As an experiment I won't have any images in this post. Are they essential to get noticed? I know some people just want to get their thoughts out there without having to worry about finding suitable pictures. I am thinking about working on some tools to make it easier to do that, e.g. an applet that takes a Wikimedia image you are viewing and generates the link to paste into your post. I just need to learn enough Javascript or something to do that.
It's been another good week for me on Steemit. I've reached a reputation of 66 and have over 350 followers. According to Dead Followers 237 of those have posted in the last month and from Steem.cool I see I need 10,000 billion 'REP' to get to the next level and I have 7.4 million Vest. 10 million Vest is considered what you need to be a 'dolphin'. For now I'm a large minnow.
And so, to business:
- a post about where they came from.@sokal is a fellow guitar enthusiast who is sending me some picks for my collection from Canada. He has
- @ijavee is a new Steemian and possibly the oldest at 90. He's got some cool stories of his life in the organic food business
- a blog. He's still figuring out what this site is about, so let's help him out.@andyc is someone I met on the (now dead) identi.ca microblogging site. He's an open source enthusiast who has done podcasts and has
I think Steemit should appeal to those in the open source world who would rather not use proprietary sites. We have control of our data here and Steemit cannot easily be shut down as some other social sites have been (Tsu, Friendfeed, Orkut, Google Buzz). It's also a great platform for developers. I've said a few times that I plan to play around with some Steemit data. It's partly as an exercise in Python programming, but I also want to help the community. We already have lots of add-ons, but I'm sure there's lots more potential.
I won't include my usual signature block. There's been some discussion of having the option to store on against a profile so you can automatically add it to every post. I think most people just copy it from a local file each time. We did just get notifications, so that's a sign of the constant evolution on this site. It's still in beta, but steadily gaining the features it needs for mainstream acceptance.
Steem on!
I am very interested to see the results of your 'non-photo' experiment. Just my opinion based upon my findings, that damn little thumbnail is vital. So, again, I look forward to your results. Congrats on your achievements thus far. I know you'll continue to shine.
Cheers. It might be good to have a default image to appear in the feed, e.g. the profile avatar, or a way to set a signature that can include images. We need the minimum of barriers to people just getting their posts out there.
I totally agree. Yes, a default image and a signature option would be fantastic and really a no brainer for what what is trying to be accomplished here. Those a great ideas!
Great post ! You are so close to being a Dolphin ! Im about the same as you with followers and rep ! I like your picks and will check them out ! But please add some photos or something next time ! Lol ! I think they are essential ! Haha ! Steem on !👍😎😂♨
I think it could show your profile pic by default so we have something. Some people are just not into pictures or emoticons.
Awe ! Ok ! I agree I just know from earlier on in steemit that pictures help break up a story so it doesnt seem to long , and the majority likes them so i use them ! Lol ! Whatever works , works ! Thanks steem on !👍
Maybe I'm a professional contrarian (or just bloody weird) but yesterday I found my brain scanning down my feed, specifically for posts without images in an effort to find longer form classic blog style posts.
I see Medium indicates how long a post will take to read. That can be useful. Some longer reads I'd want to bookmark for later. The esteem app has bookmarks.
Thanks Steve. Regarding images, although I have Google Drive, Dropbox available, I found http://www.steemimg.com/ very useful as it offers the Markdown markup, thumbnails etc.
I haven't used that one yet. The Steemit roadmap says that image uploading will be available fairly soon. People just expect that from sites like this. They won't want images in the blockchain and there are costs to running a hosting site.
I was reading about IPFS. Looks interesting.
My plan exactly. I have an idea for two helpers / markdown builders. One for creating the image markdown with or without the link. The other for building a link to a post inside Steemit.
Since i have a steemit related domain now I will put these, and any future builders, on http://steemgnome.com :)
Have a great weekend!
I have a script to get images from my PC onto posts, but it's very specific to my needs. I'll post about any others I do