Mini Pool Meeting | Hanging with some Whales | Why Steemit Needs to Become More Content Focused
Hey guys, I imagine a lot of you guys will pickup on the kind of parody of this. One of my favorite Steemians I follow is @brianphobos and he does pool meetings so as kind of a joke I wanted to do a "mini pool" meeting. I got the whale and everything.
Anyhow, I realize I'm a new guy on here so hopefully it what I have to say will be well received and not like who's this new dude comming over here talking crap.
I don't see this as being a huge problem on Steemit, but something I'm seeing is that a lot of new Steemians are feeling frustrated that their content isn't being seen. Now this isn't unique to Steemit, try going and starting a Youtube channel or an Instagram account and you'll feel the exact same way. It takes a while to make your mark and build a following.
I'm also a huge believer that many people want rewards without putting in the work. Everyone wants their posts to earn $1,000 per post but don't necessarily want to put in the work to get there.
Something I can see which could potentially start happening is that new Steemians give up on comming on here to create quality content and just start to "play the game". By playing the game I mean just running around doing follow for follow, upvote for upvote, voting on content they havn't even consumed, etc.
At the end of the day if we want this site to gain mass adoption and grow it's going to have to be content focused like a Youtube or a Reddit, and not just about playing the Steemit game to get reciprical upvotes and resteems. If that is what things evolve to were going to continue to have people comming and going until there's no longer any people to come here and join.
I recently heard that the average American spends 4 hours per day watching Youtube. That's pretty insane. I realize Steemit is young and still finding itself but one thing that I feel is currently different between the two platforms is that on Youtube while it can be really hard to make your mark, at the end of the day content wins out and if you make good content it at least has a chance, of getting views, getting upvoted, getting shared and rising high in search. This is evident as you can watch a video that has a million views, and then see that the creator only has 11 followers. It goes to show any piece of content has a chance.
On Steemit it seems like a lot of great content just gets lost forever into the new section which can be frustrating to new creators.
I guess my point is this, I think if we want to see Steemit grow were going to need to have more diversity of content. I feel like a lot of Steemit and Crypto posts get the most upvotes and it's understandable as all of us are into those things and this is a blockchain and crypto based site. Again though, to get more mass adoption we're going to have to have other stuff going on like DIY videos, makeup videos, how to videos, daily vlogs, documentaries, etc.
I think we also need to start rewarding alternate types of content as well as if a new creator comes on here and makes a documentary for example and posts it and it gets no love, after so many times they are going to leave. Where as if a new creator comes on here and people interact with and dig their content and they make a little money they will continue making content on here, more people like them will come over making similar content and that will in turn bring more viewers over here as well and viewers are also going to bring more money into the market place.
Anyhow, I'm kind of a rambler, I didn't cover nearly all the stuff I wanted to but this is just some of my opinions. I realize not everyone maybe has the same vision for Steemit as I do. I realize maybe not everyone interacts in Steemit the same way I do, I'm simply sharing my opinion.
What's your guys thoughts? Drop a comment below and let me know.
Just a heads up man. I resteemed this post and it never would show up in my blog feed. I have no clue why but Steemit.com has been acting funny today. Steemd has been acting fishy but ChainBB has been performing great!
Tried to get you more exposure but I'm not sure what is going on.
Hey buddy, thanks I really appreciate it, I thought this was kind of a clever video to make playing off your pool meetings so was really hoping it would be well received and get somme views. Yeah I just checked your feed and doesn't show up for some reason. Do you think it's just a glitch or is my content being hidden or something from being flagged the other day?
I'm not really sure if it had anything to do with you getting flagged. There have been a lot of weird things happening on Steemit. Like I'm not seeing my reply notifications and all that.
I'm just catching up to this now! That is funny you did a mini pool meeting and have the whale and everything. He was trying to crowd you out. LOL!
You made a lot of good points and I have said for awhile that the platform ends up being a "proof of effort" situation where some people are posting these PhD level research papers that no on is going to read but then people just end up upvoting because that has been what has been rewarded in the past. Or postings that have 50 pictures in them so the person things..... wow! They spent a lot of time on this...UPVOTE! LOL
And you people get all caught up in their own stuff and oftentimes it is easy to get in a rush and not be able to consume everything. I will notice that on my pool meetings. I won't get near as many views as what I get in upvotes. I get about 22 bot driven upvotes right now automatically. Some people are getting hundreds of bot upvotes and then will have like 20 views. It is crazy.
