SteemFollower – The Upvote (and Follower) "Exchange" That Isn't Vote 4 Vote (But Is Quite Effective)

in #steem7 years ago

SF0.jpg

Recently, I was introduced to a tool called "SteemFollower", and I must admit, I'm really liking it. It's got a generic name and an interface only a Geocities mother could love, but it's built on a surprisingly good idea that's got legs. It's also brand new and developing at a breakneck pace. Don't judge it on first glance, or you might simply think it is some sort of vote-4-vote or follow-4-follow exchange, rather than an elegant positive-sum solution to the game-theoretical incentive to self-/circle-vote.

SF4.png

The management would like to be very clear on that first part.

On top of that, the developer is very attentive. Despite never speaking to me before, upcoming witness @mahdiyari has rapidly implemented suggestions I've passed along through moderators in the Steemfollower Discord. The result is a service that is becoming better on an almost daily basis, with signups increasing rapidly.

Let's take a look at the basic idea at the heart of SteemFollower, the "upvote exchange", before we look at the feed display.

SF1.png

Seems a little cryptic?

Steemfollower is very simple in concept, but the UI and documentation are still in the very early stages. All you have to do to use the voting service is vote (through Steemfollower) at least 5 times per day. That will make your posts visible in the feeds of other users who are voting.

When you vote for a user through Steemfollower, you get an amount of points roughly equal to the value of your vote. At the moment, that is roughly 10,000 points per SBD you vote in rewards. Authors are ranked in descending order in the feed by the amount of points they have, so the more you vote, the higher up in the feed you are. When other users vote for your articles, you lose an amount of points equal to the value of the vote.

In other words, the more generous you are with voting on other articles through SteemFollower, the more you will receive free post promotion in the form of appearing higher in the feed of "Top Users". The further up you are in this feed, the more eyeballs get to your articles, which increases the likelihood you will receive more votes. That naturally moves you down the list, and the cycle repeats.

Overall, it's a very elegant solution, perhaps better than a similar idea I had that called for cutting vote weights by 50%, but making all votes also pay the voter equally. I never posted about this change because I hadn't finished determining how to change curation for the new hypothetical paradigm. This removes that problem by simply redirecting rewards, rather than changing their payouts, with passive promotion.

The site is in the early stages of development, but there are some nice features. NSFW filters are implemented, as you can see below. There is a promote option, where you can drain your "upvote points" more quickly to be placed higher in the post list. Minnows get a slight boost to their vote coefficient, so they get a little more upvotes in return than they give out. Reputation filters are coming. There is a referral system which gives you a small bump to your earned points. My link is found below if you wish to use it.

SF3.png

NSFW posts are properly tagged. Thumbs up for admin @Reko's post above.

There is also a "follower exchange", where you can sort through users and add them up to a total cap of 30 per day. For each follower you add, your profile will be placed into the follower feeds of others until someone else decides to follow you. In other words, you can earn 30 follower points per day which, if your blog avatar and tagline are interesting or your rep is high, will translate to a roughly equal amount of followers.

You could argue that this is follow for follow, but it's explicitly not, as the target of your follow is not notified via the interface or asked to follow you back. They will only see you if you come up in their random sweep of users. You might argue that you are making low quality follows, but I guess that is a matter of perspective. I choose to be rather selective with who I follow, at least, as much as possible.

I understand the point, as I used to try to preserve my feed, but I am willing to give users with an intereting tagline and avatar a chance. Further, @mahdiyari was agreeable to my suggestion to add reputation filtering (both a minimum platform-wide and adjustable), so once implemented this should be a more useful tool for finding established authors. Certainly better than trolling /New on Steemit.

As a result, though I have used it only a short time, I'm giving SteemFollower my provisional stamp of approval. If you are serious about your blog, you should at least give it a look. It finally resolves some huge game theory issues around voting (making it actually more beneficial to vote for others than to abuse!)

Note: I have no affiliation with Steemfollower, other than liking it!

Here's my referral link if you want to use it (you won't see any notification, just sign-up after using the link): https://steemfollower.com/?r=5490

If you have any additions or errata for this post, please let me know! I will see that they are voted to the top of the comments, and will make the appropriate edits (if possible).

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Sources: @mahdiyari, @reko, SteemFollower
Copyright: @mahdiyari, @reko, SteemFollower

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You have to vote at least 5 times a day to receive upvotes. If you don't upvote your previous points disappear. So you have to use it regularly.
I have been using it for a month now and I have also made a post about it (though my earnings were less compared to yours 😁).
It is good for users who have less steem power, not bad for either for those who have more steem power.
@lexiconical

"If you don't upvote your previous points disappear. So you have to use it regularly."

Thank you, I was not aware of this fact. That explains why there is a user on there with over $500 SBD saved in points!

The good thing is you are allowed to vote at 1% weight, so it is very easy to meet your quota.

"(though my earnings were less compared to yours 😁)."

I bought a big whale vote to help my curators/voters, and to help promote Steem Followers, but I think it came in a bit earlier than I had hoped. It cost over 50 SBD.

