This is a four part discussion.

1. Commentary about @aggroed being out of the top 20 for half a day
2. Why you should vote for @aggroed
3. SteemPeak.com Tools to help you vote and tools for witnesses
4. Why you should vote for @steempeak as well

1: Why @aggroed and @gtg loosing the "Pumpkin" vote is great

• We have not had many non pumpkin vote witnesses in the top 20 and now we have 2 more so we are heading in the right direction
• Aggroed stated "It's pretty amazing to be in the consensus witness list without those two votes." Meaning pumpkin and blocktrades.
• Meaning he's showed it's possible which is way more important for steem than for @aggroed to have those votes.
• There was a ton more publicity to the witness voting system these last couple of days... that's awesome.
• Aggroed also said "Apparently, a witness dropping from 1 to 21 is newsworthy enough re:witnesses to get people to revisit their lists."
  This is awesome people should revisit their list more often!

I am an optimist and so I see the silver lining in a lot of things... But in my mind what @freedom ala @pumpkin did was pretty great. Freedom now has less control today of the top 20 than they had a couple days ago and I like to think he/she did that on purpose.

I think they looked at the numbers a few weeks ago and said top witness @gtg can survive as a "consensus witness" without my vote therefore I'll give it to someone else. Then @aggroed took a turn at #1 and @freedom probably said aggroed is gonna be barely outside of the top 20 if i drop my vote but I believe in their campaigning ability so i'll drop it. They were right... he's now #18 and will probably still climb.

If this pattern holds true I think you can expect @timcliff to face the same thing. Better get to campaigning Tim! haha

And i submit this will be awesome. If my prediction is true I think freedom will put more people just outside the door of top20 in a position to campaign and make things interesting and make people more motivated feeling like they have a shot if they do enough awesome things. This will get more people voting and more people voting decentralizes the vote of @freedom a little bit more each time. And I like to think this is perhaps the goal of @freedom ... may not be but this is how i see it playing out right now. And less centralization is a good thing. But don't get me wrong it's also no-disputation an account that likes playing God a little bit. haha

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2: Vote for @Aggroed

I speak for myself ...

My own personal accounts vote for @aggroed because I have seen first hand the good his projects and his communities have done for Steem.

• There is no doubt @steemmonsters has been great for the blockchain
• Keychain is an amazing tool that I love using on steemmonsters, peakmonsters and steempeak
• PAL discord is a happening place and for me the shows from MSP-waves are particularly awesome
• I'm still learning about steem-engine but seems very promising and I feel good knowing @asgarth is helping them a bit because I trust @asgarth's opinion most of all. haha

When I met @aggroed at steemfest he was really chill and down to earth... he may seem a little larger than life on the interenet but I liked that he was calm and collective and relaxed at the festival in Poland and pretty approachable.

PHILOSOPHY OF STEEMMONSTERS MAKES ME HAPPY
I love that they created a game and didn't try to control the whole experience... for example they let @asgarth and myself create the top Market experience for their game https://peakmonsters.com

I also love that they not only will allow but are actively hoping people create other games using their card assets. No one has really taken them up on it but this is a huge aspect of why I personally like SteemMonsters. I'd love to create a live drafting version of the game and I don't think it would be too hard ... hopefully that happens soon. I've talked to one programmer about it who seemed interested.

I think that core understanding that keeping things open and decentralized are gonna be best for steem ... and as a witness I want someone who has the best interests of steem at heart.

So vote for him... that's my opinion.

NO WITNESS IS PERFECT
No witness is gonna be perfect, I don't agree with everything each of them do. I wish there were more witnesses (aka single solitary soul) that were good at marketing and PR outside of steem. But there really isn't anyone with substantial results (aka actual internet impressive numbers)

But that being said @steempeak has a plan but we're not willing to execute it until we have a few more things in place. I personally am not going to spend my influence capitol until I know my famous friends will not only thrive here but thank me for informing them, so i understand perhaps why there is no significant pushes for outside marketing... yet. But soon.

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3: STEEMPEAK TOOLS

So let's take a moment to visit some of the cool tools on https://steempeak.com
Back in November @steempeak quietly launched a server to become a blockchain producer/verifier (simplistic definition) which we call a "witness" (odd word to non steem users)

WITNESS LIST

I may be biased but the best looking witness list that has the easist voting system is https://steempeak.com/witnesses

Specially if you have KEYCHAIN (something @aggroed sponsored to be made) then you can click those buttons and don't have to copy paste a password each time. Voting on 10-30 witnesses will take you like 1 minute.

EACH WITNESS HAS THIS BUTTON

So promoting voting for @aggroed is as easy as giving you this link: https://steempeak.com/@aggroed

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4: Why Vote SteemPeak as Witness

I also vote for @steempeak and i'm biased because I help on that team and write most all the steempeak posts. But these are my personal feelings here on this blog.

https://steempeak.com/@steempeak <- Go here to vote.

