STEEMIT

So, I finally got over 100 followers and decided to do a steemit review. I figured once I reached a hundred followers I would have a pretty good grasp of the platform and be able to write a fair review. I’ll admit right now, when I first signed up on the platform I was more than a bit skeptical but as time progressed and I used the platform regularly I did end up falling in love with it.

For anyone that may not know what Steemit is, it’s a social network / blogging platform that pays you in cryptocurrency for your posts. Payment is made in the form of STEEM, which is the platforms cryptocurrency, and the amount you recieve is basically determined by the popularity of your posts and the amount of votes each post recieves.

I should state two things right from the start. I was more than a bit skeptical when I first signed up, and I never read the white paper.

My reasoning for not reading the white paper was simple. First off The Dood’s a bit lazy at times and this was one more white paper that I’d have to read. Also, I wanted to look at this as just another social networking platform. Most people don’t read the TOS/EULA of social sites like Pinterest, Facebook, and Google + and I wanted to approach this from an end user point of view. Most people aren’t concerned with the inner workings of their social site, they just want it to work.

With that said, my first impression was that Steemit was a sparse and under-developed platform. I did however keep in mind that the site was still in beta. This is made perfectly clear to all users with the company logo in the upper left hand corner of the site that reads, “Steemit beta”. Fair enough, they’re still working on it, and this was pretty obvious in August when I signed up.

On a side note, I actually signed up earlier with a different account but didn’t take it seriously till STEEM hit $4.00 each on the exchanges and The Dood lost his password to his original account. At that time, people were still waiting to be allowed to cash out. I had earned $50.00 but just didn’t take it seriously.You can bet I kicked myself in the ass when my 50 dollar account was now worth a couple hundred and I lost the password and couldn’t cash out. Derp! First Steemit lesson learned, guard your Steemit password just like any other cryptocurrency wallet credentials. If you lose the password there is no recovery option.

So I’ve been using the site for about 4 months since my initial rocky start. I can honestly say that the site continuosly and consistently improves with new features being added all the time. The once sparse site now allows users to include avatars, profile info in the header, sharing tools, and a way to keep track of followers along with many other improvements made over time. It’s obvious that given enough time, Steemit will not only compare but probably surpass the user experience of just about any other social site available today.

The blogging platform itself reminds me of a cross between Blogger and Reddit. You can post articles and content you create in a blog style format, and your followers can comment and share additional information with you in the comments section like on Reddit. Users have to be Steemit members in order to comment on posts and interact with other users.

The interface is user freindly and comparable to anything you might find on Blogger or WordPress. A first time user can use the built in editor to create a post, and more experienced users can use either markdown or html to format their posts. Either way the interface is fairly straight forward and intuitive allowing most people to create a well formated asthetically pleasing post on thier first attempt.

One of the features I don’t like and that many new users seem to have a problem with is image hosting. Images have to be hosted by a third party. This is easily remedied by using a service like Imgur but it can be a little overwhelming to new users. There are however many tutorials throughout the site that teaches you how to accomplish image hosting, and the friendly users or (Steemians) are extremely helpful to new users. My understanding without reading the white paper is that each post is hosted on the blockchain, and adding images to all that data would be a burden on the blockchain.

This leads me to the people. Steemit users or Steemians are truley wonderful people. Most users are very polite, friendly, and eager to help new users get accustomed to the interface. Help is as simple as asking in a post or even leaving a comment asking for help. Most of the users I’ve interacted with on the site are very pleasant, and conversation and interaction is highly encouraged amongst users.

The community is diverse and you can find just about any topic imaginable to talk about. Topics range from politics, cooking, health and wellness, to crafts, wildlife, cryptocurrency and just about anything else your brain can think of.

As far as cryptocurrency wallets are concerned, the Steemit wallet is really easy to use.If you’re transferring STEEM to another user it’s as simple as entering their username, the amount of STEEM to send and entering your password. If you want to transfer to an exchange like Bittrex or Poloniex you just enter the exchange name and place an account number that you recieve from the exchange in the memo box so they know which wallet to put your STEEM in when it hits the exchange. This is a really easy process for people that know and understand how cryptocurrency works, but people new to cryptocurrency do seem to have a hard time getting set up on an exchange and learning how to move around cryptocurrency. Again the friendly community comes to the rescue and help is as easy as just making a post asking for people to help you. The community on Steemit is really great, friendly and helpful.

The platform wallet breaks down into four ways to save your STEEM, you can save it as STEEM, STEEM Power which increases your voting power, and STEEM dollars which are always worth one dollar of STEEM. There is also a savings account you can use to save.