Steem: Don't forget to look up

in #steemit6 years ago

Following on from a couple of discussions that have happened in recent months, some more chatter on the distribution of Steem Power across the Steem account holders, and potential courses of action to take in order to grow your account for the greater good.


fish.jpg
source


The first post is one by @tarazkp who asked me to take a look at the distribution of Steem Power (SP) based on his feelings that:

The middle class we need is a large group of accounts that hold between 30-60,000 SP

https://steemit.com/steem/@tarazkp/are-you-a-steem-1-percenter-do-you-know-who-is

The numbers presented to him (which are coming along with an update below) brought this summary statement:

There are 9637 accounts with more than 500 SP in their wallet and THEY ARE ALL 1 percenters in regards to total Steemit accounts. Yes, you there with that 10 cent vote, you are a 1 percenter too.

A 10 cent up vote puts you in the top 1% accounts

A more recent post from @wolfhart in which he uses a quote from @simplymike to discuss supporting Red Fish (less than 500 SP) has been the cue for my entry today.

https://steemit.com/anhouraday/@wolfhart/minnows-will-they-be-left-behind-78343bd4bccfe


A look at the numbers

It was about 6 weeks ago when I pulled the original data for @tarazkp, and I've just performed the same task today. The data is in the table below.

SP22nd June 20182nd July 2018+ / -% change
< 1009807761040558597826.1%
100 - 50013026132892632.0%
500 - 1000344236361945.6%
1000 - 5000427544111363.2%
5000 - 10000776810344.4%
10k - 20k511526152.9%
20k - 30k19119873.7%
30k - 40k881061820.5%
40k - 50k5755-2-3.5%
50k - 60k586023.4%
60k - 70k3532-3-8.6%
70k - 80k2024420.0%
80k - 90k1913-6-31.6%
90k - 100k1811-7-38.9%
100k +14715364.1%

Drawing conclusions from these numbers has many caveats, one example being a larger account diversifying into multiple accounts - a large dolphin lost, 10 minnows gained.

However, if we take the numbers at face value, it's easy to spot the huge influx of accounts with < 100 SP over the past 6 weeks in comparison to the other (larger) thresholds. The bottom is growing much faster than the top, as you would expect I think.

Another point of potential note is that the 500 - 5000 SP accounts are all growing, along with (to a similar extent in % terms), the accounts with 5000 - 40000 SP. The best case scenario being that these are unique user accounts that are investing, or growing via content creation, etc. Although, there is a reduction in 80 - 100k accounts, which could mean the original point about a larger account diversifying is playing a role here too.

Who's supporting who?

For me, there is support that can be given to all sizes of accounts, and this is via the 'dapps'. I actually think that it's these accounts (@utopian-io, @dtube, @steemhunt, @fundition, etc) that are the key distributors of the STEEM at present, and whether you like how they are doing it or not, it is these accounts that are spreading the most wealth.

I could add @steemstem, @tribalsteemup, @deepdives, and other communities to the list too - All of the aforementioned accounts do not care how much SP you own, or (for the most part) what your 'Reputation' is.


Back to @wolfhart's post about supporting the Red Fish and the point made by @simplymike, and @tarazkp in his post regarding the 'middle class', or lack of.

It's honorable to be looking down for ways to support Red Fish and Minnows, but if you have not got your support network in place, this is going to impact the growth of your account. Very few have managed a good level of growth with this approach - anywhere near those contributing to @dtube / @dlive for example.

Personally, I think that accounts with less than 5000 SP (minimum) should be looking at what works best for them, keep the SP earned, get to Dolphin level, and then have a look around and see who your 50c 100% up-vote can benefit. Use the 'dapps' and the existing 'power' communities to grow your account, and let the 'middle class' do the rest...

What middle class?

The middle class we need is a large group of accounts that hold between 30-60,000 SP - @tarazkp

2 hours ago, we had 211 accounts in this range, 20 more than 6 weeks ago. Good!

Below this range, we had 1063428 accounts, 60431 accounts more than 6 weeks ago. Hmmm.

Whichever way you cook the numbers, it's not pretty reading. Newer accounts far outweigh the accounts who can support with a $3-6 (rough guide 30-60k SP) up-vote, and this gap will only grow. I'm not concerned necessarily about this gap increasing, it makes sense that it should. What I am more concerned about is 'good' Steemians losing focus of their own account, which would be of more benefit to others later on if they spent more of their energy (which doesn't necessarily mean self-votes) and time on themselves.

