A Cry Out For Engagement
Hey Steemians
So I've been around the blockchain for some time now and like anyone who spends their time on the block you'll see people come and go.
Rewards have been the main focus on steemit for so long we tend to forget that it is still a social media platform.
Helping remain social
I have been part of the @pifc, @paulag redfish power up league, @steemcommunity power up league for minnows and @abh12345 engagement league.
Which has helped me find new authors, engage with new content and stay engaged, but this is a select few users. The current front ends don't really encourage content exploration and engagement. It's all surface content posted more for the rewards than eliciting a reaction from users, creating discourse and being social.
The stark reality
Did you know that every day, millions of users visit Reddit, 4chan, Quora, Medium and a host of niche forums to contribute question, posts, opinions, comments and engage with content absolutely free. The motivation is actually having the ability to contribute, find information, participate in discussion and exploring content.
@mayb has been pretty active, the little loudmouth about engagement and I agree with her sentiments. It would really help if the site encouraged content exploration and contribution over and above rewards.
Let's face it, regardless of which front end you use, its pretty hard to find content through the posts that get added to the chain each day.
I mean there are users who are commenting on videos and posts on reddit from 2011. On Steemit you would be lucky if anyone commented on your post during 7 days and after a post is 7 days, very rarely if ever. I think its happened to me twice in 2 years.
I've been mulling over a few UX improvements I think would go along way into improving.
- Engagement
- Content exploration
- Content exposure and finding engaging content
Finding engagement hot spots
First on my list would be to find content more accessible, at the moment we view content in our feeds via chronological order from accounts we follow, by tags or new or reward value.
Having so few options is what leaves a lot of content hidden, and interested users can easily miss out on content, mainly due to different time zones.
Feed filters
Feeds are the primary way to engage with content regardless of the front end we use. Since we have limited options of filtering, there is a lot of content that goes unseen or crowded out by posts we are not interested.
Having post view fatigue can be limited by adding additional filters that allow us to find sweet spots like quality authors, posts that are getting good engagement, restrict the viewing of shit posts and giving users more power to explore the content with ease.
filtering feed results
Search filters
Searching for content is a HUGE problem on the blockchain; most of the content on steemit remains hidden because search is so bad. In many cases it's better to use Google to find steemit posts than any steemit front end.
I think eSteem has the best search of any front end at the moment. But having a good search based on returning posts from a keyword isn't enough.
As new posts keep coming in keyword searches are going to become harder to use, and we will need additional filters to clear out keyword searches to find content we may be interested in.
filtering search results
Once you have the ability to unearth older posts you can start engaging with the authors who may have been lost to use. It can also mean users can find content to inspire themselves to create follow up content, reactions, rebuttals and more.
It also makes steemit a place to do research as the platform does have a wealth of content as is.
Post notifications
If you've used any of the front ends like partiko, steempeak, busy or esteem then you should be pretty used to notifications. However, notifications are only for the following.
- Comments users make on your posts
- Comments users make on your comments
- Upvotes
- Mentions/Tags
- Transfers
I think notifications are great and that they should be taken further with added custom options.
- Notify me when a specific blogger publishes a post
- Notify me when a new post is added in a tag I like
- Notify me when a post in a tag I like gets over 5 comments or set by the user
- Notify me when I have not responded to a comment in 1 - 3 days
Notify me of 3 or more of my followers to comment on a specific post
Which can all be set by the user as they only have themselves to blame if it becomes annoying, and they choose the level of engagement they want.
User Profile
Allow user to filter content on a users profile by upvotes, content
Featured posts
I kind of sampled this feature from something I saw on eSteem. When visiting your profile or a users profile it would randomly pick the highest paid/reward posts and display it as a carousel above all your content.
It would be a great idea to allow users to customize their blog and perhaps choose the type of posts they would like featured. IE most upvotes, highest value reward, most comments. That way the best posts you've had can still get a bit more life even after the 7 days have gone by.
This should be an optional tool and not every user may want to use it
Allow users to set a scroll feature for a featured post section
Pinned posts
If you're a serious steemian you're probably posting daily which pushes down a lot of your content further down the fold. Perhaps you have a post you really took your time with and wanted to show it off, being able to pin your post would be a great way to encourage more engagement on your best content.