Follow for follow or like for like are just circle jerks that promote content regardless of quality. Not saying thats bad, but its something to keep in mind. Anyways, when I tried steempower it didn't do much for me. I felt the same way as @pandorasbox.

Yes, but you must have glossed over where I discussed this. This isn't vote for vote or follow for follow.

Follow for follow is when you follow someone and they follow you back. That's not how this works. This simply keeps you in a pool of others to browse through in a feed, but only if you are also browsing the feed and adding others.

The vote thing is even less vote for vote. You simply view Steemit through a mirror on the site, and vote for quality articles you like as normal. Some days I don't vote for any, because the pool is very small, and you can only see an author's most recently edited article. Other days, I find several good posts from friends who I would have voted on anyway.

The point of the quid pro quo image at the top was to be ironic.

I simply love your articles, what great content and quality of posting you offer the community here on Steemit and abroad.

Thanks a lot :)

Thing-2, I must call your judgment into question in this case.

Me too..lol

It firsted seemed like another useless service for minnows, however I see some merit.

You might argue that you are making low quality follows, but I guess that is a matter of perspective.

I don't think this solves the quality followers issue, however it's a good step.

I think this might evolve in something good, or atleast breeds other good services.

Got to be honest, I was a bit mad at the start that almost blinded me into understanding the content.

You didn't disappoint Lexi :P

I felt much the same as you did. Also, exchange is an awkward word. In this case, they actually mean "an exchange", like a marketplace. Not to exchange votes/followers back and forth.

To be honest, I think the follower exchange is the far less valuable part. The vote "exchange" is very cool. You basically get free passive promotion by appearing in the feed for being generous to other users with your vote. You rarely actually get voted back by the same users you vote for, because they don't see you or even get a notification. They'd have to check their post or Steemd to even see it. It's not quid pro quo, it's a positive-sum gain for the users that are on the service.

I hope Steemit communities can bring similar types of advantages when they go live.

I think that is sometimes true at the moment, but I am starting to see more and more accounts 60 rep or more. Those are very rarely spammers.

Yes, recently I'm noticing the same thing ,but still there are limited and you have to do too many refreshes just to get those high rep accounts. Hopefully, more of such accounts will come in future.😀

i didnt like the interface

Ya that seems unavoidable at the start.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm going to try it out

Yeah, it worths that.

I tried Steemfollower for a while, but never really got the feeling it did much for me. I upvoted a bunch of posts, but couldn't really be sure if my posts were being upvoted back. I kind of abandoned it after that.

Also, like I've said before, I'm chronically low on voting power because I tend to upvote people who comment on my posts. So there's no votes to spare to upvote random people on Steemfollower.
I need that voting slider :-/

"I upvoted a bunch of posts, but couldn't really be sure if my posts were being upvoted back."

I was able to track the votes that came through SF. It seemed to be working:

" @d-pend steemvoter-suggestions-from-my-time-ebaying-automated-game-junk 99.99% = $5.4011"

"Also, like I've said before, I'm chronically low on voting power because I tend to upvote people who comment on my posts. So there's no votes to spare to upvote random people on Steemfollower.
I need that voting slider :-/"

I know precisely what you mean. The slider is key. I do save some power to vote on good articles through SF (if I can find them).

Oh, I guess I must have overlooked that feature, or maybe it wasn't there when I used it a couple months back.

But YES, that slider.. do you know at what point it is unlocked? It's about 200-300 SP, I think? I'm not sure, do you know?

The logs are buried deep in your profile, and only go back 2 days. However, you can check them against Steemd and see that the service is putting you in the feed as promised.

Have you checked to see if Busy lets you use the vote slider at a lower SP?

I didn't yet, good idea! I'll try it in a bit

It's not 200-300 because I still don't have one. I thought I read somewhere that it's after 1,000 vests?

Geez.. well, I guess I'll look again next year or so :-/

Found this with hopefully accurate info https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemreports/steemreports-when-do-you-get-your-vote-slider-the-answer looks like I was wrong.

FYI the esteem app for your phone allows you to set a vote percentage and there may be third party sites that do too. Read the comments too

Thanks! that explains a lot.. about 500 SP then. Still some ways to go, just passed 100

I feel ya. You'll get there ;)

@mahdiyari looked familiar and it turns out he's the same guy who does https://steemauto.com/ which I just found out about yesterday.

Looks like he's quite talented. Thanks for the heads up, will have to check it out.

Thank you for the link. I was not aware of this project. You can certainly tell it is from the same developer.

You’re welcome :)

Hi @lexiconical,
Congrats! Your post has been featured in The Daily Qurator #54. I hope you like it!

Your Quality Curator,
Dr. TLK :D

Thanks TLK =)

My pleasure Lexi-Qurite :D

Steemfollower is great
I am using it since i am on steemit .i frequently use it when i need upvotes rather than followers.
As i am seeing steemfollower is going good day by day.
When i have used steemfollower first time ,steemfollower has 2800 user only but now this amount is increased to more than double .
This will help the newbie to improve.

I have also noticed a rapid increase in total users. That will help fix the problems of low quality posts and followers, as will the incoming reputation filters.

Hmm this is to be happened
As we can see