Don't run before you can walk

And in order to learn to walk, you might have to play the game. There is the investing in STEEM/SP option, but for those without the funds on the side, it's likely to be the content route. Content relating to boosting Red Fish who are just going to cash out isn't the way to go for anyone, and I would love to see my peers at 500 - 20000 SP focusing on the 'power communities', and seeing if they can get involved there.

As a potentially 'flaming' example, the Nigerians are all over @steemhunt right now, or so I am told. Why? Because this is one of the newest 'dapps' and they have 1 million SP in the bank to distribute. They are like a whale waiting for your content, it will be read and reviewed accordingly, and the chances of getting a vote via a 'dapp' over a person-whale is much higher.

I understand some people finding minimal interest in many of the 'dapps' and 'power communities', but is it not sometimes a case of 'sucking it up' and doing what needs to be done to aid the growth of your account? - I would look fondly at a Red Fish / Minnow / Dolphin 'using' these large votes to power up their account with the goal of sticking around, and then giving back when they reach a place they are comfortable with.

Summary

A 10 cent 100% up-vote (around 1000 SP) may put you in the top 1% of all accounts, but I think you are doing yourself and the community a potential disservice if you look down way more than looking up.

The standout Red Fish and Minnows will naturally grow and become visible, let us hope the majority of these account plan to stay.

If you plan to stick around and are a 'good egg' ( Thanks @lynncoyle1 ), then it will be better for the community for you to focus on growing your account towards the middle class.

I hope to see many good eggs (including @wolfhart and @simplymike) there in the future.

Cheers

Asher

Witness: @steemcommunity

Sort:  

Steem has a lot more coming with the new projects coming out and it will help the paltform grow and also possibly raise the price so I’m looking for all the exciting new projects coming up. And great statistics as always

Yes I think that is the case too, thank you 😊

Loading...

This is some very interesting statistics ! I definitely think dtube and steemhunt etc is a very good way to build up some SP which can help you to more easily start playing with the big fish . Having said that I haven’t started using either yet. I haven’t been able to upload to Dtube, because somehow the format doesn’t seem to work.

D.tube likes mp4. I run my videos through the handbrake app (free) and click the web optimized box. I just uploaded a video for my son that was 16 minutes long.

Awesome ! So it’s basically not possible to upload with normal iPhone format right ?

I wish!! Dlive and Dtube are mp4 so you will have to convert your videos somehow. I can’t wait until to get an in app converter and we can post straight from our Apple devices.

Alright got it ! Thanks a lot for the feedback- Much appreciated !

Your welcome

I found iPhone files that are not edited upload fine - but you can't do it from the device to dtube at present.

I see thanks for letting me know. I will try converting instead and see how it goes :)

Nice, thanks for the info 👍🏾

Your welcome. I have had a lot of trouble trying to get videos up in the past. His process is a little time consuming but it works. Hopefully with time the process will be easier

Have you visited their discord for help? https://discord.gg/fwKyCT

I use OpenShot video editor, it's free and you can save to a variety of formats - mpeg should be fine.

If you have issues with sound, change the Audio Settings - Audio codec to 'aac'.

Good luck, it would be cool to see some video content from you :)

Thanks for the tip I will be sure to check it out !

Hey @abh12345,

I use OpenShot video editor

How steep Is the learning curve, Asher? Just yesterday I made a mental note to search for a new video editor.

I don't think it's that difficult to get the basics covered - there are video tutorials knocking around too and I've found those helpful.

I'd submit that it's all about finding balance... as it often is with life, itself.

I don't remember where I originally read it, but there was a post from three months or so back in which someone was pointing out that the most "solid" long-term growth strategy wasn't necessarily about gimmicky and games, but about "growing with the people you joined up with."

I look at many of the people who regularly interact with my posts — and I with theirs — and they fall in a fairly narrow range around the same rep and starting point as I.

I look at my Human's primary account (started on the same day as @tarazkp) and most of the people he regularly interacts with joined Steemit at about the same time and now are much at the same "upper Minnow to Dolphin" level.

Absolutely we should help newcomers... that 5c or 10c upvote can be a huge morale booster during the early days; I know that well. But I believe you're basically right... "don't get in your own way." Don't spend more than 1/3 to 1/2 of your voting power on lifting newbies; by all means have contests! They seem to help "train" people to become more active, rather than "waiting around" for something to happen all by itself.

=^..^=

Edited to add: I am just a temporary Minnow via delegation...

the plot thickens....