Also great if you're doing competitions and giveaways
Setting a pinned post on your blog
Tag filter
Steempeak already offers a tag filter once I visit someone's user page which is fantastic. I would just like for them to step it up a notch by adding the number of posts per tag. That way I can see which tags this user contributes the most in and I can visit the tags with the most content to start engaging with all their similar content posts.
adding posting numbers to blog tag filters
Have your say
Creating more ways to customize my blog and explore content will help make the blockchain more fun and accessible and for authors to really make their steemit blog their digital home.
If you think its a good idea or would like to provide some feedback that would be great. We can then take the best suggestions and look at creating utopion submissions
Let's connect
If you liked this post sprinkle it with an upvote or resteem and if you don't already, consider following me @chekohler
| Buy and sell STEEM | Get Daily Upvotes | Get A STEEM account |
|---|---|---|
Lots of great ideas in here. The steempeak guys are always looking for quality input.
Head over to their discord - https://discord.gg/QmJKNRz - and have a word in their #suggested-features channel.
Thanks for the heads up. I'll check it out now and see what they have to say :) really appreciate it
As helpful as that might be it is exactly what we would like to change. Why go to discord? Why not communicate here?
Posted using Partiko iOS
Indeed it does! We really do need a direct messaging chat overlay system! It really would be a game changer!
All the cool communities and banter living here would be so much better! As helpful as discord is it’s papering over the problem
Posted using Partiko iOS
You make some very good observations and I agree with many of them. I hope you do make suggestions to @steempeak, have a look at @ginabot, and have a look at KURE, @krnel's new Steem app in the final stages of completion.
Thanks!
Thanks I’m glad this post got so much positive feedback it really makes me feel I’m on the right track and people here want to engage and find good content!
Thanks for the tips I’ll check them out! I really just feel like there’s just so much Double work being done with front ends and bots and discord communities!
My ideal would be to have us pick one front end and start consolidating all efforts and features and build one we can really take to market and show people this is better than what you doing on Reddit or medium and you can get some rewards for using it
Posted using Partiko iOS
Well, different folks have different reasons for being here, and that makes different apps necessary to meet the variety of needs. One consequence of redundancy is robustness. One front end is far more fragile and serves certain market segments while neglecting others to varying degrees. Many front ends may each be less popular than one app to rule them all, but the market niches get better service, and even if one app fails to persist, others may keep the market functional.
Before you settle on one, check out what's available, and you'll make a better choice, I think.
Hey, thanks for all the suggestions. Some feedbacks:
Hopefully I've cover pretty much all of them :)
Awesome thank you so much for the feedback I really appreciate it! @mayb who said a post couldn’t help? 😋 looking forward to using steempeak more often
Posted using Partiko iOS
@asgarth, yay! Cool! Thanks for being so responsive. Sounds great. What about some kind of chat or message interface also? We need to get the communication going. As much as I love discord.
@chekohler, I bet a lot of people say naive things like that. :) Tz, these people …
So many good points! Thank you for this detailed list!
Never thought of that one but I just complained about the fact that the more I engage the more I miss. Too much to handle and often I want to think about my answer/comment before I post, so I tend to forget sometimes. Good point!
This one is my fav! Let me know where the party happens!
Also, I'd love to have some kind of activity feed showing new users, overall comment and posting activity on the blockchain, and some kind of tool to measure user engagement. Built from different parameters like length of posts and comments, variety of accounts they upvote and comment on … I haven't fully thought it through, yet, what those parameters could be. Looking forward to suggestions. :)
EDIT: Oh, oh! And pinned post FTW!
Have you tried @arcange's new tool, SteemReply? It's a life saver for me when it comes to replying to comments. I used to miss a lot of them, but SteemReply shows me the comments I haven't replied on. Very useful!
Yay! Those are the comments I love! Immediately followed!
Read your last blog post and instantly followed you back!
😂
I’m glad I can bring people together in my posts! I feel like a match maker now
Posted using Partiko iOS
I’ve seen a few people using it but I haven’t checked it out myself! I’m sort of at this point where I’m getting tool fatigue and I’m crying out for a tool that can give me the rich experience of the blockchain I so crave! Hence the post lol I thought I’d try putting my complaints in a more constructive manner
Posted using Partiko iOS
I agree that everything is too limited. An all-in-one tool would be so much easier...👍
And it actually worked 😉
Ah I like that post length suggestion we can probably take the post length in words and create and average read time and say show me posts of a 1-10 minute read time! That way you know what you in for!
