Exploring Featured Posts
Hello Steemians, as you’ve probably noticed we’ve been experimenting with a new feature on steemit.com called “Featured Posts.” The purpose of this feature is to ensure that steemit.com users are provided with important information about Steem and steemit.com developments, but an added benefit is that it enables us to share exceptional community-generated content.
By clicking the “X” in the top right corner of these posts you can ensure that you will never see that individual post ever again.
Users who enjoy dark mode might not have been seeing this X previously, but as of now the X should be clearly visible at all times.
Important Steem Updates
Featured Posts also offer a venue through which we can share important updates from other Steem projects as well as great projects that aren’t necessarily powered by Steem, but are eager to communicate how they can deliver value to Steem users like today’s post from @snaxteam. Snax is a blockchain solution that rewards people for sharing content on public social media and they recently integrated Steem! Many Steem users like @NathanMars7, @surfermarly, @steevc, and so many more have taken to Twitter to get the word out about Steem and now thanks to Snax they can earn crypto (in both SNAX and STEEM) for that great content posted outside of the Steem ecosystem.
steemitwallet.com
We decided to implement this feature after the roll out of steemitwallet.com during which it became clear that we were not getting important updates into the hands of our users. Leading up to that release we published a number of communications that we hoped would prepare users for the upcoming change. Despite those communications, which were featured in the “Updates Log,” an unacceptable number of users were still taken by surprise. Featured Posts will dramatically increase the number of people who see important updates, but we understand that with this capability comes a responsibility to ensure that we are not polluting people’s feeds.
Paid Advertising?
We have not accepted any payments in return for being featured, but we are open to this possibility in the future. We would still vet these posts to ensure they are sufficiently high quality and provide valuable information to Steem stakeholders.
Communities and Pinned Posts
Featured Posts are actually a rough implementation of a feature that will launch with Communities called “Pinned Posts” which will enable community owners and moderators to feature the content they believe provides valuable information to their community members. So if you have any feedback on how this feature can be improved, we’d love to read that feedback in the comments section below.
The Steemit Team
We think this is a wise way to make full use of the 10-15 Million monthly page views and eyeballs steemit.com as a top 5000 website.
Any communications by the Steemit team can now be better communicated to Steemians who are using Steemit.com. Which has been a major pain point by the users from what we have observed.
Maybe one day @coingecko would have a featured post on Steemit.com too when the need arises😉
Hey nice website coin gecko i like how you always boost EOS higher than coinmarketcap, and hey heres 4 cents so I pushed your comment up Over $1 ! Nice!
Hey what does this REALLy mean about the X to Hide, from @steemitblog
Believe it or not i accidently hit that X on this very post, but i went back to steemitblog blog wall and theer it was,thanfully,
what if we nee dto see posts we accidently hide? There should eb a wauy to get them back
also what you said is already false, i did see the post again, As i should,m why would we want to NEVER let people see a post, it should just go into a "Hidden Post" folder so we can retrieve them later if we change our mind or made a mistake @steemitblog please acknowledge
gracias
I like this feature and I think it will be really important when you drop the next changes to the interface, like wallets, etc.
I think some just aren't thinking about when it will matter yet.
bump :)
yeah i agree and hey @whatsup how about NEXT @steemitblog we fix the PROMOTED post section,
we could have the promoted SECTIOn be deleted all together or hidden, and have a simple BOT that POSTED the posts in the front page, sprinkling them throughout the chain, because if we just put the ads in between real posts, people might find a way to ad block them/ OR maybe not
that might not be such a difficult problem but using an Account to REPOST the featured posts, so the account upvotes itself with money used to pay for the promotion, instead of burning the money, like we do now, we have that money sent to bid bots to promote the post..... but the money goes back to the Bot that reposts these featured posts, NOT back to the creator, and then the SBD received is Burned, sent to null, maybe SP too or we keep that use it for the project... but yeah Promoted Posts deserve to be put into the trending page and the only way to organically do that is just use a bot to actually post and upvote itself after posting these reposts of the Submitted posts that peopel want to pay to promote...
