Why I Use Steampeak (And Why You Should Too!)
Hello Steemit!
Got an interesting post for you guys today and one that I normally wouldn't do, however I've been watching the improvements that @steempeak has been making over the last few weeks and I genuinely believe that it's quickly becoming the interface with which to connect to the Steem blockchain.
Overview
Steempeak is a user interface that re-imagines Steemit as a social platform. Like Steemit.com or Busy.org it allows basic user actions like posting, commenting, voting, flagging and re-steeming. However, what sets Steempeak apart are additional features that aren't available on the native Steemit interface which are highly valuable to content creators. These tools vastly expand the ways in which a user can tailor their experience on the blockchain, helping to create a more seamless and intuitive user experience.
Key Features
- Vote-strength sliders (available to all users)
- Curation trail bookmarking
- User favoriting
- Tag favoriting
- Feed customization (portfolio or linear)
- Extended profile options
- In-line post previewing
- Post scheduling
- Post templates
- Drafts
- Beneficiaries
- And more!
Need more prompting? Let me show you around!
A Visual Guide
The Homepage
When you first log-in to Steempeak, this is the page that you will be greeted with. You'll notice that it's not the bare-bones feed that you see when you load up Steemit.com, there are a few added elements. In the middle, of course, is your feed, which can be filtered to exclude re-steemed content and also toggled between portfolio and linear view using the buttons on the top right. Prominently featured on the left and the right are your favorites, whether it's topics (tags), curators or users.
The ability to manually follow a curation trail is new and is only being visibly offered on select accounts right now (@curie being the only one that I am aware of), however you can follow any user's curation trail by visiting http://steempeak.com/@<user>/trail.
Rather than delegating your votes through an auto-trail using a service like SteemAuto, this offering allows you to follow a trail and upvote content you specifically like, rather than just any content the trail upvotes. This kind of discretionary use is par for the course on Steempeak, with other options like vote-strength sliders that show the proportionate STU amount and post-scheduling helping to increase accessibility for all users.
There are other helpful features for post editing like in-line preview. Rather than being hidden at the bottom of the draft page like on Steemit native, a live preview of your post is visible to the right of your editing field. This is helpful for formatting with bold, italics, headers, images and dividers and understanding the general flow of your article or content.
Like normal, when you're finished writing you add your tags and determine the payout split. Before posting using Steempeak, however, you can also review a number of helpful features like Beneficiaries (which allow you to allocate a % of the post's rewards to another user or service), self-upvote, and scheduling. I scheduled this post for 2:00 PM PST today, for example, but finished it last night.
The final area of benefit for content creators is the ability to save drafts and create templates for posting. Where before I used Google Drive to store all of my writing, now I can save drafts directly to the Steempeak for later editing. Templates allow me to speed up the process of adding the extra fluff I do to the beginning and end of each of my posts.
I also use templates to create the end of day reports for @tagalong, significantly reducing the time it takes to produce them after each day of curating.
Summary
If you use Steemit a lot for long-form content, blogging, curating or browsing, Steempeak is the app for you. Its intuitive interface and leading-edge features make it the premier platform to browse the Steem blockchain. Emphasis on user discretion, accessibility and customization help make sure that the platform can be tailored to each individual user's preferences. Stop wasting time with an out-dated design and step into the modern Steemit experience.
That's all for now, thanks for reading! (Notice me @steempeak)
Until next time,
~ Mako
Thanks for reading!
Check out my most recent posts here:
Entry for Zen Coloring Contest #36 - Temporal Introspection
3 Minute Review - Kingdom: New Lands
My Current Ongoing Story:
Kayde's Tale (Part 1)
Alora's Tale (Part 2)
Kayde & Alora's Tale (Part 3)
I think you made your case well enough. I will be going back to testing steempeak. If I get pissed off at it I will spam discord. ;)
Spam Discord anyways, spamming Discord is fun ;)
~ Mako
Oh,man what a coincidence.I kept asking to people why some people use steempeak and nobody had an explanation.Now I see your post and realized why people use it.
Nice thinking.Thanks for the information that I was looking for.
My pleasure Phillip! Thanks for reading :)
~ Mako
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It is a much prettier platform and does have a lot more functionality. The slider is better now since HF20, prior to if a vote value was too low it would fail sometimes.
Good analysis of this dapp though never used it..buti believe similar features are already available in other dapps like esteem or busy....what is more in it ?
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I agree that Steempeak has a lot of awesome features, but for some reason I tend to forget it exists regularly. I'm so used to SteemIt...
When I remember it is there, I use it mainly to schedule my posts. For the writing of the post, I still use the SteemIt editor. With the Steem-Plus extension installed, I can see my preview right next to the editor too. And I really think it is inconvenient having to scroll all the way up to the top of the Steempeak editor every time you want to add an image. That really bothers me so I write on SteemIt, then copy and paste into Steempeak if I want to schedule my post.
I should use the rest of the site more often, instead of staying with the dinosaur that is called SteemIt. After the initial exploring right after it launched, I haven't been using it a lot.
Checking out the new updates is on my to-do list for tomorrow.
Posted using Partiko Android
Well done bud! This is a great little insight into Steempeak. I'm really liking the idea of templates and scheduled posting, will help out an awful lot with BuddyUP.
I've also just been using there Peakmonsters feature for selling Steem Monsters cards, super handy.
I'm wondering, what other types of handy features have you found while you have been using the front end? Any little-hidden gems you decided to keep out of the post?
I really just like their interface, it feels like a modern social platform without the hassle of a skin like busy or esteem. One thing I didn’t mention was the ability to filter your notifications. I get a lot of tiny curation rewards that I really don’t care about, and I can turn those off to help clean up my notification feed.
~ Mako
Oh nice, that is really handy actually. I'm really enjoying the front end so far, the notifications alone are superb.
Thanks for the little tip there about the notification filters too, I'll give that a little adjustment now.
My pleasure!
~ Mako
I strive not to be a man of success, but rather to be a man of value.