Read time should also be a part of every posts UX! Will really improve click through and avoid clicking on a 1 line post
Regarding new users we could add that into search and feed filter and filter by account age
I’m pretty sure I’d use all these features and the ones you mentioned!
Posted using Partiko iOS
🎗 Announcing SteemBeem DAPP ⚡ Give It A Try, Best Is Yet To Come!
This is not relevant to the OP. It appears to be nothing more than automated spam, and as such is anathema to society.
You can avoid being flagged by me for this in the future by substantively commenting on the OP, even if you do mention your app.
Thanks in advance.
Hey @valued-customer this nothing less than an entertaining small range lottery. you may try it or check about. Thank You!
This OP isn't about lottery. In fact this OP was seeking engagement - which is all I ask of you. Please do engage authors on the content of their posts when you comment, rather than parasitizing their work as a means of putting your advertisement in front of eyeballs. It's courteous to do so, and is rude to take advantage of other people in society. All I ask is that you express your original thought regarding the posts you comment as a member of society and not a bot or financial manipulation of the network.
Society is far more valuable than it's economy. Please respect that.
Looks like @mayb has a stalker/secret bot-mirer! What is this even? There’s totally better ways to promote your dapp than spamming comments
Posted using Partiko iOS
hey @chekohler thanks about informing and your suggestion, post comments for sharing @steembeem will be deprecated!
Right now I think blockchain is at the infancy stage still, however that being said, I remember well the transition from BBS to CompuServe/AOL/Genie, and to the internet.
I am not sure who the first free internet exploration tool went to, but I do remember the battles between MS and Netscape, the gradual disappearance of Genie, the CompuServe, then AOL, since the internet exploration tools became so much easier to use to access information.
The Steem Blockchain viewers are in their infancy stage, who will eventually win out? Who will become the next Chrome/Netscape? Who will fade into oblivion like Genie, or fade into obscurity like AOL and CompuServe?
Right now I see three major competitors for block chain access, Partiko, eSteem, and Steempeak, I however would not rule out the steves of the world however, we all know they are conspiring to take over everything, so Steeve app is out there too.
As more chains become available in a social sense, we will then see who can win the race to the moon for blockchain browsers. I am looking forward to the Blockchain Browser wars when they happen.
Can you imagine an all in one place for all your blockchain needs? One wallet to keep your eth, steem, and eos in. One Browser to see, post and comment on in EOS, Eth, and Steem blockchains and those that follow on?
I think Steeve.app will be pretty close to being in the lead there, but thats just me, lots of views out there, heck I still just use the steemit.com surfer, but I do not get ads, if I did I would be using something else.
I do like what steev.app is doing and I have no doubt a lot of its features will be come future staples of any blockchain front end explorer!
I agree we are in the formative years so we are the test subjects for all the growing pains! In a few years we will look back and laugh at how basic we were and how this multichain blockchain front end is so amazing and how we ever lived without it
I just think that to get there we as a community need to say ok what do we want and how do we get it by working together! Do we all start supporting say steempeak delegating stake and getting features added and then start using it as our primary tool and recruiter for new users kinda thing
Not this I’ll sit and wait around for others to make it better, unfortunately this is decentralization so we have to do it together!
Posted using Partiko iOS
That is the beauty of blockchain front end explorers. All those "Early" internet companies wanted to control the internet, to be the go to source, they all got swallowed up by innovators who came a long and said, nope sorry, we like what this place is doing with this, and this place is doing with that, and they took the best parts and made it simple and all a person needed now was an internet provider, they did not need AOL, CompuServe, Genie et al; I think it was Linus Torvalds that started the web browsers and pretty much took control of the internet away from the few and gave it to the masses.
I myself do not think we should as a group pick one or the other front ends, The developers will make what people want. Eventually it will be like regular web browsers, a few stand outs a few that people will stand by, and then the masses of blind people choosing what others say they need.
Chrome, MS Edge, Firefox, and Brave, I am sure there are others out there, as I am sure there are some die hard MS Explorer fans out there. We have gone from every phone company being an internet service provider to there only being a few internet service providers today.
