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! π
Welcome to @heart-to-heart explains Steemit things so everyone can understand!
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 ;)
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?
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!)
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!
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! ;)
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!
The New Kids on the Blockchain:
A Ted Talk by Lorne Lanze giving a humorous and optimistic perspective about how it all works:
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.
Ledger? Like Heath, the swoon-worthy actor who played Joker and came to a tragic end well before his time?
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.
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!
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!
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.)
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!
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.
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:
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!
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!
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!
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,
I do get a lot of bug with busy... don't you?? under google chrome / mac
I use Opera and I haven't had any problems a part from the ones in my first post that have been corrected but let me know the problems you're coming up against so I can relay it! =D
edit: @fabien is here to help!
Hey can you tell me what bug(s) do you get exactly?
The main issue I got is on Writing draft... if I surf elsewere and come back, the only edit I'm allow to do are straight forward typing... Enter key does not change line... pretty boring I do have other minor issue working on the wallet, but that is the main one
We've commit a fix for this issue, it should work as expected by now.
Tx I'll check this out!!!
Thank you for your feedback, indeed there is an issue on editor and drafts we are working on it.
thats really very good post and its helping people lot as i got something from it which i not know before so thank you so much for sharing...
I am happy to hear I can help teach you some thing you did not know :) I hope to keep being able to help!
=D
you are very nice person and i am sure you helping lots of people from your post. what i see in your post is that reading carefully and being more attention because you making post from which i get to know thing..
Aww thank you :) Yes, I really like being able to help <3 I will keep trying to help in any way I can! I love inspiring people and that is what I am trying to do with my blog so thank you for being here with me :)
very nice and informative post..
Thank you! I hope it helped =D I know some of this is tricky stuff, I had a hard time getting to know it all ;)
i can understand my friend its take time to learn and its helping other too..
Simple explanation of decentralization vs centralization, a ledger and the STEEM blockchain. Well done!
I haven't checked out the Busy chat feature yet, so I might go ahead and do that, to see how it compares to using Discord server chats and Steemit.chat. Now I need a system for keeping up with every chat at the same time without switching between Discord, Slack, Telegram, Steemit.chat and now Busy haha!
I suppose chat might be built into Steemit, once they launch their community features, but I haven't seen much info on their upcoming features yet.
I am so excited to see the community features... I wish that would hurry up already ;)
Thank you.. I am blushing, having compliments come from you makes my heart flutter <3
Check it out and let me know what you think. I am really interested about the user experience from someone else's view! I'm going to have to pop into DC and find out more about these other names you're dropping! See you there XO
Me too, I want to see what it's all about!
Haha I am glad to hear it, you always do cool stuff, so don't be shy, when people like it! :D
I'll try to send you a message in the Busy chat :P
Ohhhh, we're going to be connecting 3 ways now! I love it! Looking for your message π
@heart-to-heart absolutely love you and your writing! Fun and easy to digest for all! Well done on all you've achieved and all the great posts you are publishing! Would love to post some links to your articles in our facebook group Steemit Mastermind if you don't mind. Of course you are invited to join us there if you so wish.
Hi @kenistyles thank you so much! I do try to make things easy peasy lemon squeezy. Especially things I find hard myself. I am crazy about learning new things so I figure it's my duty to share what I have learned ;)
Absolutely you may share away, thank you! =D
I have actually decided not to spend time over there anymore on the other platform so as to dedicate myself here but I appreciate the invite and would love it if you'd share whatever you feel over there of mine! Tis an open source platform and this post was meant to be shared (as are all of them!) and I am more than happy to spread the love!
Hope you have a wonderful day my friend =D
I hear ya! Thanks for the reminder and I respect you for fully commitment to us here, thank you. You "get it" and fill the gap between tech heads and mass user adoption.
I'm only in the group over there to help others escape the fbi monitoring program.
Well thank you, I think that's really important distinction and I hope to help people understand the not-so-fluent aspects of the inner-workings.
I hear you, understand and respect you for that job as well! You made me chuckle when I read this! Great job my friend, keep them safe! <3
Guauuu !! Nice post, sometimes you immediately know when you are going to follow someone, and that is the case with you. You should have spent some time writing it up, and for that I thank you very much. I spent like 7 hours today just reading/writing preparing a post over the terrorist attack in Barcelona, and sincerely I wasnt expecting it would be that much work. Now that I have finished editing it for the third time, I just have seen you post and my heart bled for you.
