Shift to the "Dark Side"...

Having been a prolific manual Curator for a couple of months, I'm now experimenting with a bot/ automated curating. After a couple of days of research and head-scratching I managed to set up a functional (if rudimentary) Bot Curator. I'm calling him "T-Bot". Right now T-Bot is behaving himself and voting on authors on my 'list', at times when I want it to.

T-Bot has been operational for two or three weeks now, and it's given me a richer appreciation of curating.

Initial thoughts

Here are some initial observation,

• creating a bot/ authors list has little to do with front-running. I read an article eluding to bots front running @wang. Operating a bot has little to do with frint running @wang or any other bot. I've come to appreciate that @wang is greatly misunderstood. Merely front-running @wang is not optimal. @wang is often diluting its Curation Rewards by having less popular authors on its list. There are some profitable authors that are not on @wang's list. Whether this can be attributed to benevolence or the bot not being updated, I having studied that bot enough to say. All I can see is perhaps @wang isn't the big bad wolf it is made out to be.

• with a target vote of 40 a day, there is scope to add less profitable authors to my list without hurting the bottom line too much. I've been doing that. I'm sure others do as well. Equally there are some that don't.

• it sounds obvious but even though I have T-Bot, I can still manually curate vote on content off their list. I find myself doing that.

• having T-Bot allows me to concede to the fact that there are actually good and consistent content providers on Steemit. People that are worthy of support and (dare I say it) that it is profitable to vote on. To me this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I apply the 80/20 rule when adding an author. If 80% of the time an author produces good stuff, I won't sweat over having voted on not so good posts.

• This is a critical point for me. Even when I was manually curating, I effectively ended up voting on the same authors that produced consistently good content. It got to a point where it made little sense for me to spend too much time wading through posts in the "new" section. I knew who the good posters were, I could follow them. I only needed to spend a limited amount of time 'keeping my ear to the ground' for new good quality content providers.

• using T-Bot saved me from burning out. When I first started manually curating, I spent lots of time wading through the "new" section looking for good content. This was hellishly tedious. Eventually I found steemstats.com and used it to let me know when a good author had posted. I had a desktop alert. The alert told me when authors I followed had posted. A 'ping' on my computer would prompt me to rush to Steemit to see what they had posted. I immediately read the post as quickly as possible then I'd set a timer based on when I thought was the optimal time to vote. It was an incredibly inefficient use of my time and energy. It was also not sustainable. I would spend my day 'on call' for new posts. Ironically, I'd still miss out on a large sway of good content. Often I'd wake up in the morning (I'm in the UK) and have missed a whole host of quality posts I could have voted from authors Stateside. Now T-Bot upvotes, at an optimal time, for any good author at any time they post.

• T-Bot allows me to read posts at my leisure and actually enjoy content. As a manual curator, consuming and comprehending content on Steemit was crazy. You're reading but you're too busying clock watching, pre-judging the content to determine whether it is worth an upvote, to actual properly take in what you're reading. Bot curating is more refined. I feel like I'm engaging in a different pact with Authors on Steemit. I'm looking at their body of work, at my own leisure and making a longer term commitment on whether to support their blog. I can review how I feel about content over time and decide whether to continue to support them, scale back my support or drop them off my list.

Why bother?

I guess some may be asking, why bother creating T-Bot, or Curating for Profit in the first place? Why not vote for what you like when you get the time to visit the site? There are a number of reasons, however I guess it boils down to (1) I want to ensure that people that provide value by producing consistent good content are consistently rewarded. (2) it's a means of creating a quasi- passive income in the process (3) I enjoy the game.

I can see how owning a bot makes the business of curating scale-able. There is also the potential for a cottage industry around curating that will benefit the Steemit economy as a whole. I aim to continue to bot curate and refine how it works.

I also think it's important to be transparent about the use of Bots. I'm writing this as I don't think Bot curating needs to be a faceless exercise that is done in clandestine corners of Steemit. Bot Curator happens. It also accounts for a large portion of Reward allocation. It's logical, that in a decentralised platform such as this, some will see it as a benefit. Good bot curating, I'd argue is healthy. It's bad curating (whether it's via a bot or not) that is undesirable.

• Good curating to me is voting for content (and content providers) that bring or add value to the platform, whilst earning Curation Rewards (as an incentives) in the process.

• Bad curating is voting without care or voting purely to game rewards or in a nepotistic way.

• Whether or not a bot is used is incidental.

Peek behind the curtain...

If there is interest, I'm open to publishing my Authors List. I don't mind letting the community see my reason for including authors on my list and taking them off. I think it would be good to have an open dialogue with other members of the community and give people a chance to pitch authors to go on my list. I could probably learn more by getting the input of others.

Glimpse into the future

I like to look forward.

If Steemit is successful, I see there being tens of thousand quality content creators contributing to the platform every day. Each vying for a share of millions of dollars worth of rewards. I can see how bots will allow bigger players to distribute rewards across a diverse portfolio of content creators for the betterment of the platform.

I think being transparent about the use of bots and engaging in open and honest dialogue with the community about how decisions are being made is the best way to garner trust and confidence in the platform. It's only when people suspect that bots are being used in nefarious ways, that distrust develops.

Bots or no bots, if Steemit is ultra-successful mega-whales (and maybe even dolphins like myself) should brace themselves for greater scrutiny over voting practices. We are deluding ourselves to believe we can randomly browse through Steemit 'like a normal user', upvoting 4 or 5 posts that happen to catch our eye. Unlike a normal user vote, a mega-whales vote could be worth $1,000 or $10,000 to the people we vote for! No small change.

The truth is a successful multi-billion dollar social media site or blogging rewards site will always be big business for those at the top of the tree. Thus whales (and even those that just want to curate for a living) should open their minds all the tools at their disposal (including bots) to ensure they are running a tight ship.

Let me know your thoughts... I'm particularly interested to hear from those that disagree or think that bots are bad for the platform. I'm open to the possibility of being wrong!

Until next time

Happy Steeming!