BACKGROUND

After we created a witness server we then created tools on steempeak.com for witnesses and then announced we had a witness server. We aren't great at campaigning or remembering to ask people to vote... but we've found our way up the list. Actually thanks to @freedom we made a pretty big jump to #44 ... just goes to show that the @pumpkin vote can't actually get you to top #20 ... we're not even half way there to "consensus witness". At 27,000m we're not half way to the 64,600m needed to get into the top 20 today.

STEEMPEAK PHILOSOPHY

When we created the site we wanted to make:

1. The most intuitive steem interface
   (something our friends could understand right away instead of having a super confusing first couple months on steem)
2. Have all the tools we had been using or wanted to use in ONE PLACE.
   (At the time we were all using like 5-6 sites just to do the things we wanted to do on steem)

I think we've done a great job but are not even done with that goal yet. There are more and more things we want to make this site easier not just for you but for your friends and family and plenty more tools we're working on.

PERSONAL GOAL

Also it's been a big push of my own to see that SteemPeak is distinct philosophically from other social media in that it doesn't try to strong-hand control you or your experience. I would love our motto to be "Taking control back in your social media experience" or something like that. Giving the consumer a bit more sense of control in their life. I think in the hearts of millions of people they're getting tired of being manipulated and told what they want to see and how to see it. I know for a fact creators are not happy companies are inserting themselves way more into the conversation between them and their fans. Youtube, instagram, FB all change algorithms as soon as creators figure out a great system of connecting with their fans. Now you have to "ring the bell" on youtube if you actually want to know when your favorite creator did something. That's why companies like patreon wer created because then you could have a more direct connection with fans. (Even patreon is screwing around with that these days)
On many sites you don't even have a choice to see the content of the people you follow in chronological order. Your experience is very carefully crafted and not just your experience but your attention is being put where it serves FB and Youtube the best. And while it's great they work hard to understand you and your inclinations the point is they greatly limit the control on your end. In this "we know best" sort of attitude.

Steempeak will still work to figure out what is great as a default experience but still give you Control of your experience. At least that's what I'm fighting for. What do you think about that?

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MY 10 FAVORITE STEEMPEAK TOOLS

1. ACCOUNT SWITCHING is a beautiful beautiful thing for someone who posts on @steempeak @peakmonsters @photogames @monsterworld and @jarvie
2. LOGIN OPTIONS
   Keychain and Steemconnect are both on there
   Having both is important ... steemconnect is still important for me on mobile but on desktop Keychain is 100% how i roll
3. IMAGE SLIDER
   I couldn't imagine browsing steem without the slider... specially photography posts.
4. OPTIONAL BENEFICIARIES
   I use them on every single post I do... for example @aggroed himself is a beneficiary of this post... I'll even throw 1% toward @pumpkin because hey why not.
5. EASY MONEY SENDING
   I like going right to an account and sending steem/sbd with a click of a button and no more worrying that i'm sending it to the wrong person.
6. EASY DELEGATION
   But even better is being able to change delegations just as easy.
7. NO TRENDING
   We have erased it from our vocabulary even though it's still technically possible to see steemit's idea of what trending is. And we do have an actual list of trending topics based on views so that's cool. But soon we'll go even further away from the broken trending by providing better options for exploring steem.
8. COMMUNITIES
   Not something presently finished but we're to the point of testing by next week is the guess.
9. DRAFTS
   It would destroy my soul to use a site that didn't have drafts
10. TEMPLATES
    Super important on a project like @photogames which I'm looking forward to getting rolling again after I work on a project to get photographers here.

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THE FUTURE IN OUR HANDS

Another personal goal... which I suppose should be the goal of every successful business. I don't want https://steempeak.com to be dependent on any one outside group for it's success. I don't want our future connected to Steemit Inc or the things @aggroed does or to the price of Bitcoin or even the price of Steem. I think we have some solid plans. That's the kind of centralization i'm scared of... putting my success in the hands of any of you, frankly.

SteemPeak's future is bright not because of where we are today but how we're positioning ourselves for tomorrow. I want to make sure SteemPeak can be a raging success even if no one presently using steemit ever switches to steempeak. (Old habits die hard) I want to create the place millions use and I want to create a place creators thrive... meaning we create a place for creators to have viewers.

And I'd like to think I'd continue to be the person to see problems and not wait for someone else to fix it but do it ourselves if we can ... or at least put it into the schedule to get around to it as soon as possible. haha

More Programmers

With that said we're really dependent on @asgarth haha... he's honestly one of my favorite people in the world. Not just because of his talent but because of his disposition and the way he sees the world. But yeah anyone else really talented want to help on some projects so it's not all in his hands? I have some 3rd party stuff connected to steempeak that we agree is best to be 3rd party and yet closely connected to steempeak and of course steempeak has a big backlog we're hoping to get done soon.

STEEMFEST PICTURES?

Yep it's been a crazy couple of months. I have not even been able to go through the steemfest pictures yet... But i'm catching up and obviously i just posted 3. haha