See you again !
Hi @jupiter5 Thank you for taking the time to write such a genuine comment, I always love interacting with people here =D
This post took me much longer than I anticipated as well, I worked on it for 2 weeks really before I posted it including all the study. I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about before trying to explain anything ;)
Thanks for the sweet words, posts take a long time... longer than they may look like at first glance. I have a new respect for this kind of thing. I never thought about it before, I would just read an article and move on, but now knowing how much time it takes me to make one... wowza haha I sure do notice! I will keep my eye out for you, I appreciate your effort as well <3
As big (and full of people) as this site may be, I am starting to notice it is not that big at the end of the day. Certain types of people tend to visit the same kind of posts lets say. It will be my pleasure to write on another one of your posts (now that I follow you ;)
Thanks for the info, I'm new here and this sort of thing is both interesting and useful.
Your most welcome! I try to share the things I learn around here to help make it a bit easier. I had a hard time figuring everything out when I first started so I am happy to share and be of help :)
Hope you're enjoying Steemit! Let me know if you have any questions =D
wow! thank you for sharing this. I'm actually new here as in I just got approved an hour ago, and this post will surely gonna help me in the future. Thank you and God Bless :)
You're very welcome my dear and welcome to Steemit! If there's anything I can help you with feel free to reach out to me, I had a hard time adjusting to everything when I started and am happy to help if I can :) Welcome and happy Steeming XO
thank you soo much dear
With these explaining skills you should be a teacher. Great informative post.
Funny enough, I love teaching and it is part of my life missions to continue to explain and express things in simplified, easy to understand, fun ways that actually click. I want to recreate how we learn so I am thrilled to hear you like my style and that it helped you to understand these complicated concepts =D
Hope you have a great day! Thanks for the boost of confidence <3
whoah. excellent write up. very good points covered :)
this must have taken you sometime to write I would imagine, and your use of other material to help aid the points your trying ti get acroas was perfect
Haha well, you are right with that assumption. It was a project I was working on for a couple of weeks in response to my first piece on busy. I needed to learn everything myself before I could hope to teach it but I hope that this helps others in the way it's helped me =D
Thanks for noticing, you're too kind! XO
That was very in-depth, I enjoyed it.
Whoa, that's actually an innovative reimagining of social networks. Social networks are all fragmented and I have repost the same posts on all of them. With this, I only have to post once. But I can view in many different ways. Same data different lenses. I use Steemit.com when I'm blogging and busy.org when I'm in a casual mood. And of course steemdb.com when I want to look at the inner workings of STEEM.
I love it! That's actually the same for me. I like to be able to switch it up, it makes things fun and gives me a different perspective depending on my mood and what I am after at the time. I like to post on Steemit because I am used to it but I like to scroll around and search on busy.
How do you find busy in comparison? I haven't been able to talk to many people who actually use it! I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about it! Looking forward to hearing from you- thanks for commenting your experience =D
I use busy for nearly all of my mobile browsing. It's easy to scroll and upvote. I leave casual comments with lol's and emojis. On Steemit, I subconsciously make every comment I leave a longer mini-blog post.
This blew me away because I was interacting with the same data differently just by how I was viewing it.
Case in point: I was never too big on photography on Steemit. I felt like it was overkill to have entire Steemit threads centered around individual photos with short captions. But browsing the photography tag on https://steepshot.io/ is making me upvote and comment on photos just like I do on Instagram.
Does your use of the different platforms differ from desktop to mobile?
Also, in a recent blog post of mine, I debated pros and cons of using a username vs. a real name on Steemit. I like your username @heart-to-heart and how it goes with your branding of honest conversations. Would love it if you gave your thoughts on my post!
Wow that's really interesting, thanks for sharing your insight with me! I find it seriously fascinating to hear that you use the same information differently just by how it's presented. That being said, I would have to say I agree with you, I feel like I view Steemit as a more formal system, I like reading and learning and engaging here where over on Busy I find I use it as more of a social media experience, FB-like, user-friendly. I can see the differences for sure and both have their strengths!
