Great News! Your Steemit Guide Is Here! Everything you didn't know you didn't know about where Steemit comes from featuring brand new cover photos, bookmarks, drafts, tips and more!

I'm here to make it easy for you and show you how! 💜

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Welcome to @heart-to-heart explains Steemit things so everyone can understand!

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Have you found yourself wondering what was going on in here?
Things a bit confusing for you? Terminology got your face all scrunched up? Steemit is a great big ocean for us tiny fishies and things can be quite complicated. Blockchain? Node? Decentralization?
I have been getting asked a lot of questions lately so I decided to be teacher for the day! Here are Steemit's insides explained very simply so you can use some great new features! To explain how to use them, I have to first explain how it all works! I'll keep it easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, I promise! ;)

For starters, have you noticed that you can customize your profile now by adding a cover photo to your blog?

You may have seen other articles about this already as the update excites Steemit users around the globe but my friends, do not pass this particular article by. I have so much more to offer you here and I hope you read on as I attempt to explain Steemitverse from the perspective of a newbie with keen dedication and a heart filled of Steem ;)

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While this new cover photo feature is most certainly a welcomed update, @busy.org has already incorporated this feature as per my last article reviewing the up and coming site.

To change your cover photo, go to your settings and paste a URL into the space provided like this:

(At the moment, there is no way to move it so that it sits where you want like on FB.)

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I originally wrote about busy.org as a research project, signing up and playing around with it from the inside since no one seemed to have the answers I was looking for! While I was doing so, I updated my cover photo and so when Steemit came out with this new feature, my chosen image automatically showed up on my profile! Pretty cool right?

Here is a shot of my Steemit profile:

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Here is my busy.org profile:

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I used to be in love with the fact that busy let me customize my profile more than Steemit, but now as you can see, at first glance, Steemit offers a lot more access to what's going on in terms of posts on my profile with its layout.

But wait a minute... what does Busy.org have to do with Steemit?

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Great Question! Let's veer off for a minute to cover some things for the newbies that may not be clear and helped me wrap my head around all this!

(If you're like me, you might be wondering what the heck I am talking about. I certainly know that when I first joined, I didn't know any of this so, let's start here!)

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Steemit sits on a 'blockchain' and is powered by said blockchain's technology.

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Hmmm... maybe we need something a bit more helpful... don't you agree? Let's try a picture!

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You definitely don't need to know this to use Steemit or Busy but I am a firm believer in 'the more you know' philosophy! ;)

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I like this analogy shared by blockgeeks:

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Here is that analogy of blockchain shared in the same article, expanded upon by William Mougayar, a Venture advisor, 4x entrepreneur, marketer, strategist and
blockchain specialist (who blew my mind with this crystal-clear example!):

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Everything that goes onto the blockchain is transparently accessible, authenticated and audited.

The bitcoin blockchain was the first of its kind but it's not the only one out there. You are using one right now being on Steemit!

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The New Kids on the Blockchain:

A Ted Talk by Lorne Lanze giving a humorous and optimistic perspective about how it all works:

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I keep hearing blockchain referred to as decentralized!

What does decentralized mean?

Let's say decentralized is a toy everyone can play with and have access to at any time whereas centralized is only shared with a select group of friends who have the collective as well as individual power to decide who they share it with.

Here's a fun fact you might have heard mentioned in the Ted Talk I shared above, wiki is a great example of decentralized information because it is available as open-source and anyone can read it! You can type in anything you want on it right now and be presented with a huge amount of verified information on it!

In contrast, centralized information systems of the past like Lanze's example of the encyclopedia used to limit their information to subscribers and therefore, not everyone could view the information! That caused a lot of problems with information and records being kept from the public eye (especially legal, medical and political! Imagine that!) It also took much longer to edit, verify and send said information where now, with the internet, it happens almost instantaneously!

I will let our open-sourced friend wiki take over for me on this part if you're wanting to learn more.

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Ledger? Like Heath, the swoon-worthy actor who played Joker and came to a tragic end well before his time?

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No, no, no! Get your head out of the gutter (as momma would say!)
A ledger is an account balance! Money going in, money going out. You probably have many interactions with this in your day to day life. Your online banking is a great example but if we were to use Steemit as another example, I can show you what my account looks like here! Steemd.com operates on the blockchain and is publishing my verified ledger to the public.

Everything is all out in the open so there are no surprises, no counterfeits, no transactional errors since it's been authenticated before it gets posted to the block.

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Are you starting to get it?

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So, here we see my open-source, verified log of account history.

Everything I do on the blockchain is accounted for on this list and verified by 'witnesses' (trusted and voted on members of the community) and 'miners' who actively work at authenticating each transaction. Once the transaction has been verified by multiple of the computers whose job is to audit these transactions in a competition with the other computers to earn coins... (you know what, this is the easy guide, let's not worry about this for now.)