Microsoft understands and has not forgotten what happened in the past. That is why they bought Git-Hub. I know people think that they can not control all the development on Git-hub, but then again people thought that in the past, when MS bought DOS, when Microsoft bought Word Perfect, when Microsoft drove Netscape out. Microsoft will do what it can to secure it's future.
There used to be very few Telephone companies, the government decentralized them in the 70's in the United States. There are now very few internet service providers, no local ones to speak of, although that is changing with satellite communications coming to age.
As for the users community coming together, after the out cry of the community to have advertisement and the short shortsightedness of that branch of the community, I would vote for total mayhem before asking the community to decide anything.
I guess we won’t know how this whole thing will pan out as much as we can say it’s superior product a lot of marketing and timing goes into which company wins these races!
I’m just happy to be a long for the ride so I can sit back one day and look at the progress and feel I was a part of it in someway
Lol I get what you saying I don’t mean involve the entire community if we asked them they would just say give us all bigger rewards and steem will be great!
I mean people who see the long game and want to Build something worth competing with centralized options! The mob needs to be the mob I guess a few will guide and the rest help scale
Posted using Partiko iOS
I think it is fun being in on the ground floor of the next possible iteration of the next web. I had a lot of fun on BBS's, did I miss them when the full internet opened up, not really. I liked making pages, and animated string gifs and such. Now I am enjoying just watching the change.
Liked that post and this is a prime example of an undervalued post. It's tough if you don't have the bells and whistles like SBI and a few whales uovoting you on auto vote . This time last year I began my steem journey. Was earning 5 cent a post. Now I am averaging at 2 quid which is great. Maybe next year I will be getting 3 . Who knows .
Posted using Partiko Android
Oh I agree, I found out the hard way my first 50 posts made $0.00 lol Didn't know what I was doing wrong but slowly I started to move up the ranks and get some rewards.
Indeed, I really have nothing to lose, its far more fun here than any other social media network so I don't mind it. perhaps one day ill also hit that 2 dollar post mark, would be really nice!
I do, however, enjoy posting something and getting tons of feedback. I had a post recently that got like 20 comments it was awesome.
True, so hard to find content and users in Steem. In order for you to be seen, you should engage with communities and it's not as easy as other social media sites where the site itself suggests users for you to follow. sigh. I think that feature would be great addition to Steemit and to other front ends. (I only know @ntopaz has been doing this though, great one!)
Also with regards to finding content, I suggest you try out Steemlookup (https://steemlookup.com). It's a search engine tool developed by Curie. Basically what we Curie curators are using to find content on Steem. :D
I don’t really engage much with communities on discord and i know I should it’s just having to do so much off site is showcasing a clear problem!
If those discord community servers could be on site grounds for sharing and having discussions I think it would be crazy beneficial
Suggested followers would really be a cool feature or popular authors for a specific tag
Thanks for the tip I’ll check out the site soon
Posted using Partiko iOS
I believe engagement is the driving force on steemit and in other to succeed Also on steemit. It takes me months for me to realise that
Well people kinda just fall in and mimic the behaviour they see being rewarded and so the cycle continues! I doubt many would be around if there wasn’t rewards or rewards we’re say locked up for a certain period of time!
The site is by no means a real rival to other sites that don the same thing until we provide a better product
Posted using Partiko iOS
I know Discord is a time suck, and it does hinder steem. But Ginabot is such a great tool! But yeah, instagram is so great and appealing, because of DM. Steem needs to grow up already, and add this function.
Indeed, a lot of people have told me about great tools like ginabot but I feel that’s papering over the cracks! Clearly it’s needed if bots/work arounds are so popular!
Even medium has a DM function of sorts it should be a staple for any social and user generated content platform
Posted using Partiko iOS
I like the ideas in your post. I agree that the current options to find good content you're interested in are way too basic. And Google Search... I'm not a fan, to say the least.
You can use the Steem Enhancer Chrome extension for that.
I see there had been some response and some changes have been made. by the people from Steempeak. :0)
Looks like my ideas got a reasonable amount of support this is probably one of my best performing engagement posts lol go figure! Seems like a lot of steemians are craving a richer experience
Oooh I’ll check it out, thanks for the tip
Posted using Partiko iOS