Blockchain Business Intelligence: Venezuela Tag Trend & Distribution

Details

While running the query for this analysis, I was surprised with the number rows it is returning. Venezuela may well be one of the biggest sub-communities specific to a country within Steemit. Since early 2017, I've been following the news about the on-going plight of our friends in Venezuela. In 'It's humiliating': plight of Venezuelan middle class is pawn shops' gain, a recent news article from The Guardian had this headline:

The country’s economic crisis – inflation is set to reach 13,000% – means people are selling their jewelry to buy necessities.

I am unsure about how I've been missing a community as big as Venezuela. It could have been the language barrier. Most of the posts are written in Spanish which I neither speak, nor read. In this analysis, I don't only aim to present statistics related to the Venezuelan Steemit community. I also hope to also drive visibility for the said community to the rest of the Spanish speaking countries in the Steemit world.

Outline

In this contribution I will present charts and findings on these key points:

• Monthly Trend of Post and Payout for #venezuela Tag
• Distribution of Posts & Comments in Count and Payout
• Distribution of Posts and Payout by Language
• Payout Range Distribution of Posts
• Top Categories Sorted By Payout
• Top Authors Sorted By Payout
• Unique Author Trend By Month
• Author Scatter Plot for Users Who Posts Using the #venezuela Tag

Scope of Analysis

This analysis covers the posts and comments where the #venezuela tag was used from inception until the extraction of the data on February 16, 2018 (11:30AM GMT). In the charts where I presented trends, I excluded the month of February since that month only have data for half of the month.

In the Scatter Plot, I excluded outlying dots where the authors' location is either unknown or is not Venezuela. I did not go through every single authors, and the main purpose of exclusion is just to remove outlying dots and to give a closer to accurate picture of the Venezuelan user-base. The exclusions are below:

Username	Location	Use of #venezuela
paco	Canada	1
doitvoluntarily	Unknown	9
dragosroua	Romania	4
g-dubs	Unknown	1
htooms	Unknown	1
pennsif	United Kingdpm	3
anahilarski	Panama	5

Tools

I used arcange's Steem SQL Database in generating the data. I used the Comments Table for the posts, comments, payout and language by running this query in a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet:

SELECT author, category, parent_author, json_metadata, created, total_payout_value, pending_payout_value, body_language
FROM Comments
WHERE json_metadata like '%"venezuela"%'
GROUP BY author, category, parent_author, json_metadata, created, total_payout_value, pending_payout_value, body_language

In the Scatter Plot, I used the Accounts table and ran this query:

SELECT name, created, vesting_shares, reputation
FROM Accounts
GROUP BY name, created, vesting_shares, reputation

To get the simplified reputations score, I used this formula:

=ROUNDDOWN(MAX(LOG10(ABS(reputation))-9,0)*IF(reputation>=0,1,-1)*9+25,0)

The charts were built using Microsoft's Power BI.

Results

The tag #venezuela was seen as early as May 2016 like the tag #australia. Between May 2016 to May 2017 however, the posting activity using the #venezuela tag was very minimal until the inflection point that happened in June 2017 when the number of posts where the tag #venezuela was used increased 460%, and the payout increased 557% compared to May 2017.

Incidentally; May, June, and July were the months when there were heavy protest followed by death tolls from the protestors. June 2017 was the month where the Venezuelan started protests specific to Food Shortages and Inflation

The inflection point between May and July 2017 could have been in effort to find refuge within a community which can help ease the suffering resulting from the crisis.

Between July to November 2017, the posting activities and payout was once again pretty much flat. The next inflection point occurring in December 2017 and January 2018. Between those times, the Vatical-led dialogue between the opposition and the government pulled out. The crisis seems to have also escalated during the period as portrayed in Reuters report on Twenty-eight arrest after Venezuela looting, violence.

Distribution of Posts & Comments in Count and Payout

Comparing the comment engagement in the #venezuela tag vs. the earlier analysis of similar nature, this is better than #nigeria which placed comment at 21.5%, but can improved when compared to #teamaustralia which had a 50/50 distribution between posts and comments.

The payout on comments in #venezuela is not far from that of #nigeria and #teamaustralia.

Distribution of Posts and Payout by Language

This is the first time I am breaking posts down by language for a country specific tag, most tags I've studied till now are posting in English for the most part. Two-thirds of the #venezuela tag posts were in Spanish. I was able to find 72 unique languages, but broke it down to the top 5, others, and some posts with unidentified language used.

The payout on posts written in Spanish where the #venezuela tag was used was even more, accounting to almost three-fourths of the sum of payout for the tag.

Payout Range Distribution of Posts

Because majority of the #venezuela tag users are new, which you will see clearly in the unique author trend chart, the post with zero payout is the highest compared to both #nigeria and #teamaustralia. As this community, and the posting activity continues, this will change for the better.

Top Categories Sorted By Payout

As expected based on observations from the earlier charts #spanish tag has the highest share of the payout, followed by #venezuela, then #introduce yourself largely because of the volume of new sign up creating self-introduction posts.

Top Authors Sorted By Payout

From this list theghost1980 and dontstopmenow are my fellow cohorts at sndbox. josevasquez posts often at about two posts a day average, while provenezuela seems to be a community driven curation effort for the Venezuelan community.

As pointed out in the earlier charts, we've seen massive growth in the months of June and December 2017 both in terms of posting activities and payout. That observation directly correlates with the count of unique author trend as shown in the above chart.

After some exclusion called out in Scope this is a rough picture of the user-base using the #venezuela tag. It looks like a growing, but still very young community that needs to build both reputation and Steem Power. With effort, consistency, and resilience (that Venezuelan are already showing in facing the crisis) our friends from Venezuela are here to continue to grow.

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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