MY UTOPIAN.IO EXPERIENCE PART1: VISIBILITY SECTION

Repository

https://github.com/utopian-io/utopian.io

Introduction

I joined Steemit in January 2018 with little optimism, I didn't get my hopes too high so as not to be finally shattered or heartbroken. Little did I know it would later become an integral part of my life and make a difference and impact on my life. When I joined Steemit, I was just wandering around trying to see how the platform is and how I could contribute to its development.

When I joined, I knew little or close to nothing about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. There had been so much noise about Bitcoin and how it was going to change the economy of the world. I paid little attention because it wasn't something that was affecting me directly.

But I discovered that after spending some days on Steemit, if I was to last on the platform I had to understand the technology behind the whole thing. Not much information was available on the internet about Steemit. I had to comb through posts on Steemit itself about upvote, voting power, steem power, reputation among other things that are of importance to know. On Steemit, nobody is going to spoon feed you, you have to create a path for yourself. You tell people about Steemit and after one week they tell you "well it is too difficult and complicated" but these same people have been on other social media doing it for free and getting paid $0.00

I started out by trying to make friends and create a network of users who can easily assist me in case I needed help. Your network of followers and people you following on Steemit to a large extent determines how can you go. A simple resteem from a well-known member can create more exposure for you and in turn more earnings.

But I wanted something more than, I wanted something that was sustainable in the long run. I sought for communities on Steemit, first I looked at the closest to me; the Nigerian community. They were doing great, probably the fastest growing community as at January 2018. They were doing casual stuff like meet-ups and crowdfunding for projects. I attended like two of such meetups but wasn't impressed by the level of knowledge been dissipated. I wanted something better than that.

My breakthrough came when @lordjames, the man who brought me to Steemit told me about Utopian. A platform where I could make contributions to the opensource community in certain areas and earn cryptocurrencies. That sounded like an exciting idea to me, I grabbed it with both hands and have never looked back since then. It has been a journey filled with ups and downs, joy and sadness but up to this point, I still stand strong.

The Beginning

At the beginning of Utopian, it was just a few persons trying to change and make the world a better place. Using their skills in areas like Social Media marketing, graphics design, Data Analysis, Blogging, Development, suggestion, Translation, bug hunting and Tutorials. Their goal was to assist people in creating opensource resources, these persons might not have the resources to pay people to person some work for them. But with Utopian providing some incentives, people were motivated to help out.

The good

It was all good and rosy in the beginning. Stemm price was flying very high and we didn't need to do much. All we needed for an upvote from Utopian was 1,000 reach, a screenshot and video evidence of the ad placement. There were no extra conditions we have now like the number of click (CTR), bidding strategy, the relevance of the ad message. Then we were getting upvote of about $70 (that was big money in January 2018)

There was also no grading system, all you needed was for your work to be approved. The current grading system vets the quality of work for each contribution.

The bad

When other members of Steemit saw the potential in an upvote from Utopian, everyone came lurking looking for their own share of the cake. It created a bit of a problem, the abusers somehow found their way in too. They created terrible contributions just for the rewards, they didn't care about the impact of their work. All they care about was enriching themselves from cryptocurrency.

All these problems led to a review of the rules. First, the reach was increased to 5,000 minimum and later to 10,000 minimum. A community manager was created to oversee the activities of the moderators. The moderators were also accused of bias and abuse of privileges.

Formerly contributions were allowed from just about any opensource application. Due to abuse and the need to seek the consent of application owners, the section now has a whitelist. Only applications in the whitelist can be promoted. When an application is on the whitelist, it shows Utopian has taken permission from the application developer to promote their work. This was done to prevent any legal case that may arise in the future.

The ugly

I had some ugly exchanges in the Visibility section of Utopian. It is sometimes painful when you use your hard earned money to promote something and at the end, your work is not approved. That would get anybody pain. Visibility remains the only section where contributors have to use their money to make contributions. I think that is a contributing factor to why most people avoid the section. They don't want to get their hands burned.

The issue of ugly exchanges was not peculiar to me alone, several others complained about it. The moderators were taking undue advantage of contributors and their judgement is final. So they were like self-made gods.

I want to use this opportunity to apologize to @techslut. I have not done this before and I think she deserves it. One certain time, my contribution was not approved and I got so pissed. I believed it deserved to be approved but it wasn't. I was mad and let my emotions control me. I almost received a lifetime ban because I almost said something silly to her via discord chat, I was only saved by a typographical error.

@techslut whenever you see this, I am sorry for that day on discord. I didn't mean those words. I have come to learn a lot from you and @didic. You two are the reason I continued making contributions in the Visibility section even when everyone else deserted the section. You encouraged me with your knowledge and skills.

The Website
Many people who just joined didn't know Utopian had its own dedicated frontend for making contributions. The frontend had an excellent design and easy navigation, everything was straightforward. Then came the complete break in Utopian activities. I woke up one morning and could no longer access the Utopian frontend but everything was fine on Steemit. I was confused and rushed down to their discord channel, but no concrete information was available from any staff.

It was later revealed that there was a hack on the Utopian account, no further details were provided about who or how it was done. There was a rumour about it been an inside job, a rumour that that looked most likely and I believed it.

Currently, the website (Utopian V2) is under development but it has taken longer than expected. I guess they want a perfect platform for everyone.

Conclusion

So far it has been a wonderful experience in the Visibility section, the section has helped me improve my social marketing skills. My only current challenge is that I need other people to make contributions in the section. I am always happy when I see contributions from other people because they bring a variety of ideas and different ways of doing the same thing.

Resources

All Images are from pixabay.com under the Creative Commons CC0 license.

Series Backlinks

This is the first part in a series in which I would be sharing my experiences making contributions to the different sections of Utopian.io