Why Followers Forget You Exist - Steemit's Information Overload Problem
An interface overhaul is necessary. As it stands now, steemians continue to struggle with follower acquisition, retention, and engagement. If the information overload problem isn't solved soon with improvements in content management, a mass exodus of unsatisfied early adopters is imminent.
I readily admit I've forgotten most of the people I follow already.
That isn't because they failed to continue to deliver quality content, those I've caught back up with are still putting really great work out there...pretty much all of them actually.
The reality of the situation is the only thing keeping me consuming your content is my feed page.
Well, when I have 100+ new posts in my feed daily it's little challenging, as the case is for many. Especially if you're posting at a time of day that you always end up #95 of the 100 posts that pop up, its a guarantee you're going to remain "out of sight, out of mind".
Solving this problem is make or break.
Successful solutions will require innovating in the space of social media. We can barrow a bit from the seminal ideas of other sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit but ultimately we're sailing fast through uncharted water and the cracks in the hull can't be ignored for much longer.
Complacency Will Sink the Ship
Let's be honest, for a beta steemit is a brilliant proof of a concept. As an asset or tool for content creators, it just isn't there yet.
Right now the pumps are keeping the ship afloat - the growth steemit has experienced has been made possible and sustained through community organized moderation and curation efforts. While these communities are necessary, the source of the problems needs to be addressed or they will be taxed beyond their limits.
Another admission I'll make is I don't know the solution in its entirety, I only a have a few ideas and they only may be a bandied solution.
That said, I believe the salient issue right now is what I'll call -
Feed Clutter
I'm perfectly happy reading an enormous amounts of articles everyday, so long as the information is well written and following at least a loose narrative that ties together to provide useful insight.
Here's the rub though:
Frequent posting/resteeming clutters up my channel and while all that content might be great, its taking away from my ability to keep up with others. Because I can't sort OR search by category in my Feed, less frequent posting content creators are highly disadvantaged. Not being able to sort and search the Feed in intuitive ways is exacerbating the information overload problem.
When visiting "Tags and Topics", content from those I follow doesn't stick out. Their content should either be highlighted or temporarily stickied at the top of various categories in the tags.... and/or give those a follow a category of their own like "trending" in the topic I'm looking at.
There is no tracking of so much important meta data. Last time I visited a person I follow, unread/read replies and stories, etc
The Feed Needs Order
I believe the way forward here is apps hosted on steemtools can serve as an aggressive proving grounds for content management solutions to deal with information overload. Improvements particularly to /feed need to be prioritized.
I don't really have much to offer as far as programming expertise is concerned right now... I am learning though and hopefully can be part of the solution in less technical capacities for now. If this isn't addressed, the veritable consequence of sustaining high effort and realizing low user engagement will come to light in the form of many shifting gears back into centralized social platforms.
The scope was confined to /feed here but I do have many other qualms. I think if we can at least add sorting and searching to /feed, content creators will see far more sustained engagement and growth in their follower base.
I believe in this platform, but I along with many others grow increasingly frustrated with the amount of upkeep and management work necessary to brute force past steemit's flaws.
Sources:
Extended Reading
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-feed-google-versus-facebook-news-feed-2017-7
http://gizmodo.com/reddit-raised-200-million-and-is-redesigning-to-look-m-1797407331
I know of some changes coming. I have seen NO PUBLIC INFO RELEASED ABOUT THEM. Why? What's the plan?
Fearless leader needs to make some announcements before Nov I pray..
@ned
why before Nov?
Steemfest, I assume many announcements will be made.
thanks for the heads up!
I can totally agree with this. There's so much information all clumped into a feed. Perhaps we shouldn't be following too many people.
I would like something like a tag cloud for my feed, so you can see the active tags and wander the posts that way. Would make such a difference keeping track of people you follow.
Also a bookmark system for posts that you found that you want to come back to or that had helpful information.
You can basically do both with Evernote for the time being (which is what I'm doing), saving the posts and tagging them, but discovery is still manual which is the problem.
Mate you are speaking a lot of truths here and this post should be rewarded as this issues are right on the corner...
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I hope you accept, it can really boost your rewards.
Sure I'll accept - you're one of the community organized curation teams I was thinking about.
I thought I was the only one that thought this way~
Good ideas, hope they release the next version that address this over feeding!
next version unlikely, I'm just hoping there is reasonable native support through the api for these types of ideas to flourish. It's nice to see others aren't settling for how it is now, hopefully we can foster constructive efforts towards realizing steemit to higher potentials. It's been in "beta" for a year.... people's patience have a limit.
I've been here near a month and a half now and I too find the interface slightly frustrating. Even with only 70 odd followed I still miss things I'd like to read, often until it's been up for 4-5 days. It doesn't help that the notifications seem broke at the moment, notifications come for feed updates but not for comments/replies. That being said I have no idea what the answers are, maybe more sensible sorting as you've suggested or perhaps an easier to access list of followers which shows how many posts they've posted since you last visited the list. Great post either way :)
I think there are decent workarounds but it is still quite time consuming and error prone for me to keep up with everything.
I wasn't aware notifications were "broke" or working any differently, I guess that would be a big deal though.
I was thinking the same thing with the followers/following tracking unread posts/time visited, problem is as far as I'm aware none of that type of data is tracked.
When I first started here - just in June this year - you would get notifications for comments people had made. Chrome also had popup notifications for when people commented. No idea how it works I admit but I'd like to see it fixed then leveraged so you can get notifications for when people you follow post things. Then I wouldn't miss as much :)
Yes, exactly! I'm always on the prowl for stuff to read, but the lack of decent filtering turns everything into a frenzy.
I'd like to be able to filter my feed by tags and also create groups of users I follow (for instance a "Favorites" group). I would also love to create my own re-steem feeds that others could choose to subscribe to without cluttering up my own original posts.
I'd like to be able to filter my feed by tags and also create groups of users I follow (for instance a "Favorites" group). I would also love to create my own re-steem feeds that others could choose to subscribe to without cluttering up my own original posts.
I've considered both of these ideas as well. Also you should be able to pin posts to the top of your feed. I.e many people would pin their introduce yourself post.
I agree. Not only the feed articles, but also articles in popular tags can be easily ignored, and ended up become under-valued compare to its quality.
I'm working on a project than can discover under-valued articles more easily.
https://sydneyitguy.github.io/understeemed
It only has some basic filter and sorting features at the moment, but it can still produce a good list for a curators.
This looks good, it isn't quite exactly what i was talking about, but I'll try it.
it would be good to have groups to file my contacts into and be able to search without going into google - i will follow you now
I agree completely! It is very frustrating and needs to change.
I may just be totally out of the loop and change is coming, but I haven't really seen much topics bringing the concern of content management to light on steemit. The news feed alone is arguably Facebok's defining feature and most important asset. I think there has been negligence on this when it comes to steemit as it keeping up with content remains incredibly overwhelming.