i know it sounds like a roundaboutr way, why not just use bidbots in first place?Well this promotion button the NEW one would atcually BE an elaborate Bid Bot button, and rightfully so.... its the ACTUAL way you pay to get promote don steem, NOT with sending ur coins to Null and placing it in some section no one ever uses, but we didnt know that back then and now we all know how paid promotion actually works and how it can actually be profitable, maybe we keep teh SP, maybe pay back the SBD we earn on the bot, anyway, we have the tools to fix the promoted section without any hardfork
TLDR; Imagine fixing promoted Section by having the "Promote" button activate a BidBoit menu, like @postpromoter or @booster for example, like how @steemplus has a button to "Boost" your post which just leads to a bidbot that sells you an upvote OR copies and pastes the post to a new post to be upvoted and have its rewards burned. . We can just hide the promoted section, and just have the Promoted Section official bid bot post its "promoted" posits to the trending page, bidbot can burn rewards
It would be nice if every Steemit blog could pin one post to the top of the page too, that way the businesses, intitiatives and communities can keep a post there that tells about themselves and has information, rules, procedures etc.
I would love it too!
Posted using Partiko Android
Second that
Posted using Partiko Android
This is planned and in the spec for communities (also is mentioned in this post) 🙂
Do you guys have any plans for other ways to generate revenue so you don't have to sell so much steem?
What is a community? Do you mean a hashtag community or a platform community like Steemit.com could be a community and Busy.org could be another community, or what does community mean? Does it have something to do with groups or witnesses or people you follow or something else?
Communities is a planned feature that could be thought of similarly to subreddits, but can also be used in conjunction with user's individual blogs. The back-end software for this feature is Hivemind which is a non-consensus data layer for Steem that makes adding new social features much more trivial to implement than directly at the blockchain level. All posts and comments on steemit.com are currently powered by Hivemind which shipped earlier this year.
Justin, so, is a subreddit more like a Facebook group or more like a sub-category of a forum, a message board? I guess, like a forum as Reddit is a forum. But I see a forum as similar to Facebook groups. Different layout but same purpose behind a Reddit and FB group it would seem.
When are communities coming? Sounds exciting. Thanks.
Seems like a good idea...I'd welcome that tool.
Then everyone would pin and it would get cluttered, and would defeat the purpose!
It would pin to their blog, not the feed.
Oh wow!
I totally agree. That is what Twitter, YouTube, Minds, Gab, has.
Please stop this.
Youre continuing to establish the idea that everyone should write STEEM related content making the community even more of an echo chamber filled with clones.
Please stop. This is no way to attract mainstream audiences. Everyone outside Curie and OCD already ignores 99% of non crypto content.
At least you dont have to make it worse.
You have the sidebar, use it, but stop featuring posts. This sends a bad message across.
The content is already one sided as is.
@andrarchy
I think it would be much worse for people to not know what we're working on for the platform. We've made major changes in regards to our level of communication this year. This is one way that we can make sure a majority of our users see our regular updates and important announcements.
No. Thats what the sidebar is for. Featured posts are free promotion and by pushing Steem related content up you create an echo chamber and you push creators to copy the people that get featured because getting featured means whale votes.
And we all want whale votes.
How do you get them? Copy what the featured guys do.
Its a very bad idea.
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I have to agree the sidebar is a better place for this content.
I have to agree
The sidebar is a better
Place for this content.
- valued-customer
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
No. The sidebar is terrible and doesn't help with the same goal. You seem to have the wrong idea about what gets chosen to be featured also . But that's all up for discussion.
No i got pretty clear idea. Lol. "Steem related posts that are seen as important for the community".
It is even clearly stated in the context of this post.
Its an awful idea. Trending is full of trash posts that are put there without proof of brain and now they want to give away more spots that arent community voted? To steemians that andrarchy follows and posts that talk about steem. +all the things ive written above.
