My Steemit blog

I was approved today as well. My username is doctorgaby

I have no idea how steemit works, but I'll find out!
 
It's not easy to find everyone on steemit. Is there a better way than their search function? The FAQ's don't seem to have any answers.
 
I've noticed couple of things on Steemit that might help newcomers.

1. In order to have followers you need to make your first post or you could introduce yourself with tag: "Introduceyourself". The best option is that you copy the same thing (from your introduction post) in to the settings under the option: "About". (pic 5). That intro will go to the top of your Steemit blog (wall) together with your profile picture and cover photo (like a FB header).
After that you will become visible on the platform and peeps can follow you. Before the first post/intro you are invisible on Steemit search!

2. The easiest way to post Sott articles is to copy and paste article's intro with the link (of that particular article), but there is a tricky part you need manually to upload picture for the article (drag or drop sometimes works, the best option is to save the main photo of the article on you puter and to upload it from your puter ). The first tag of your post (article) will decide what category your article is going to, so be careful what you write, you can put maximum 5 tags in the article (picture 1). (You can make only one post in 5 minutes.)

3. Perosnalization is a tricky as well, Steemit will not save your profile and cover image, you need to upload picture url, the easiest way is to copy and paste your FB profile pic. Just go to FB, click on your profile picture and with right mouse click to open menu and than chose option: "Copy image address" (pic 2), after that paste it to the Steemit settings under option: "PROFILE PICTURE URL" (pic 3). Do the same thing with the cover photo. The profile picture needs to be minimum resolution of 600X600 pixels.

4. Steemit is still beta release so it's working slowly. With first people you decide to follow, you might have nothing on your Feed (wall) for some time or until people you are following make new posts. (pic 4)

5. Copy your Steemit password to your computer, the best way is in the Microsoft Word (or similar writing program), that way you can easily copy it if you need it. Steemit can't help you if you misplace your password because it is computer generated and for your eyes only.

6. Share "Resteem" Sott articles from other peeps as much as you can because they are more popular/visible with every share. :)

Hope this will help a bit.
 

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I've just been approved. My username is @lainey83.

I struggled with finding other users too. Just put their username into the search bar like this:
https://steemit.com/@lainey83

And you will be directed to their page where you can follow them.

It would be great to keep a list of everyone's usernames from the forum so we know who to follow. So far there is:

hrock
alchemist
ljubicasilic
marina90
adanie15
mikebearcat
laurajadczyk
doctorgaby
cherylburkill
le-lenutrof
daniels99
lainey83
 
If anyone missed this post on SteemIt be sure to read it! It covers a lot of dos and don'ts:

__https://steemit.com/steem-help/@beanz/the-unwritten-rules-of-steemit

Edit: It's probably a good idea to also observe and read for a while to see what gets posted, and how (by clicking into posts). Because based on what I've seen it's much different than FB and Twitter in that people apparently expect to read your perspective on posts and not just see links to stuff you're posting from wherever on the net. I've seen a few people refer to their SteemIt account as their blog, which definitely has a different connotation than having an account on FB or Twitter.
 
Great to see many forum members on Steem. I have followed all of you and upvoted some of your posts.

Some notes about the platform:

* Don't lose your password. This is the single most important thing to take care of. If you lose your password, you will lose access to your account with all the money, followers and posts in there. So don't just save it to your computer. Save it to a separate USB or print it out to a piece of paper and keep it somewhere safe.

* Posts on Steem are usually longer than on Twitter or Facebook and are expected to be written in your own words. In fact, there is a bot called cheetah that flags posts copied verbatim from somewhere else.

* Rewards on Steem are based on a system of stake-weighted voting. The reward for a post depends on the amount of steem power (money) contained in the votes that the post gets. For example, a single vote from someone with a lot of steem power may generate more reward than 100's of other votes. That means people with a lot of steem power command great influence on the platform. A post can either be voted up (reward added) or down (reward subtracted).

* Up votes are rewarded too (curation reward), depending on how much reward the voted post subsequently gets. In general, most of the curation reward for a post goes to the first few votes. So people don't usually vote for a post that already have many votes unless they really like it. Reward accumulation stops 7 days after a post is created, at which time, 75% of the reward is paid out to the author and 25% goes to the curators.

* Apart from the amount of steem power you have, your voting strength depends on your voting power too. This is a number between 0 and 100%. Every time you vote, it decreases by 2%. It will also continuously regenerate at a rate of 20% per day. So you have about 10 - 15 effective votes per day.