Don't spend more than 1/3 to 1/2 of your voting power on lifting newbies;

I recommend a 50/50 approach self/community with some percentage spread across small accounts to incentivise and larger percentages focused on the stayers. of course, the 50/50 is a maximum and as an account grows larger, it can adjust to more community orientated.

The way I look at it is that if I don't take enough action to build my own stake, I am always going to be "stagnant" in my capacity to help others grow. Right now, I can only throw about 30-40 small upvotes a day around, AND that's with a couple of nice delegations.

When you're very small, something like a 10c upvote (especially on a comment) is actually "exciting" because it feels like actual progress. Getting 10c from a "bounty" feels like progress. If my account grows 10% in a week it feels like major progress... even if that's just 5SP.

So small things go a long way in making the difference between creating an active "future minnow" and yet another "dead redfish."

=^..^=

Hi @curatorcat, thanks for the comments.

Yeah basically the post is about not being too selfless, particulary if you plan to stick around. People have different opinons of how to spread your vote between self/small/large accounts - and I guess there is no ideal, this is down to the person.

Cheers.

Thanks for your advice, Asher.
Ever since the beginning, I’ve been involved in supporting and educating others. (I’m a teacher in real life, so this comes natural to me, lol.)

I t wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago, after I had a conversation with @beeyou, that I realized that although this is a noble thing to do, I was limiting the growth of my own account. Especially because the higher you get on the chain, the less support you get from the bigger guys.

From thatthat moment forward, I changed my mindset. I started to see that the bigger I could grow my own account, the more people I could give some decent support.

But it was (and still is) a bit of an ethical battle. I actually want to do both.
So I started lobbying, trying to find people who were struggling with the same issues. And I found quite some people who were asking themselves the same question.

I do believe both can - nééd - to be combined. It’ all about finding the right balance.

Our bad luck is that the bigger you grow your account, the less people have a bigger account and can, or want to support.

So we’ll have to set up our own support system somehow, with little help from bigger accounts. In order to be able to maximize growth, us smaller and bigger minnows have to figure out how we can make the most out of supporting eachother. IMO, without forgetting to support the smaller accounts at the same time.

I’m not a good strategist, so I’m still hoping someone will come up with a solution that allows us to do both. Because I do remember how it was to be new, and if those newbies will have to wait until the 5000+ accounts will start supporting them, they will be long gone before they even got started.

I’m glad my repeated comments on the topic have raised a little awareness and that more people are thinking about how we can find the balance we need.

The balance will be better when you get to 5k 😊 More teacher dolphins please!

Turn everyone altruistic and things may look instantly awesome. Of course that is not going to happen, and so the good guys need to collect now to fill the gap.

Thanks for pushing the topic, I'm sure @tarazkp will write more words on it in future, and probably myself too. It's not one code can fix easily, and likely depends more on how people act - Rise good eggs rise!

As one of my earliest supporters @simplymike, I will always be grateful for those early boosts! But I also agree with your point here... and I'd like to add a little nuance:

It's great to help newbies and have newbie contests and initiatives... but I think what we need to consider is what constitutes helping newcomners by empowering them, and where we get into getting in our own way by actually getting in the business of offering "relative" newcomers a free ride.

My own approach has — from day one — been to take and ask for whatever help I could get with the aim of getting past the infamous "dust threshold" with my votes (currently 250-ish SP)... and then pretty much socialize my way to anything more more than that. I'm blessed to have that process speeded up a little with a couple of delegations at the moment.

Part of my point here is also that I never got a memo that said "Steemit's easy!" It's not. Social media success is not easy. It all takes work and perseverance... even when things suck.

But getting back to helping newcomers and redfish... maybe the key is to help just enough to EMPOWER people to be able to figure stuff out on their own... just like school, we don't need (hopefully!) teach to still hold our hand when we're 23...

=^..^=

Hi @abh12345, Like all your previous posts, this one too is valuable. There are some new stats for me specially some accounts that I had forgot that they were distributing STEEM through their upvotes. @fundition is such good example. As a freelancer, I've been writing professionally for my clients but when I joined Steemit, I wanted to do it on full time basis. I believe, I've been writing valuable content but I never wanted to buy upvotes hence I fell flat on the ground and that's what has been putting an hold on my blogging activities here at Steemit. There has been a contest by @fulltimegeek around #donaldmarshall tag and I was one of the 9 writers who got selected and it was a great experience. Such contests make the writers/bloggers alive and they work with far more motivation and eventually Steemit gets better quality content. I'm once again trying to catch up with a writing routine here and this time, I hope it does not stop and I speed up my journey towards dolphin level. I'm sure I need to do a lot of hardwork and I'm not frightened. Excellent reading with some very interesting stats. Shared with 1500 + followers.

