250,000+ daily active users on Steem is my estimate based on 50,000+ transacting every day AND the number of unique users active on all Steem applications including steemit.com, @dlive, steemdb, etc. This estimate of 250,000+ daily active users on Steem comes from applying the same definition that most database driven platforms like Google and Facebook rely on to define an active user instead of only counting the number of accounts making transactions.

When we remember that a blockchain is really just a fancy name for a database and that everyone accessing the database every day counts as an active user, we see that we have a lot more "active users" on Steem than we can easily report.

Why Does It Matter?

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In the live witness forum hosted by @aggroed last week which I uploaded a full replay of at https://steemit.com/dlive/@jerrybanfield/1bcfe7f0-4c8d-11e8-aa5b-83da28bb4ae3 we heard many of us participating, including me, referencing the number of active daily users on Steem in a way that makes it seem like a problem because we only included the number of accounts transacting every day.

By using the number of accounts transacting as the number of active users, we only count the top 5 or 10 percent of most engaged users on Steem as active. When we consider that around 50,000 accounts out of 920,000+ transact every day, this makes it seem like we have a problem with user retention and that everyone involved needs to work to solve it.

I was shocked to realize during the witness forum last week that even with my seven years of experience in digital marketing, I had not stopped to consider what we were choosing to call an "active user" on Steem and the impact of this on the conversation about our user activity on Steem!

Defining Active Users Accurately!

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An ACTIVE USER in digital marketing includes EVERYONE using a website or application via any interaction with the DATABASE from a UNIQUE IP ADDRESS. This definition includes signed in users engaging, signed in users only pulling data by browsing, and signed out users only pulling data by browsing. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monthly_active_users.

How Do We Calculate ACTIVE USERS?

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To see how we calculate active users, it may be easier to start by thinking about YouTube. YouTube's number of active users will include all unique viewers on every video on every application from youtube.com, mobile applications, and embedded videos on every website. That total for any one day is the number of active users on YouTube.

If YouTube only included users liking videos, uploading videos, and commenting on videos, the number of active users reported on YouTube would only represent a fraction of the total. Meanwhile on Steem ...

Users Transacting vs Active Users on Steem!

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When we consider the number of people on Steem reading posts but not making any transactions, we see the true number of ACTIVE USERS for STEEM is much higher than just those transacting. In addition to transactions, we need to remember to inlude among active users the following:

1. Users with a Steem account who do not vote or comment on a post.
2. All readers on steemit.com without an account or not signed into an account.
3. Everyone browsing feeds on mobile apps, watching videos on applications like @dlive, and anything else where a transaction is not taking place.

How Do We Count the Number of Active Users on Steem?

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To get the true number of active users on Steem using the same methods standard in digital marketing which are used by almost every major company, we need to include every unique IP address making any use of the database we call the Steem blockchain including

1. Every account transacting on the Steem blockchain plus
2. Every unique page view on steemit.com, dlive.io, steem.io, dlive.io, d.tube, dsound.audio, fundition.io, steemdb.com, steemd.com, and any other website using the steem blockchain plus
3. Every unique interaction with a mobile application or Steem wallet including viewing a page or a balance without making any transaction.
4. Minus any duplicates. For example, if one user likes a post on steemit.com, uploads a video on @dlive, and looks at data on steemdb.com, we only count that as one active user.

To get the accurate number of ACTIVE USERS DAILY for Steem, we will need all of the data for every single application dependent on the Steem blockchain aggregated by unique users because these numbers combined represent the total number of people actively using the Steem blockchain in all forms.

~250,000 Active Users Daily for Steem?

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I estimate the true number of active users when we consider all of the data is 5 to 10 times the number transacting every day because I believe based on the data I have seen previously that steemit.com gets hundreds of thousands of unique page views every day which when combined with every other way to access Steem adds up to at least 250,000 a day.

For validation, let us again consider YouTube. How many videos do we what without liking or commenting? I believe the average on YouTube from what I have seen is about 95% or greater of the among of "passive" viewers that watch a video without liking or commenting versus about 5% or less of those "engaged" which are leaving a like or a comment. My own experience validates this both as a creator and a viewer. My best videos get about a 20% like and comment ratio while most are 5% or less.

