Witnesses. Who are they?

Witnesses are our peers. They are other members of Steemit who; Using their own money, pay to rent or maintain their own Steemit servers which process all of our upvotes, blogs, comments, and transfers on this platform. Essentially, this helps secure the network, since every witness maintains a server with a constantly updating version of Steemit. Unlike Facebook, which has a main server room- That stores all of our information, and can change it at any time without our authorization.

Why is this important?

Do you remember when Facebook used to be awesome? No ads, no autoplay videos- No spam? Every 5th post is now a sponsored ad. Facebook isn't the product. We are.

Steem witnesses prevent this corruption, by voting on all changes to the platform through their witnesses. If ever a majority of the witnesses do not like the proposed changes to the platform, they would only have to refuse the latest upgrade, and Steemit would force-fork.

There appear to be two different witnesses here on Steemit. There are technical witnesses, that create apps on top of the Steemit blockchain-AKA developers. And there are social Witnesses who help the community stay motivated and answer questions about the platform.

Most of my followers are familiar with @surpassinggoogle. And this is where I will go on a bit of a rant-

Many of us have been on the receiving end of votes from @surpassinggoogle. Especially Filipinos, since he has committed himself to helping our community grow- And it is thriving because of his help. If you have gotten an upvote from him, and haven't voted for him to be a witness, do it now. It doesn't cost you anything but 10 seconds of your time to cast a quick vote. After all, you can vote for 30 witnesses in total, so make @steemgigs one of them.

When I first joined Steemit I was totally lost. I had no friends on here and didn't know where to start or how to navigate the platform. My first few blogs weren't good, barely made a dollar lol ;D

I found a couple of Steemians online, made friends with them, and joined a few discord channels to learn more. About 2 weeks later, I was super discouraged and figured Steemit wasn't for me. I didn't feel like I fit in anywhere, and felt like I was failing. Then, I met @surpassinggoogle who gave me some great advice, and motivation to keep steeming and to help me climb my ladder-Reinvest in myself.

He told me that if I stuck with it, he would help when he could, and got me to invite many of my close friends to join as well. He didn't know me or owe me anything. What could I offer him in return? And true to his word, he kept an eye on me and my blogs and helped me find my groove here.

Because of his help, I dedicated myself to also helping as many people here as I can find time for. I owe him a lot, and can honestly say that if he just decided to pass me by, I would have missed a whole lot these past 6 months.

So my sincerest thank you to Terry for everything that you do for the whole Steemit Community.

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Please, do the community a favor and support @steemgigs, Terry who blogs using @surpassinggoogle, as a witness.

How to vote:

1.) - Go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses

2.)- Scroll down to bottom, and type in steemgigs and click vote. (You can only vote once per witness if you try to vote again the original vote will get deleted.)

3.)- Come back here and tell me you voted for him ;)

XOXO,

Gilaine