Have you ever noticed how the same authors used to dominate the frontpage day after day. This was mostly due to the whales and their bots featuring the same people over and over. Soon, a bunch of dolphines joined the party with their bots, upvoting the authors that whales usually upvote, and thus cashing in on nice curation rewards.
You could see it very clearly. Suppose a featured author posted something new at 4AM Saturday. 14 minutes later his post would have $1.25 in rewards. A minute after that, his post would suddenly jump to $1,293 after receiving a dump of whale bot love. And thus same people would earn thousands of dollars, day after day, for posting anything at anytime (anyone remember the imposter @dashpaymag).
The rest of Steemit got 2 cents.
Until today.
Change
I have noticed a very sudden shift in whale voting behavior.
A few major indicators are:
- a reduction in average top earner payouts (frontpage)
- a massive cleanup of author lists from whale upvote bots
- whales are now A LOT more active in upvoting new authors
Exciting times ahead
Our whale friends won't make as much money as they used to. Curating many small posts is not as profitable as betting on a couple dozen sure winners.
Our top authors aren't going to make as much money as they used to. Guaranteed thousands of dollars per post are gone.
New authors are going to see an instant reward for their good work. It used to be that the authors would make $0 for many of their posts, until eventually they got a winner. With this new distribution of rewards, authors will be able to receive meaningful rewards that provide encouragement and a feedback signal. It is much easier to see you've gotten better if your reward progression is $0.15, $3.5, $16, $128, $333, than if you make $0.02 on 20 posts and than one hits a $1,000. This will allow you to experiment and improve much faster.
And finally, we are breaking into new topics. This is an opportunity for all of us to start something new, something great.
What are you waiting for?
This is your opportunity
Don't blow it up.
Do not blog about Steemit
Steemit is great because X, and I love Steemit, and I bought $20 worth of Facebook ads now give me $2,000 in rewards - style posts are unlikely to get much attention in the future.
Unless you have something useful to contribute, such as a powerful new idea, new tool, design, documentation etc, I would suggest to pick something else to talk about.
Be an ice-breaker - start a new topic
We have 45,000 members, and I'b be damned if all of us are just versed in 3 skills:
- talking about steemit
- introducing ourselves
- taking pictures for #art
There are so many other things to talk about. I am personally interested in trading, investing, books (non-fiction), technology, food, nature and music.
What are you into?
Look at all of your interests. Than pick a niche - something that you're profoundly in love it. Something very unique to you, something that makes you-you.
Delight us.
This great news, there are some really good authors here i'd love to see getting rewarded more than 0.02 sd a post.
I started a new topic, computer-graphics. Doesn't seem to get much love though.
i'm interested
I enjoyed your article! Cheers
I'm into sketches and CGI. Check out my posts. I'm gone follow you.
I have slightly different observations:
(1) I think some of the reduction in the top average earners has to do with the price of Steem being lower.
(2) Another thing that has changed is that minnows are not piggy-backing on trending posts as much. At it's height top trending posts were getting 1000 votes, the @brendazambran post got just over 600. Maybe low SP holders are finally cottoning on that whilst piling votes onto an already popular posts benefits the author. It doesn't give them much in terms of curation rewards.
I must confess, I haven't been paying much attention to whales recently so they may have changed their strategy. I do hope they do pay a bit more attention to good quality niche authors. However I also hope they continue to reward newcomers that bring value to the platform too.
As for whale bots that upvote based on author lists... they are a law unto themselves!
I started working on a tool that will help whales find good content based on dolphin vote momentum. That is how I noticed the shift. Its not like they switched 100%, but its noticeable.
Great - your tool sounds interesting. It would be great to see it once it's done.
I will release it as a web app for everyone.
I need that tool, like right now! I've been really having a hard time finding new authors that I love.....I know they are there, but it takes too much time! thanks in advance for doing this.
I forgot to address your 1. point. The lower Steem price has been partially offset by an increase in the daily rewards pool.
i think they chcanged the algorithm of whats on the front page, which is good (though it doesnt solve the problem) there are a couple of huge posts that you don't seem to see on the front page... upi until this afternoon, there were two 15K posts on the front page.