It is funny you mentioned the bots as well because the reason I haven't posted in about 24 hours is because I'm building out my bot army. LOL It's judgement day over here....hehehehe. I'm working with a bunch of scripts to automate my voting more on my main account and then getting my bots lined up to trail my votes. The goal being a few things. I'm testing to see how much I can pump these bots up Steem Power wise and also I wanted to lock down a few of the account names. Kind of like locking down domains. A lot of stuff has been taken at this point. It is pretty crazy and there are tons of dormant accounts just sitting out there squatting on names.
We will have to do a skype pool / mini pool meeting sooner than later!
Hey will your bot army be doing any mercenary work? I.e., how can I get in on it ;-)
My bots are friendly. I have programmed them to be kind and generous!
Very nice.
You answered a question that I had, which was how are people getting more votes than views. The answer bots.
I dislike the bots )with the exception possibly of @Cheetah because he makes @theblindsquirl say the funniest things). The bots dehumanize the experience and put unecessary power in the hands of those with the technical know how and time to develop them. It is the rise of bots that would make me leave steem and I am a tech guy. I realize you are talking about there use as defensive tactic but ultimately we would be fighting to keep the peace. People do create good content here and I do go looking for it and vote for it. Is it altruistic to believe that if others do the same that Steemit will become what it set out to be and spammers will lose interest or real followers.?
I get the concern you have with the bots but really when it comes down to it that is every part of our lives. It is like complaining because self driving cars are coming and truck drives will eventually be out of a job or that their are self check out lanes at Wal-Mart or Home Depot.
Being a tech guy you have surely automated something with a script before right? Computers are about automation. Those who can't adapt will get left behind. For better or for worse it is just a fact of life.
I used to say I hated twitter because it is a bot orgy. Hahah, but you know Twitter wasn't somewhere where I every tried to build a following. What was the point? Maybe get a million followers and then possibly I could throw an affiliate link out there? I just didn't see an efficient way to monetize it.
About content on here. It isn't all bot driven. There is a big human element. When Steem prices sunk to really bad levels the place was in what I call "sleeper" mode. The bots were running but it wasn't worth most people's time to be on the platform posting.
But how is that any different than everyday life? I have a washing machine to mechanize the washing of my clothes instead of hand washing them. It doesn't mean I don't care about my favorite shirt.
Those are just my thoughts on the subject. Those with the technical knowledge will always get ahead. Those who are the most wealthy will always get richer. If we don't step up we get left behind!
Hey I have a friend of mine who is into writing scripts and stuff. If I wanted to make him aware of Steemit and maybe team up with him on some projects could you link me to something that would give him some background on what type of script to write or how to write scripts for steemit type thing. Sorry not even really sure how to ask what I want to ask. My buddy is a mac engineer at a local college so he's more into networking and hardware than coding and programming though he does know how to do it and I'd like to get him involved or maybe team up with him for some type of automation type projects
Here is a link to the script I'm running to have the trailing bots upvote everything I upvote. It is a little complicated if you aren't technical but it sounds like your buddy is in a similar boat as me. My focus was more Network admin stuff so I do some scripting but mainly I'm good at implementing other people's code more than reinventing the wheel.
This script can be challenging to implement and I had a few issues I had to resolve with it but it is working pretty solid right now.
https://steemit.com/radiator/@inertia/drdoogie-rb-vote-trail-bot-update
Again most of what I have set up right now is a little more of a test. The bots that I have trailing me aren't very powerful but eventually I want to supply more power to them and then let that power build up overtime. If they run for years and build curation rewards and also the price spikes I feel they could be worth something. Plus certain words or accounts could become worth money in the future as well. Check your comment and see the upvotes on it.
Actually in the interim I came across a great post on the bots that we often come across in posts by @financialcritic . I added the link below. I have a better appreciation of these one's purpose now.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@financialcritic/steemit-paid-voting-bots-guide-part-1-how-to-use-randowhale-booster-whaleshares
Hey buddy, I notice a lot of people doing development on Steemit like the whole ChainBB thing you have mentioned and even like you said building a bot army. Not sure if you've done one in the past but would love to see a video like explaining what this means.