I have heard of steepshot but as I don't have Instagram, I don't use it so I have no experience to share there, same goes for my mobile usage. I don't have any of the apps on my phone and hardly use my phone in general so all of my interaction comes from my laptop.
I will absolutely go take a look at it now, to be honest I never even thought about what my user name would be. For some reason it just came to me that this is what it was and as it flows with everything I write and care about it was a perfect fit! I'll save the rest for over there- I'm headed over now =D
Thanks for your insight as well! That's really interesting that most of your interaction comes from laptop usage.
Thanks, see you there!
Well all of it does actually ;) I never use my phone for it! I guess I hadn't thought that most other people would, especially being on the go!
that was a lot on decentralization! super well done... yeah i know, now i've got to pic an image for my homepage, wow, lot of pressure! (-:
Haha well, I just felt like I was so confused before I knew this stuff (really it's not crucially needed to know stuff) but it helps me get a handle on what this whole platform is and how it works =D Let me know when you choose so I can check it out!
This post has been resteemed by @nettybot courtesy of @sammosk from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ). Join us in Discord.
Be sure to go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses, scroll to the bottom of the page, and vote for @netuoso.
This post has been resteemed by @msp-shanehug courtesy of @sammosk from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ). Join us in Discord.
Upvoting this comment will help support @minnowsupport.
I checked out busy.org but have been using esteem lately on my phone. Havent tried posting with it yet, but it is great to keep up with everything on the run!
I haven't attempted busy on my phone so I am curious what that would be like. I also don't have esteem because it keeps me confined to my computer and keeps me slightlyyyy less addicted than I already am ;)
Esteem is an android app. Makes it way too easy to not be chained to your computer. :)
I know what Esteem is, that's what I mean! If I don't have it on my phone, then I am not constantly connected to it and when I leave my computer, am stepping away from Steemit at the same time which makes for a well needed break in a lot of cases ;)
This is a fantastic guide for newbies, well done @heart-to-heart <3
Thanks my new love ;) I am happy to have partied with you earlier and am looking forward to spending more time with you in the future! XO
Come back soon <3
THis is AWESOME! Very well done, i shall go and check it out!
YES! It's like Discord meets FB over there ;) Let me know what you think! XO
You can also check chainBB, for those who like forums
Thanks for sharing, I will definitely take a look at it :)
another excellent job!
very useful. Thanks
Hey @ekitcho I wanted to run some things by you before posting but am happy to hear you like how it turned out! I wish you guys the best over there =D
Thank You for posting such informative material. i have a lot to learn, so this is good for me . i will follow you so i don't miss out on things like this :)
Hi! Welcome to Steemit =D I am happy to hear you find this helpful, I do try to make what I learn easy for everyone to understand so yes, I will continue posting tips and tricks like this in the future! Let me know if you have any questions, I would be happy to help! XO
Wow, so much information!
I can get pretty intense when I put my heart into things ;)
@heart-to-heart This answered several questions I had... new here too.. thank you for the information @jeejee
Hey @jeejee your welcome! I am more than happy to help however I can! I know what it's like, I still have no idea what's going on sometimes ;)
Hope you're enjoying it here- if you have any more questions I'd be happy to see if I could answer them =D
Thank you @heart-to-heart very much! I'm looking forward to learning and growing in Steemit community πβ€οΈ
@heart-to-heart Thanks for the amazing info. You made it clear and nice. Thanks for sharing and keep up the great work :D
You are very welcome :) I am more than happy to share what I know! Especially in an easy to understand way that teaching has afforded me =D
I'm happy to hear it's being seen and appreciated! I will continue to post helpful blogs like this as I come across things I believe need to be shared! Hope you have a great weekend =D
It's always great to have people like you around :D
Have a great weekend too :D
@heart-to-heart
you a great lady ... always sharing vital info for minnows like me... thanks for this posts...i now get things clearer...
You're welcome @kenhudoy :) I am very happy to be able to help! If you need anything else, feel free to ask! I will try my best =D
thanks dear @heart-to-heart ...just a few things as a minnow needed guide
need their list in assenting order and how each works...
Thanks dear... you the best and also very cute!
this is a very great post.
Thank you for your kind words, I do try my best to be helpful on here =D I just wrote another how to last night! Hope it helps <3