I think the front page still looks pretty steem heavy.
But users can do their bit by upvoting 5 non-steem posts a day, preferably when they are just 30 minutes old (so a genuine job of curating and discovering).
I upvote U
I have certainly noticed this change in whale behavior! My glass blogging has started to gain a lot of traction with each new post :) i have also noticed many deserving topics finally getting the recognition they deserve.
great read sir.
Hopefully this is going to improve and giving more encouragement to contributors. Happy Steeming!
The problem I see is the halo effect. People will vote more for things that have already been voted for too much already.
The herd mentality...That is a big problem here
This is how humans and lemmings work. Not a exclusive problem on Steemit. That's why Britney Spears was able to sell Millions of records, for example.
Hey i just joined now but i can feel with you already : D we should be sharing and exploring life in all its weird social media ways. Let us spread the love rather then talking about it. Let us help the dolphins come alive and make sure theyll be swimming to the ocean of consciousness.
Whatever. Got a bit lost there ;) anyways great post! Thanks <3
While the whales are free to vote as they please (in my opinion) I am excited to see if this starts to broaden things out a bit more. Just having that one post pop for somebody adds huge fuel to their creative fire, hopefully inspiring more great content in their preferred topics.
Lets hope so. would love some whale love all over my face.
Thanks for shaping the community! Looking forward to it's development :-)
If this observation or the trend that you've noticed is real it could really mean that the playing field will be more level for all of us. This is encouraging. I hope that you are right.
Your suggestions about new topics are also very valid. It will happen sooner or later but it is better to be sooner :)
Certainly a welcome move. Can't wait to see a diversity of content with niche topics.
I also see a sharp rise in re-distribution in the last 2-3 days. If this rapid pace is maintained, I might have to pull forward my follow-up distribution trends post to next week.
Wow, it is seems to be very good news, especially in front of upcoming competitions between blockchain social networks ( i mean Decent, Yours, Synereo)
Why is it that the whales get to decide what trends on the front page and what doesn't? If the platform is for the good of the community, shouldn't the community decide?
I touched on a similar subject in my post steemit is not a meritocracy.
How is this article about art anyhow ?
Been a great shift (my perspective) to see them using less of their voting power and rewarding alternate content. Great post
Guys, it sounds nice and I have faith in the wales. I don't agree with them from time to time, maybe I would thought different but hey: this is their work. I just using their work.
It's interesting how everything evolved from one week to another. It's so quick.
I found something else to focus: commenting a lot, in detail. That's my way to help the platform. I'm posting something serious very rarely (one a week). It allows me to get detached from the money race.
And another thing (important for me): this personal shift brings me more happiness. It comforts me. Pleases me without adding more and more stress.
I just told you my personal perspective because I think relaxing (in any way you want) pays out more in the long term. Not with money.
You already know that. I didn't want to be arrogant or a pretentious prick. Sorry if I behaved like one.
Cheers
I don't think it's so much that the whales are changing their strategy as a lot of users came here with dollar signs in their eyes and they didn't get what they were hoping for, so they gave up. I'd love to be wrong and find out the whales are voting more for smaller people. At least the stream seems to be less clogged with random stuff. Hopefully it will be a better time for everyone soon.
it's an interesting intellectual (well sorta lol) ecosystem. Naturally the interest is in making money, and i hope I do from my post, but it's also disciplining me. I've started a number of folders collecting ideas for posts and will do a couple a week. Some of those will be expanded later into longer articles and videos. So whether or not I get rewarded here does make a bit of difference, but overall my best reward is disciplining myself to write again.
that's good news to hear. I had 4 posts yesterday and 2 of them get some lunch money but from the trend of low votes on 2 of the post, I think we are still missing some diversity. My 2 food photography got some interest but write up about fitness event and a poem on Steemit were not so well receive.
So, I'm laughing to myself thinking we are a bunch of people here who likes to eat, feel images and not so much into reading and don't care much about exercise. Maybe another experiment will be more insightful if a few posts of different topics were posted almost the same time to see how people react.
I am actually seeing a downward trend in my rewards haha.
Nice to see this new approach.
Your rep is the result of your hateful witch hunts. You have no one but yourself to blame.