* Steem is the underlying blockchain where all the activities are recorded. Steemit is the UI layer on top of Steem. There are many other UIs such as busy.org, d.tube, eSteem (mobile app), all interacting with the same underlying data.

Hope that helps to understand how things works. The link that m provided is very helpful too. Steem on!
 
Bobo08 said:
Great to see many forum members on Steem. I have followed all of you and upvoted some of your posts.

Some notes about the platform:

* Don't lose your password. This is the single most important thing to take care of. If you lose your password, you will lose access to your account with all the money, followers and posts in there. So don't just save it to your computer. Save it to a separate USB or print it out to a piece of paper and keep it somewhere safe.

* Posts on Steem are usually longer than on Twitter or Facebook and are expected to be written in your own words. In fact, there is a bot called cheetah that flags posts copied verbatim from somewhere else.

* Rewards on Steem are based on a system of stake-weighted voting. The reward for a post depends on the amount of steem power (money) contained in the votes that the post gets. For example, a single vote from someone with a lot of steem power may generate more reward than 100's of other votes. That means people with a lot of steem power command great influence on the platform. A post can either be voted up (reward added) or down (reward subtracted).

* Up votes are rewarded too (curation reward), depending on how much reward the voted post subsequently gets. In general, most of the curation reward for a post goes to the first few votes. So people don't usually vote for a post that already have many votes unless they really like it. Reward accumulation stops 7 days after a post is created, at which time, 75% of the reward is paid out to the author and 25% goes to the curators.

* Apart from the amount of steem power you have, your voting strength depends on your voting power too. This is a number between 0 and 100%. Every time you vote, it decreases by 2%. It will also continuously regenerate at a rate of 20% per day. So you have about 10 - 15 effective votes per day.

* Steem is the underlying blockchain where all the activities are recorded. Steemit is the UI layer on top of Steem. There are many other UIs such as busy.org, d.tube, eSteem (mobile app), all interacting with the same underlying data.

Hope that helps to understand how things works. The link that m provided is very helpful too. Steem on!

Thanks Bobo08 for the notes, they are very helpful. I did share two posts from SOTT today and got a comment from that cheetah bot in one of them. But I was thinking, in regards to writing our own posts, we could write about topics related to things that are being covered on SOTT, and then share some links from SOTT about that particular topic. Im not sure if also posting links to other websites is ok, im a bit confused on that now :huh:

Just some thoughts.
 
Bobo08 said:
* Don't lose your password. This is the single most important thing to take care of. If you lose your password, you will lose access to your account with all the money, followers and posts in there. So don't just save it to your computer. Save it to a separate USB or print it out to a piece of paper and keep it somewhere safe.

That's very important. Apparently at SteemIt there's no such thing as recovering a lost password.
 
DISCLAIMER: ALL INFORMATION HERE IS MONTHS OLD. NEEDS TO BE DOUBTED AND/OR VERIFIED!!!

I have played with steemit. I will make a few comments on the crypto currency aspect of it, on the culture aspect of it, and then on posting.

Some information may be obsolete because I am too busy for this right now.

Steem is pretty darned fascinating. While there is already a ton of entirely superficial, modern, polished crap that makes your soul hurt for the amount of money that it makes, there is also a jungle of crypto currency commentators, disenfranchised libertarians, curious professionals that just want to blog, hippy farmers, and, of course, porn.

My personal impression is that optimizing the use of this platform is partly gaming its system and partly just being plain, old genuine and serious about what you do so that your audience finds you.

If you all find steemit interesting enough, then (1) a techy type person should take charge of following developments in the functioning of this platform and translate this knowledge to the laypeople among us (2) a media-oriented type person should take charge of observing trends of how platform content is evolving and digested and translate this knowledge to the laypeople among us. Then, the rest of the folks can just churn out content without trying to understand every little thing, that an isolated user who managed to gain a decent amount of exposure, had to understand by themselves to get their place.

CRYPTOCURRENCY

There are 3 different types of steemit currency:

1) Steem - Traded on exchanges

2) Steem Dollars - Currency for use on platform, upvoting or downvoting, your voting power is lightly augmented or diminished by how much of this you are holding.

3) Steem Power - Long term investment in the platform itself, Can't be sold for 2 years, AUGMENTS OR DIMINISHES YOUR VOTING POWER TO A GREAT DEGREE

If you want to buy into Steem instead of organically growing your Steem cache, you must have Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETC) to buy it on an exchange (may be different now).

