A little help for the new people: Welcome to Steem! Here's some hints on how to get started.
Hi, I'm Aggroed. I'm a PhD chemist and former chemistry professor. I used to work for higher education companies in sales, but now I've quit my job because of Steem and am working around the clock to spread the values of Peace, Abundance, and Liberty, grow the Steem ecosystem, and train and retain minnows on the platform. I created and manage the community account @minnowsupport and founded the Minnow Support Project. We just crossed 8,000 members (though a quick prune of inactives will probably peel that back under 8k for a day or two). I'm working on building a youtube/film studio to pump more Steem out there as my next project.
Anyway, I've been here a while and have helped a lot of new users out, and since we're growing it's time to talk about getting started here again.
603k
We've passed the 600k accounts mark. I was 54,169 so we've literally more than 10Xed the number of accounts since I got here a year and a half ago. Yeah, a lot of them are bots, but we also have a lot of active users. If we continue at the pace we're going Steem will have 2-2.5M accounts by the end of the year. I think it's going to speed up even more than that, but either way it's a lot of new people. So, here's a quick welcome.
What is Steem?
You may have an account, but you're still trying to wrap your head around this place. WTF is Steem?
Steemit: A development company run by @ned that works to make the blockchain as good as possible.
Steemit.com: a website running a program called condenser that allows people to interact with the block chain.
Steem: The block chain and name of the community in general.
What does this thing do?
Steem is a fairly unique blockchain. We're a social media program with an embedded cryptocurrency. It's sorta like facebook and reddit had a baby and genetically enhanced that baby with some crypto DNA. Yeah, it might feel a little weird at first, but there's some power here. Every time you write a post and someone upvotes it you'll get some money. If they have a lot of Steem you'll get a lot of money. If they have a little Steem you'll only get a little bit of money. As you comment and post you're making money. Heck, even voting on this platform earns you money. So, it's like being on social media but now you're earning money!
How does it work?
Well, right now there are 260M Steem tokens. Investors purchase those tokens because they think it's a good investment. Steem tokens come in two flavors Steem Power and Steem. Steem is a fully fungible commodity meaning you can send it all over the world in 3 seconds and trade it for other coins on exchanges. Steem power isn't as fungible but it has a cool use. You can power up your Steem tokens into Steem Power and now you effectively own a portion of the blockchain.
Steem has platform inflation. There's a little less than 10% inflation on the system so this coming year a little less than 26M tokens will be created. These tokens are distributed on the platform primarily based on how individual Steem Power owners want them to be distributed, and they do this by upvoting content. Think of it this way. Think of Steem as a stock with a dividend, but instead of the dividend going back to you automatically instead you can assign that dividend to anything you want on the platform. It's generally discouraged to just send that back to yourself over and over especially on low value posts, but with that main exception you can support whatever you'd like here. You choose what you think is valuable and you help breathe financial life into it.
There's a second token called an SBD. There's some controvery around what an SBD is, but I tend to think it's a unique token that provides some risk mitigation, fast transactions, no cost, and serves to reward active users on the platform. The Steem blockchain guarentees that SBDs are worth a minimum of $1 of Steem because the program will allow users to convert SBD into $1 worth of Steem. The market values the currency higher than $1 right now and even though we guarentee it's worth at least $1 it's currently trading between $5-8.
What's the point of all this?
Look, the main thing is that it's social media, but this is social media that pays you too. You could do all of this on Reddit or Facebook, but those guys have some weird censorship going on, they don't pay users, and it's filled with basically endless flaming and just shitty people. So, here you can blog and use some other platforms like Discord to interact with one another, and while you're at it you can get paid in crypto.
I'm new... what should I write about?
Well, I have two answers to this. 1. If you're writing because you love it then just write about what you love. That's really all that matters. 2. If you're writing because you want to earn money here then a few things. You're going to have to be patient. It's hard to get noticed and build on the platform. If you're expecting a free Lambo tomorrow you're going to be disappointed. What I think works best is start by commenting a lot and only post short form content. You're 50 page expose on Obama's third vacation while out of office is going to have to wait. Comment on other posts and build up a following. The other best way to do that is network on Discord. I'm partial to the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network because I founded it and in there you'll find 8,000 people to interact with. There are other servers you can connect with once you find your way around. Once you have some buddies around there the resteems and upvotes will happen naturally.
How should I interact with other Steemians?
Here's a few quick don'ts:
asking for follow for follow
asking for vote for vote
asking for others to review your work
being rude
Here's some quick dos:
Make friends
Be kind
Offer your services for free while getting started
engage on others posts
Flags and Rep
Part of what keeps everyone nice around here are flags and rep. Rep is roughly how much you've earned from other people, but it scales depending on how the higher rep accounts interact with you. People are more comfortable providing stronger upvotes to larger accounts so you're going to want to work on getting your rep higher. Mostly that just happens over time as people upvote you, but you want to avoid flags.
Flags on the system reduce rewards and reduce your rep. If you're coming from other platforms you may not give a shit about those things yet, but you'll soon learn that protecting your rep and avoiding flags is pretty important. Especially because people can go back to all your posts within a 7 day window and flag all of them.