I don't even know how to begin wrapping my head around what that means. My limited scope of knowledge makes me think you create multiple accounts, then build some type of software like a hootsuite or an IFTT and give it instructions to do things based on peramiters? Is that correct? Also when people develope on here is there a particular language everything is done in ie phython or whatever?
I'm a total noob when it comes to this type of stuff but curious to get a little bit of a better picture of what all this means. Would love to see a pool meeting on it
It is very tough to explain in a pool meeting. It almost has to be something I show on the computer but there are different ways to interact with the data on the blockchain. There is a CLI wallet where you can input commands. Some of which aren't available though Steemit.com
Also you can code in Python, Java, Java Script, Ruby....etc Here is a list of tools and websites that can help http://steemtools.com/
Hilarious. Would love to see Brian's reaction. Agreed. I think ultimately the bots might become a problem if too many people rely on them to make automated comments. The value of Steemit to me is that there are so many intelligent people with specialized knowledge sharing interesting things they are doing with their lives.
Yeah the people are super smart on here. It is like a higher level of social media where you learn. But yeah..... the bots aren't all bad. I'm training my bot army to behave fairly and generously!
Hahahaha...okay. Hey one thing I didn't understand in your latest video. You mentioned that on Steemvoter you could have more than one account and set them up to upvote you. How do you create more than one account? Do you mean you create more than 1 Steemit account? Is that allowed?
Yeah so it seems that Steem Voter really allows you to only load up 3 accounts max in there and have one as a primary and two as smaller secondary accounts.
You can create new accounts a few different ways. Honestly it was one of the biggest mistakes I made on Steemit is not creating hundreds of accounts last year when I first got on. It was stupid of me to be honest. Now it is a lot harder. They want you to enter phone numbers and all that. I tried to use fake numbers I generated from an app called Sideline but those didn't work. I was able to use a Google Voice number and then there is a someone complicated way to create them through Busy.org.
There is also a way to create them through the CLI wallet. And there is a service called Anon Steem.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@someguy123/anonsteem-create-anonymous-steem-accounts-without-social-media
It cost money to create accounts or you have to delegate some of your current Steem power to the new account to get it rolling.
As far as it being allowed. Yeah sure! We do what we want around here. We own this place! You can't look at it like Facebook or YouTube where it is a closed off system and we don't have access to the backend or the ability to directly interface with the underlying code. We have equity in this system and we can interact with the code however we see fit!
Wow, that's so hard to get used to - we make the rules! But it's great information again - thank you. The funny thing is I never entered a Facebook or Reddit account when I signed up for Steemit.
I have a couple phones I might be able to use. I can't remember - will they need to send short codes to me?
So once you set up your 2 extra accounts you just set them up to auto-upvote your main account?
My business partner and I wanted to create a joint account in addition to mine so we can both post content from our website. We're building a content website with original articles, videos, images, etc. so we thought we could cross post the same items on a Steemit channel.
I have to wait for my first BTC order to clear my bank account before I can even spend .01 BTC on Anon Steem.
I couldnt agree more, @rulesforrebels
I hope Steemit will develop better system of organizing the content, to match YouTube. Right now, it's whatever on top of your feed gets some attention, the rest is gone.
Hey @steemulator, definately checking ChainBB.Com, it really totally changes up the interface of the site and kind of organizes stuff more in a fashion like a forum or message board and also whatever has the most recent comment rises to the top which keeps it sort of like a reddit or a citydata which is kind of cool
Thank you, will do!
Ok Yeah you did ramble a bit :) but I always like video postings that have the text with it so I can read and listen .. or not :) You made a comment about needing more diverse content on steemit and mentioned makeup. My teenage daughter had a channel for a while on youtube for that exact purpose and had thousands of views on some of her videos. But she ultimately deleted her account and content entirely because people's comments were brutal and personally hurtful. The answer may be, if you don't like the water then get out of the pool, but if we attract those kinds of morons to this platform then i too will get out of the pool.
Hey @whitesj40 I can totally see that and yeah that would be rough for a teenage girl. That said I think every Youtuber is going to run into trolls and haters. I'm a Youtuber myself and I'm pretty fortunate that I have a super supportive audience. I don't really get a ton of haters and when I do my subscribers are typically pretty quick to quiet them. That said I can see a makeup channel getting some hate. That's unfortunate. If your daughter decides to give it another go I'd tell her that anyone who has the time and effort to do something unproductive like hate on her is doing nothing themselves and their opinions are worthles
Steemit actually has a pretty good mechanism for controlling behavior in the flagging. If you get flagged for being an idiot by someone with more earned credibility than you it devastates your profile.
