinis, time to start looking into purchasing apartments and hard assets with all those extra bitcoins you'll be making this year ;)
haha small island maybe?
$200-300K in the caribbean can get you a decent one, up in Canada, SE Asia or Greece that can get you a pretty dank one though. Definitely the island life is rockin' at $1m+
haha yes!
Kim Dotcom honestly is a hero. That video made me laugh out loud when I first saw it, fucking hilarious! I definitely want to meet up with the man one of these days. MegaUpload was an amazing site back in the day, shame the dude got RAIDED by choppers all the way over in New Zealand..
yeah he really is! He also called $2k Bitcoin before everyone else this year!
You just got a follow from me. I am new and excited about followers too! good luck on the 10k
Thank you mate :) I think anyone can reach it, if they truly desire it enough and spend a lot of their time going for it
And not just any followers. Quality ones will benefit you the most in the long term, I think! Good luck to you!
Not only that, but more relationships which are more valuable in the long term.
Top o' the afternoon to you Luke! What's a "whale vote"??? :)
Good question. A "Whale" is what the community calls someone with a high amount of Steem Power. Their votes have a lot more influence than "minnow" or "dolphin" votes. You can see more about that here https://steemwhales.com/
Thanks Luke as always! Now, interestingly enough, hasn't the Hard fork implemented today effected this dramatically?
For me, the most exciting part of HF19 is that MY upvotes are worth actual money now. I worked for two months, every day, to build a following and some SP that would let me add .006 to someone's post. It wasn't much, but it was something. Now, my vote is worth a quarter or more, which makes me a lot more likely to pick good content, but also more excited to give that upvote to people that deserve it. It's changed how I interact with the site. For the better, I think.
I remember this exact experience when I first started here. :)
I've been creating quality content on youtube for the past 4 years and didn't really get a "break" on viewership despite many people saying they really appreciated the quality I was putting into it. I've gotten discouraged lately, but steemit is starting to give me some new hope that maybe hard work and quality is rewarded, especially with this new change. I just want to create great videos and not have to rely on gimmick to attract viewership. Am I asking for too much?
Building community is hard. It's not just about putting out content to no followers. Engaging, building relationships, commenting to add value to other people's posts... it takes time. Good luck!
That is very true. I have built a modest following on youtube by engaging, its just that beating the impersonal algorithm that only measures time spent on videos and can't measure quality reliably is frustrating. I saw myself decreasing animations/ motion graphics so I wouldn't so much time doing the videos. I feel that steemit has a potential to be more intelligent in rewarding quality content, so it makes me motivated to invest more time here. In youtube you have to work so much for so long for so little that its weighs down on you, especially if you don't want to go the sensationalist route.
I am with you on that, @siloe! With the YouTube algorithm favoring channels that post every day, I've seen channels move to the 'talking heads' format, full of chit-chat, instead of more complex content with real information. My videos take long enough for me to make - I can only imagine how much longer your animation requires!
Yes. that is why I had to cut production value begrudgingly. Your channel is one of the few that has relevant concise information that is actually unique, that is why I appreciate what you have to say. I thought that quality would speak for itself. And while that is still a bit true, it is not the driving force behind growth there (which may be actually harmful for youtube long-term)
Thanks for the kind words, @siloe! Just like Steemit, the YouTube/Google ecosystem is complicated. They've had to undo some of their choices, like with the G+ accounts. So I'm hopeful YouTube will notice and make changes in their algorithm, especially if people are watching less because video quality has dropped with everyone rushing to post every day.
I believe that this new fork is going to help STEEM grow a lot bigger as now everyone has a chance to make some money with their posts. You don't have to be followed by whales anymore to make some decent rewards.
This is the biggest change STEEM has done since its inception and I believe it to be a game changer.
I feel stupid that I powered down and sold my STEEM now that this change occured. The next step will be to accumulate as much STEEM POWER as possible. STEEM price will skyrocket in the near future.
The money generated by votes went up 20 folds ! The market is unstable as people are not sure yet if this change is good or not in the long term. I believe it is as the biggest problem was to get decent returns for new users.
Indeed when you are a new user and when you make 1 cts for your post its not very motivating for you to continue posting.
STEEM marketcap direction is the billion dollars in the next few days.
@najoh You pretty much hit the nail on the head there friend! I'm very new to steemit and I was fortunate enough to have my 2nd post hit a decent coin share, however when I voted for others, a penny was all I could give.... so several people who follow you tend to get a bit uninterested since you've got no worth under those terms... there are a few whales that come to help out, but it still leaves us way behind in steem power gains and money for bitshares... so putting a huge work load into future posts is something we really think over before doing. Iwanted to make some serious posts on real great topics, but I'll probably end up with a few bucks for 20 hours of work while looking at another post of someones tatoo raking in several hundred dollars and steem just because they have ither a huge following (which I have nothing against when it has been earned) or again, just because that person has a community of whales all voting their pics up! I'm not saying that it's a bad thing for them, I'm fine with that, but the question becomes " do I really want to contribute all this work and shared knowledge here on steemit for a few bucks, or should I just go create a blog and get traffic into it on my own?" I could advertise my stuff and create a sizeable audience which would pay the bills alot faster that way! So I think steemit did a great move, since it is more encouraging this way, but there is still room for greater changes as well... I imagine that I'm probably not the only one with these thoughts. we'll need to see how things go!
At least I now have a bit more incentive towards creating content and trying it out here rather than elsewhere, which is a good thing!
Or newbs will dump their new-found wealth on the markets. Time will tell.
Since we're at half that now, are you taking odds against? You might be a little too excited. ;)
@lukestokes Well, I'm lucky that I have a nice combination of minnows dolphins and whales (including you hehe ^_^)... but what really blew my mind was that none of my posts went down! Though seeing a lot people's voting power disappear when it's only been a couple hours is a little distressing... I'm gonna have to totally rethink my posting schedule.
None of your posts going down sounds like a pretty good thing. :)
I think things will settle down after a week or so. There are enough international people here that someone's always around to vote, for the most part. I spent months trying to figure out a good posting schedule and I finally just said, "Bah, forget it. Just post when you want to."