This is a highly simplified explanation, but it prepares one for aspects of the posting process. For example, you can choose how much of the steemit upvotes that your post receives will be translated into Steem Power. You can't spend Steem Power immediately on an exchange, but the amount that you have has a big effect on your upvoting power.

Your voting power is on a daily cycle. It decreases as you upvote until such a point that you have no more and need to wait for it to recharge.

The ruies change. For example, you get a portion of the upvotes of someone's post if you are among the first few commenters, but the Steem administrators can decide, that the first 10 commenters or the comments during the first 15 minutes after the post has gone up, will be rewarded and no others. These rules can change according to the behavior that the admins are trying to encourage. Effectively, the idea is to reward discovery of a new post.

CULTURE

Because of the above, some behaviors emerge.

1) CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES - If you have a contentious point to make, know that a "whale," that is, someone with a great deal of Steem Power, roughly the equivalent of 5 to 50 thousand American dollars can smash you. If a whale starts downvoting you, then you have basically been censored. I saw this playing out. Some turd was posting porn photos without attribution (more on photos later in the POSTING section). Someone called it out. The original poster bought a ton of Steem Power and started downvoting all of the detractors, effectively making the posts of the detractors disappear from the Steem feed. On the other hand, the vote of a benevolent whale gets you more exposure on the Steem feeds and more Steem currency. Last time I was paying attention, most whales were benevolent.

2) GAMING THE SYSTEM - I don't know what changes might have been made, if any, to how Steem is awarded to both original posters and commenters, but this is important. Steem is trying to reward the curation of content as well as the creation of content. Thus, there are specific rules as to what percentage of an original poster's upvotes go to the poster and how much goes to the commenters. The rules for how commenters are rewarded were tending towards trying to reward the behavior of someone scrolling through their feed, finding something they liked, and then genuinely and spontaneously upvoting it. Lovely aim for a social network, but good luck on that...

3) DO YOUR THING OR... (number 4 will be the "OR") It is wise to understand the system that you are living in, but it can be the case that you should just enjoy the platform for what it is. Create your content. Appreciate others' content for what it is by upvoting or by commenting. Worry less about optimizing within the rules and more about content creation and curation (remember that curation is rewarded), but be aware.

4) ...OR BECOME A WHALE - Buy a ton of Steem Power and make money simply upvoting and commenting. Seriously... If you want to buy the equivalent of 500,000 American dollars of Steem Power tomorrow, then you can theoretically make a decent living just upvoting and commenting everyday. Just remember that if Steem takes a dive at the same time that your pickup truck needs a transmission, and that was your only 500,000 dollars, then you are SOL. If want to grow your Steem account organically, then no problem...

POSTING

1) LESS FRILLS - Mostly, you can make your posts approximately as pretty or even prettier as any social network like Facebook, but you need to do a bit more work. You have to use markup language. It is like the tags that you see when you write a post on this forum: <b> This text will be in bold-faced font because of the arcane symbols surrounding it </b>

In other words, to do any formatting other than the default, one needs to use a lot of these tags manually (may have changed by now).

You can do an entire post in MS Word exactly as you want it to look and then run it through a markup language converter (for example, http://markdownpad.com/) in order to get a body of text that you can put directly into Steemit. Note that not all of your intended formatting may be translated by the converter, AND SOME TAGS MAY HAVE TO BE MANUALLY ADDED.

2) IMAGE HOSTING - You must open an account with an image hosting website. Generally, the site, after you having uploaded your images, will have an array of esoteric looking "tags" for your image that allow you to reference your image from that site. You will have to use these tags to get your steemit post to go look on the internet for where your image is saved.

3) DIGITAL POLITENESS - Last time I looked, the nice part of Steemit preferred that you attribute everything that is not yours. For example, images that are copyrighted or even not explicitly associated with a more open use license should be avoided in the strictest sense. There are bots that actually scour the internet to see if you are plagiarizing text and then leave a snarky message in the comments if you are.

4) NSFW - Since there is less need to kiss advertiser's hind ends, there are erotic images passing through the steemit feed. They tend to be marked as "NSFW," and you would have to click on them to open the possibility of clicking on the link, so there is a second layer you have to pass through to see pictures of naked people. If you want a less censored platform, then you simply must accept this.

5) BE SURE ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING - You can see a projected version of your post as you are typing, but once you enter the post, you are on the blockchain. Even if you edit a post after the fact, a sufficiently skilled auditor of the block chain can find your original post.

All of what I have typed is subject to change, but the active contributors to Steemit are always editing and adding to the how-to and for-beginners sorts of posts. Go find them and have fun!!!

Best wishes!
 
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