People will do anything and everything for personal gain, so long as they are not ostracized for it. I Think of steemit as the wild west, there is little accountability and even less incentive to play fair, so why would you? Calling people on their bullshit is usually the best way to get them to stop, no pressure like peer pressure. Long term this is the force that brings people into line an probably sorts out the issues you presented in your video. It is also the force that brings about PC speech, safe spaces, and YouTube's adpocalypse, so pick your poison.
Hey @cslaw I agree with you and withthe comment about peer pressure, I think Reddit does a really good job at that. You try posting like an advertisement/spam and your quick to get slapped down on there.
Something I was questioning the other day is if money corrupts everything. I know on Reddit for example people get hungup on Karma points and play games to get them but at the end of the day it's fake internet points, here on Steemit we have real money so I was trying to figure out exactly how that shapes peoples behavior
meep
I thought this was inspirational, not hateful in any way. good pool meeting.
Thanks Christian appreciate it
Good video man. I am a beginner on Steemit but my account is slowly getting bigger. What I find is that people are using the same tactics to get bigger or more money on Steemit as Instagram for example.
On instagram, you'll have lots of people that use comment bots that post generic comments on your pictures. You know what I'm talking about: the generic ones that just say "nice pic" or thumbs up. Something is happening on Steemit that is similar to that. I have a particular post on there and some user just commented "Nice post!" and made $0.35 from that based on 2 upvoters. The thing is, those same 2 people that upvoted his generic comment didn't even upvote or comment on my post. Why would someone upvote a completely generic comment yet not the OP?
I hope my content can get more exposure to be honest. The thing is, I don't even know how to get my posts more exposure. If I have posts that I want more people to see, what are my options? Thanks for the STEEMITREBELS tag, that seems to help. Once I make a post, people have a certain time span to see it on the New section or whatever tag I post it in, but once that is over, how can I get people to actually see my content after it has been scrambled with all the other posts? That is what I am currently trying to figure out.
hey kenan, great comment buddy. Yeah like you said the same tactics are being used on INstagram and other platforms where there's no monetary gain or where the monetary gain is a more roundabout one ie on Instnagram you dont make money just buy getting likes or follows you have to do even more work to monetize that account be it selling the account, selling shoutouts, affiliate marketing so with Steemit where you can make money directly off the bots actions I think it's going to be even more widely used.
Kind of interesting along this topic is someone had posted I believe on here or Youtube can't find the comment that Instagram is really cracking down on that stuff
They are cracking down on it. They shut down Mass Planner, which is an app that does auto-like, auto-comment, auto-follow, etc. Since then, my account barely gets these generic comments anymore.
In order to change you have to be willing to do something different. With all the new ones coming here from YT they think they can just come drop a video and make money not understanding this is not YT and this place is so much more than YT could ever hope to be.. Resteemit!
Hey thanks for checking out the post and thanks for the comment. Yeah I agree everyone wants results overnight which isn't always realistic. I think the same challenges will be faced trying to start out new on any social network be it Youtube or Instagram or whatever else. It took me months and months and months to get even a couple hundred folloers, but once it starts growing it really does snowball.
While I definately agree with the above point I do think if we want Steemit to continue to grow we need to get as many if not more people over here consuming content in addition to just creating it. I think it's cool what ChainBB is doing with making the way we interact with Steemit a different thing so people have options of how they would like to interact with Steemit. If you havn't checked it out check it out it's a different layout and kind of a different experience in terms of how content is organized.
I'm a big fan of Youtube I have nothing bad to say about Youtube and plan on continuing to do my thing over there and hope it as well continues to grow and improve but also have high hopes for Steemit and trying to do my part to spread the word and grow the site.
At the end of the day I'm only one person and I don't expect Steemit to cater to me, I think all of us have different hopes and or expectations for how the site will work, what it will become, etc.
Thanks for the resteem buddy appreciate it
Lol... saw the pool meeting thing and I figured it was in reference to the big guy.
Yes we all want bigger things here in Steemit. But if it comes it comes if not, I'll just keep writing. Today I actually wrote a poem about Steem essentially. Perhaps you'll find t a good read:
https://steemit.com/steem/@valderrama/i-wrote-this-poem-just-for-you