People flag for all kinds of reasons:
You were acting like an asshat on the blockchain
You were acting like an asshat off the blockchain
They disagree with your content
They disagree with how much your content was earning
Your content is a type of abuse where you're posting copyrighted material belonging to someone else
Your content is a shit post consisting of essentially 1 image/video that you didn't even make and no text just to give an opportunity to have it be upvoted (same goes for comment spam)
You should avoid picking fights or acting like a fool because it's going to hurt your rewards and experience here. Give it a few weeks before you explore that feature cause you're effectively picking a financial fight with someone else.
Well, that's essentially Minnow 101
As you progress there's more that you can do. I'll talk some more about this stuff later and maybe give a dolphin 101.
Would've been more informative if you included more detailed Steem and SBD explanation in your post.
Anyway, it is a nice work and valuable post for many newbies.
Brilliantly succinct @aggroed
That's the best explanation of Steem and Steemit I've seen anywhere.
Great work as ever dude.
Thanks for all that you do @aggroed. I'm quite certain that the vast majority of the steemit community values and appreciates you, I do! All the very best!
I will second that.
I've only been here for about six weeks so still feel rather new.
:)
Your post helps clarify things a little further in this woolly mind of mine.
Thanks to you and Minnow Support for all you do daily for us wee Whitebait.
I already love Steemit and dub it the thinking (wo)man's social media.
Hoorah.
xox
@mellisaramirez! Check this out! :)
I loved the explanation on the whole flagging and downvoting because someone is an assist on,off the blockchain. I recently got involved in an argument with a person because he was boasting that he was two days into Steemit but was doing better than those who have been here longer because he uses in one of the five tags a name of a whale which was taught to him by his mentor and I said he shouldn't be proud of vote begging and concentrate on making good articles instead.
I so wanted to rip him a new one but decided he is not worth it haha.
It is an amazing time to join Steemit and indeed we are just going to grow with the fast transaction rates, ability to earn Cryptos in this gift economy thus giving financial freedom to people who in turn create better posts, unleash their creativity and further enrich the content of Steemit.
I will be sharing this with my team who from 10 we have now become 100 + because they believe that Steemit is not a scan or a ponzi when we made a series of cashing out posts on earning in Steemit through our mind and creativity.
I had to remove my delegation to minnowbooster so that I can delegate to our main account but I have always believed in what it does to help out the community. Hopefully I can delegate again once I reach my goal of 500 SP.
Am getting started and new here. I love your lecture it has impact on me. You are not just a PhD chemist and a former chemistry professor. You are a PhD steem and a current steem professor. That's how I feel and rate you @aggroed. Thanks from @chrizy
I see you as my mentor in this blockchain. Please go through my Introduction post.
I remember when I first started steemit (5mnth ago) and I used to love posts like this because they really helped me out to really find out what this community is all about and what I should be doing and not doing.
I still like to read these posts because I'm still growing and want to learn as much as I can. So thank you @aggroed for supporting the minnows and all that you contribute to this community because I remember how hard it was in the beginning and still is but I love what I do and what I've been learning and made so many amazing friends from around the world and one of the best things is all the people that inspire me to be a better person and helping and supporting others
Me, too, joined June 2017. Am growing, too.
Thank you for your guide. I am fairly new to steemit, and I can already notice more mature community than the other social networks can brag about. One thing I still don't fully understand, is steemit centralized as a platform? People tend to agree and disagree on this subject but truth of the matter is that a small group of people do decide who gets upvotes and who doesn't (no matter the quality of the content) Even though most of the upvoted content I found here is really quality and time-consuming for the writer, I find (here and there) invaluable (polite word for trash) articles that keep trending and get upvoted to the sky. To be precise, I fear that this could be the only problem in the future of this social network. Have a nice day and a fruitful year!
Steemit is sorta (de)centralized. Technically the platform is decentralized, but we have a problem of distribution where most of it is in the top 100 accounts. So, that makes it seem like we're pretty centralized. Steemit also has a ton of power... so again while technically the platform is decentralized in theory in practice a lot of it is still heavily concentrated.
Yeah, that makes sense. Concerning the centralization "issue", I have a feeling, that even though concentration of power, majority of whales are actually good and helpful people. The most important thing is socialization and community, so it would be fare to disregard everything else, and enjoy the platform. It is indeed becoming very popular, people are finding their own ways to it, and this community will just grow. Let us hope for the best.
I agree with your philosophy. From what I've been able to observe, there are quite a few whales doing quite a bit of good for others. While I suppose there is some return in it for them, I'm sure they could find easier and less time consuming things with a greater ROI.
But they hang around, and get involved in different projects, it seems to me, because they are among the most passionate about the community, its direction and future, in spite of what they might actually gain, and even if they do come at it from different viewpoints. Healthy discourse and debate is good and we can all take part and contribute our own $.01 to the discussion.
And when I fully understand everything everyone is talking about, it'll be that much better! 😃
Decentralized to an extent but not as much as Bitcoin: hope Steemit can continue to improve and everything. If Steemit can become more decentralized, than bring it on. But for the most part, we are trying our best it seems and I hope for the best and everything.
I am just in hope that the community will stay awesome, as it is for now. Everything else should come by itself.
This is a great primer for new members to Steemit. Things like this should be required reading for new members to help them get a feel for how everything works.
It's super confusing for new members and I'm speaking from experience. But the more you roll up your sleeves and interact with people, the clearer it gets.
Thanks for providing this!