The important part is after authentication, it is then posted in what we call a 'block'.

I wanted to show you a block on steemd.com but unfortunately there is node maintenance in process over there so I can't show you a shot of it. However, it's just a grouping of what has happened in that particular 'block' of time and sequenced linearly together with all the other blocks of time, creating the (you guessed it!) blockchain!

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So, blocks are groups of information being sent through the blockchain and then verified by 'miners.' Bitcoin's block time is adjusted to maintain one block per ten minutes however, Steem's blockchain is adjusted to be around 3 minutes (instead of 10) making it a more responsive network which can handle more transactions. Once they have been authenticated, they are posted publicly and remain online, open source without ability to be taken down. This is how we can prevent corruption and foster trust. (thanks @sammosk for helping me get the Steem version accurate!)

I don't know about you all, but I am LARGELY in favor of that!

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PS while we're here, in case you're an inquisitive little fishy like myself, a node in botany refers to a stem where more leaves emerge ie: a pathway. Well, a networking node is not much different and can receive, create, store or send data along distributed network routes. So that error we saw in the last part (which sparked my interest) means there is a connection loss between where I am entering (at the stem) to where the communication is (at the leaf.)

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OK, I think we're all caught up now!

Now that I've schooled ya in stuff you honestly don't need to know but are now all the more versed in lingo to use around these waters ;) I'll tell you how it applies to this article!

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Don't be fooled, Busy.org is not independent of Steemit, both sit on the Steem blockchain!

Now you know why I needed to walk you through all of the above!;)

Let's look at the two platforms as sisters. Each born from the same parents, each with their own characteristics and quirks to offer but also sharing much of the same DNA that came from their parents.

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For example, when I posted my blog about Busy, I was receiving responses based on the idea that it was one vs the other, a battle of loyalty almost. I got the feeling that people thought if they 'switched over to Busy' it would be betraying Steemit but as far as I can tell, that isn't so as they are meant to be cooperative platforms and I use them interchangeably based on their strengths.

The confusion could perhaps also have been how I presented it (I admit, I did not nearly understand all of this above information at the time of my first entry!) However, whatever the case for the confusion was, I hope this has changed that and you see that Busy is utilizing the same technology to give us what is simply another experience.

Steemit.com operates on a decentralized, open-source platform right? Well, so does Busy (and many other platforms). In this way, they use the available technology to grow and improve on what is already published here. With this open-source information, we will see innovation at levels we have never seen before. Think of it as artists coming together and sharing their techniques with each other in effort to create more beauty. That's what is happening here.

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Updates:

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For those of you who have not read the first post see it here however, while I won't go into them in as much detail here, Busy offers some really game-changing features such as:

• Drafts: create more than one post at a time without losing your work!
• Bookmark option to save posts!
• Separating 'Resteems' from your own content!
• The ability to send a 'tip' to the author in desired amount!
• Voting Power preview on profile for easy access!

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Posts:

The old programming was glitching which is a shame because I genuinely enjoyed using it for it's simplicity. They've recoded it and now it offers a simple task bar feature to edit your text with ease.

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Obviously I blocked some of my text with the bar but you get how it works!

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Group Chat:

Well, since Busy is so new, it seems to be lacking participants in its chatrooms however, I see it being huge once people start finding out about it and using it more frequently! As you'll be able to see from my screenshot of the Streemit group chat, there isn't much going on at the present.

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Friendly chat:

A question I had for the busy team was how to communicate with those I did not have on my sidebar chat. Only people you follow will show up for you there however, you can search anyone and connect with them on the message option atop their profile. I'll show you the chat bar:

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Alright class ;) I think that is all the time we have for today!

We covered a lot of material and I wouldn't want you to feel like I overwhelmed you!

I hope you have fun reading about how Steemit operates and how Busy.org can be a wonderful additive to your user experience. I am very motivated to continue helping this community understand aspects which confused me terribly when I first joined and use my teacher personality to help. I hope you find it useful. Again, the more you know!

I encourage everyone to check out busy.org, you can check out my post for how to sign up and navigate the waves. I also encourage supporting other projects popping out of the ground here, I am going to continue to keep my eyes open for them and will share them with you as I find them!

The Steem blockchain was created to foster this new way for us and I say we support and encourage those who are creating a transparent, open-sourced world upon it!

Times are changing and this new sharing of information is monumental to our development and I for one, am excited to be involved!

If you liked this post, please connect with me in the comments!

I truly love hearing from you and getting to connect with people from all over this planet as we share ideas and stories with each other!
Note, I am no expert, I'm still new here too but I am a gal with a passion for learning and teaching what I know! If anything you read here deserves some extra input, I would love to know!

For the very most part my blog is centered around inspiring topics that will make you smile, laugh, book plane tickets and even salivate as I get creative in the kitchen. I try to share the the things in life that bring me joy and I hope they bring joy to you too!

Sending you love, as always.

XO,