Thank you :)

Yes, the #donaldmarshall tag, curated by the Lord of the Steem is another valid option - I'm glad you found that 'community' as an area of support.

Thanks again for the support and RS!

You're welcome Asher.

Very interesting viewpoint....one I will have to consider.

We do focus a lot of attention upon helping the smaller accounts. That was part of the reason for the minnow uprising idea....let the smaller accounts show they are willing to support each other. What they lack in SP they make up for in sheer numbers.

So far, and we are only on day 2, it looks like the turnout is a bit lackluster.

Perhaps this view is a more sensible approach. Support those accounts who show the desire to grow their accounts by their actions. Many want the upvotes from larger accounts without the willingness to put in the time and effort.

My latest numbers run through June 30th did reveal a nice growth in both the Dolphin and Minnow categories. Planktons were down; inactives up.

As much as minnow power is touted, the hard truth is that they can't support each other into 20000k SP accounts - that will take longer than anyone is willing to stick it out for.

I think we should be willing to support the ones who've shown they can 'do it themselves' to some extent, via the dapps for example.

As well as a smaller subset, It gives us more time to assess and see who's sticking around.

I think the numbers above echo your findings too, and think we need a dolphin uprising before a minnow uprising. Cheers!

Some great food for thought there and certainly a common sense approach. This is something I've been thinking a lot about of late, especially with my upvote value plummeting. How can I help anyone else to grow if I don't grow myself? I have been wondering how best to find a balance that benefits the growth of my account, but still with some help going to the odd redfish account that seems committed to building themselves here.

It's a common conundrum of the good egg 😊

Bluntly, follow the SP. Ned (Steemit head) has delegated millions to the projects above, it makes sense to help them help you.

From my point of view as a curator within the Hispanic community, which is where people have less chance to invest in a good SP, I have noticed the growth of accounts thanks to the Dapp as @dlive, @dtube, and have maintained We motivate to continue on the network, and people from other networks have also been motivated to start in the blockchain.

I think everyone should try to find content for at least one dapp. They are distributing the STEEM/SP, I just hope that those who obtain it plan to stick around. Thanks for your comments 😊

If that is the recommendation that I make to users who live in the community of @votovzla, since we have almost 5000 users and we do not have a delegation to cover the needs of the community.

Yes, a community that size is going to need a lot of SP to support it. Hopefully the best creators will find the way.

Don't run before you can walk

And in order to learn to walk, you might have to play the game.

It took most of us nearly 6 months before realizing this fact. Many individuals I started out with are community-oriented but awareness here brought on a wave of reality. Sadly, a couple have decided it’s simply not worth the time to pursue and left. Others are still chugging along.

We all respect you because you were the first to show our community any support. I know @simplymike has been mulling over this issue; we all have really. Unfortunately, some of those dapps that do show support are for video producers, like dtube and dlive. I believe some other non-dapps but community supporters like tribalsteemup and thealliance are exclusive membership groups where one has to apply for acceptance. Why do we have to be in high school all over again? I have seen deepdive support to others, sadly, I have no political or conspiracy theory interests. Lol, dilemma, dilemma. We will have to form a think tank and come up with a solution.

Appreciate the insight, as always.

Deep dives girl!

Lol, see what I mean Asher? Here is a winner of deepdives himself.

Yes I know :)

Think of it as a research project - you don't actually need much knowledge prior to diving 😊

Hi @beeyou

I feel partly to blame at times for touting the community orientated approach too much to the smaller accounts via my actions and posts, so hopefully this can address that somewhat.

It's a different game now than it was a year ago, but the dapps and the 'high school' setup are the current rules, and it's basically up to the individual if they want to partake for greater returns.

I used the @steemhunt example, because I think it's something everyone could contribute to, if they want to.

Thanks for your comments 😊

You have been an exceptional role model to many of us and our community’s staunchest supporter. I am as much a realist as an idealist. The challenging part would be finding the time to venture out into the ‘great unknown’ 🙂. Perhaps I will try with busy first; everyone keeps saying to give them a try. Baby steps, and then Steemit world domination. ;)

aww thank you @beeyou

I've tried my best because I saw a young community with a lot of good eggs :)

busy will give you a little push with each post - the size of the push depends on the SP of your followers.

Go go Steem world domination!

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.39
TRX 0.12
JST 0.040
BTC 70118.22
ETH 3546.28
USDT 1.00
SBD 4.89