When we translate the amount of "passive" interactions with a database where the viewer is browsing only into Steem, an estimate of 5 times as many active users as accounts transacting is conservative. The true number is probably 10 to 20 times higher than the number of accounts transacting. I chose 250,000 because this number is almost certainly accurate as a minimum with much higher numbers possible.

Is @ned an Active User?

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As the CEO of Steemit Inc, @ned said last year at Steemfest 2 that he mostly just reads posts on Steem without commenting, upvoting, or otherwise transacting on the blockchain. When we take a look at @ned's profile at https://steemworld.org/@ned we see that most days @ned would not be counted among accounts transacting because he does not upvote, comment, or transfer Steem/SBD most days.

Is it most accurate to include @ned as an active Steem user given he reads posts most days on steemit.com and/or alternative interfaces but does not make a transaction with his account?

No More User Retention Problem!

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With a more inclusive definition of active users, we now are able to eliminate the apparent "user retention" problem because we begin to see that many users, especially new accounts and users thinking about joining or waiting for a response to a sign up, do visit steemit.com every day but often are not signed in or do not vote any posts. Given the account creation process can take weeks, a lot of new users have been very active reading data from the Steem blockchain before making a post and are in the habit of not voting on posts or commenting from the beginning because of an inability to do so prior to signing up.

When I first started learning about and researching Steem, I was on steemit.com every day and did not make any transactions. For every one of us that is here and transacting every day, there are at least 4 more of us lurking every day.

Updated Steem Reports by @penguinpablo!

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Thank you very much to @penguinpablo for publishing my favorite reports showing the current data on Steem each day and week because we can see proof of the growing value of our blockchain in your reports every day! @penguinpablo was kind enough to hear me out after I originally posted a shorter version of this as a comment on his recent weekly report. The third heading today shows "daily accounts transacting" on Steem along with a description of what this means in terms of active users to help each of us avoid getting the users transacting confused with the number of active users.

We hope this will help each of us to communicate the huge amount of activity we have on our blockchain every day and help each of us remember to include everyone that is participating without making a transaction!

Will Steemit Inc Help Us with Reporting Active Users?

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@andrarchy as the Content Director for Steemit Inc, will you help us maintain awareness of the amount of unique visitors to steemit.com each day, week, or month because this will help us to better understand the amount of active users on our blockchain?

With steemit.com being the number one interface for the Steem blockchain and every unique user on steemit.com be a part of the total active users for Steem, seeing the number of visits to steemit.com makes it easier for us as investors, bloggers, merchants, and developers to understand the value the Steem blockchain offers.

What About Bots?

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Based on my 13 years of experience doing nearly everything on Facebook from finding a girlfriend to launching a business and building page with over 2 million likes, I estimate 50% or so of the daily active user activity reported by Facebook is bots ranging from automatic posts to Facebook to huge collections of bot accounts that do not represent a real users. While in principle we might like to think active users should only include real human beings making proof of brain transactions, the standard in digital marketing is to include all the activity which generally means almost every platform's active user data reflects a lot of bots.

Therefore, bots on Steem are no different than bots anywhere else when it comes to being included in active users. We include all the bots along with the human beings in the reports and accept that the true number of human beings involved may be a lot less than the active users.

Bid Bot Questions and Answers!

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Speaking of bots, in addition to talking about active users in this live witness update, I will also present a bid bot tutorial live because I am consistently seeing a lot of questions and confusion about using bid bots. For those new to bid bods, I recommend a look at https://steembottracker.com/.

Get Answers to More Questions Live!

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With doing Steem full time as a witness at https://steemit.com/~witnesses, every Wednesday between 10 am to 12 pm eastern time I intend to be available to accept live questions and answers after a short initial presentation showing what I have been thinking about most as a witness during the previous week. The purpose of this is to be accountable to you each week as to what I have contributed to our community and available for you to get answers from me about anything you want to know including an immediate live reaction to your questions.

Thank you very much for reading about this live witness update which I hope was helpful in maintaining the hope and faith we have in our Steem blockchain's ability to help make this the beautiful world we intend to live together in!

Love,

Jerry Banfield

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