I repeat. Tragic idea. Do not do it.
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You say terrible, I say great. Shrug
Haha. Well its not the first time we disagree. 😁
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Experience has not shown me that they change their minds because anyone said, "I do not like it...for this or that reason." Mostly they only tell us what they have already decided on and then in a show of being 'democratic', they ask us.
So, it is not that I tried to give you upvotes for the money - I only wanted to show you/give you my support by increasing the number of upvotes given to you.
Thanks for trying.
Only changes from Steemit inc.
Plenty of people outside of curie and OCDB look at non crypto content.
Plenty of people
Outside of curie look at
Non crypto content.
- justtryme90
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
That is true. I look at #Informationwar and #FreeWrite
Updates should be in the sidebar like you said. But featured posts can be pinned to the top of the newsfeed. The top 100 witnesses should vote on which posts are featured. There should be a limited amount of slots for featured posts each day.
@steemitblog i bought steem coin at 2$ now price is only 30 cent please invest your revenue coming from adsense into steem and pump it otherwise i will be ruined
Hm yes, thank you for proving that payout and curation (visibility) are completely unrelated as all frontends are controlled in a centralized manner.
Now eliminate curation from the consensus layer and put it on an optional sliding scale to be determined by the content creator.
This.
Thanks for providing a post so we can discuss this topic! :-)
I am all for this featured posts functionality in case of the wallet change and any other future 'big changes' on Steemit.com. I'm also happy to see you learned from that experience and are making sure that doesn't ever happen again. The way it works now (post on top, x to click it away once read) works fine, so I'm glad you've implemented that.
Other than that I would suggest to be careful or just not use it on other posts. Always keep in mind who Steemit.com's users are (and if you don't know, try some market research amongst your users): they often have fled from (content) manipulation and centralization. Having one or two people at Steemit, Inc decide which posts 'we have to/should see' is just more centralization on a platform that is filled with people that don't like that.
Selecting posts yourself is in my view a no-go, but having people pay for that very very special spot is maybe even worse. We now have: ads/banners, trending, hot, promoted, all places for promoted or 'not so much promoted' content. All these 4 spots still have their own challenges. Clean these up/remove/perfect these first before adding a fifth place with 'special' content would be my sincere suggestion :-)
(PS: The best way to get people to see content is if their favorite Steemians/influencers resteem a post. Making sure a resteem works like a retweet, with a personal comment from the Steemian that resteems would be my preferred functionality to add to Steemit.com in order to get more 'viral content' - people want to know why a person resteems a post so they can decide to open a post from an otherwise random author.)
Last thing I want to mention: the more this pinned feature is used, the less it will catch a person's eye. People easily get 'blind' for these sort of features, and if they had to click away uninteresting (to them) or paid posts a few times in the past few days, they will be less likely to see the actually important featured post where you announced a very important update on steemit.com - Yes, indeed, like the wallet change, the whole reason you as I understand it implemented the featured post.
Just my sincere input.
TLDR: Good job, but the less this feature is used, the more effective it will be.
Very well said! I second all the points you mentioned. Great & important input imo.
KA-CHING
the main point
That is why the top 100 witnesses should vote on which posts are featured in the limited amount featured slots that rotate every day or week or whatever. We all know that all the Steem users can vote on their favorite witnesses. The top 100 witnesses can then be rewarded with the responsibility of voting on featured posts. They decide. They vote. The top picks are then featured. And important updates should be kept on the sidebar.
@steemitblog,
Two Highlighted Errors so far!
Under post, the advertisement align should be centered to the post! Seems it got a CSS error!
When we try to create a new post, sometimes the Title Bar is hidden!
Cheers~
You need to finish fixing the WALLET @steemitblog I still cannot 'reveal' my keys even when I type in my master key it does not reveal the keys in the permission area. Not happy with this update at all.
The 'Featured Posts' implementation here on Steemit, is perhaps a helpful addition and being unobtrusive in nature, I don't mind it at all; as a matter of fact, I welcome it.