Check their Github repos to find out.
STEEM
STEEM is the actual core blockchain code for the STEEM token. This is what matters most for this ecosystem and where all the value is really created. To understand why STEEM is more valuable than Steemit, please see: STEEM Is NOT Steemit. STEEM Is More Valuable Than Steemit.
Steemit (Condenser)
Steemit, the website, is called Condenser on Github. It's the code that creates the interface most people use when interacting with the STEEM blockchain. In many ways, it's just a reference implementation for what's possible. At the same time, Steemit, inc has committed resources to improving it and is actively developing it as you can see here.
Jussi
Jussi is a JSON-RPC 2.0 Reverse Proxy Frontend for Steemit. In non-techno speak, that means Jussi makes Steemit scale. When someone pulls up a page on Steemit, a reverse proxy allows a cache to serve up that page without having to go all the way to the blockchain data which would be orders of magnitude slower.
Steem-js
Steem.js is the official JavaScript library for the Steem blockchain. Many third-party applications (i.e. not developed by Steemit, inc) that integrate with Steem (examples of third-party applications include DTube, DLive, Busy.org, Utopian, etc) use steem-js.
Steem-python
Steem-python is the official Python library for the Steem blockchain. Similar to Steem-js, this library is used by Python developers for building applications built in Python which use the STEEM blockchain.
Hivemind
Hivemind is an off-chain consensus layer for Steem communities and API server for social features like feeds and follows. This keeps track of all the stuff that is not part of the core blockchain, but needed for the overall social media experience. When people talk about "Communities" needing to be implemented, this is what they mean. You can see the Communities Draft Spec here.
Steemconnect and SteemConnect2 (sc2-sdk)
Steemconnect and SteemConnect2 are JavaScript SDKs which most 3rd party applications use to get your permission to interact with the STEEM blockchain on your behalf. This is an important part of the STEEM ecosystem as it creates a trusted website where people can confidently enter their password without having concerns about giving out their keys to various applications. Through this approach, you can grant permissions and later revoke them without the application you're using ever knowing your actual password.
There are more projects we could talk about and view on the official Steemit, Inc Github such as devportal, imagehoster, dsteem (RPC client), conveyor (APIs), redeemer (SP Delegation Tools), overseer (User Analytics Telemetry Receiver/Multiplexer), yo (Modular event-driven notification service), and others.
Why should you care?
The reason I'm highliting this activity can be summarized in one sentance:
Put up or shut up.
It's so easy to criticize. It's much more difficult to build and create. Some (myself included) have criticized Steemit, inc, the team, or the leadership without always doing the work to better understanding what's actually going on. If your answer is, "But I'm not a developer. I can't read code to know what any of this means." Okay, fair enough, but that gets back to the "put up" part. If we have a valid criticism of anything, we should fully understand it first in order for our input to be valid. It's easy to say "They should do this" or "They should do that," but ultimately we're making assumptions unless we have enough information. Lots of information is out there on Github for those who are willing to look at it and understand it.
AND I think it's valid to expect more "official" communication from Steemit, inc via the accounts @steemitblog and @steemitdev. That said, maybe we shouldn't expect them to do everything around here. We have a lot of developers here, and they, if they choose to, can be rewarded for writing posts about the Github activity they see and adding to the #steemdev tag. That could help Steemit, inc.
Beyond just the code, there's also business development going on:
I could go into more, but I think you get the idea. I had a discussion with @andrarchy recently where I vented a little bit about some of my concerns, and he did a great job of giving me more perspective. As the community liaison, I'm hopeful he'll be further empowered by Steemit, inc to be a more active spokesperson for what they are doing and how it will benefit us all.
In summary, let's find out how we can help Steemit, inc instead of just pointing out the issues we see. This post highlighting their Github activity over the last month is my attempt to help. What can you contribute?
This is an amazing blockchain with a solid development team, and I'm very excited about the future.
I hope you are too.
Witnesses: you can help here also. Regular communication is important for building a valuable reputation for yourself and the STEEM blockchain. Your voice matters.
Thank you Luke!!
100% right sir
People despite their knowledge will always question.
It's the discussion that brings consensus and enlightenment. :)
Steemit is the best social media for discussion, disagreement, and arguing to generate consensus, learning, innovation, involvement, motivation, and above all participation in some direct democracy.
If we want motivated community, put people in constructive conflict to approach the Truth.
Open discussions is the basic foundation of Free speech, information, education, and communication, building the pillars of our freedom of choice.
I agree! I definitely didn't want my post to be a form of silencing any one. On the contrary, I think we should all be talking more (including Steemit, inc) about this stuff. When we do so, we should be informed. If we aren't, our suggestions about prioritization may actually be hurtful instead of helpful. If we promoted Steemit, as an example, before the STEEM blockchain could handle millions and millions of new users, we may create worse problems.
I know you are always moved by good intentions and you open good discussions to bring light on Steemit.
On Steemfest2 there was a promise of the developing team to create an open direct dialog with the Steemian citizens.
I didn't have time to check if this dialogue has been started or getting better but this is the best way to develop steemit, by talking to the people that are supplying the real essence of steemit growth...quality content and bloggers making citizen journalism.
And keep all the good vibe you always try to put on Steemit.
Keep opening good reflections and constructive discussions.
Thanks to all your human valued work without the Money God guidelines that sometimes blinfold peoples reasoning.
On the long term human values allways create more value then short term money values.
What is your understanding of why Dan Larimer has moved on? AFAIK, he is no longer a part of the development team. Is that right?
I'm looking forward to seeing how EOS works out for him.
Hopefully it's not all-out war and EOS builds out a steemit-destroying social media website of its own with a more balanced distribution model. Because that would be bad for steem and steemit.
That could happen, but if Steemit Inc. actually put more into Steemit then Dan wouldn't be able to make a better user experience. Steemit Inc. would have only themselves to blame for anyone building a better social media website.
It's a long story of which I think only Ned and Dan know all the details. Dan has moved on and it doesn't seem like Ned and Dan are getting along well at all now, which is a pity. I remember recently when the BitShares blockchain had some serious issues and Dan came in with a pull request to fix it. If he were still on good terms with the STEEM ecosystem, we might benefit from similar involvement in the future. As things stand now, I see that as very unlikely.
Any thoughts as to why @berniesanders and his bots would flag this comment? I'm somehow on his radar, the majority of my curation and author rewards being flagged into oblivion. I have been a member of the Steemit community for less than 2 weeks. If there is some way to abuse this system, I don't know what it is or how to do it. I see this happening to other minnows as well.
My votes for witness hinge on their capacity to organize against tyrants. There is no good reason I should be flagged like this every single day.
I'm guilty of commenting on the post of one of his political opponents on my 2nd day here and then speaking up once I started receiving this treatment. That's it.
The advice I get is to stay out of @berniesanders radar, but I don't have that option. He continues with indiscriminate flagging. What can I do?
He flagged me for over three months straight, often in the last 12 hours before payout which meant no other upvotes could counter his. Unfortunately, we don't have solutions for "tyrants" like him, short of someone with millions of dollars slowly buying Steem Power and then directly countering his actions. It's something the co-founder of STEEM (Dan Larimer) brought up before leaving. It's something future STEEM competitors may take more seriously based on the frustration many people are seeing here on Steemit.
I'm quite open to any suggestions you have for witnesses about how issues like this can be dealt with. Smart Media Tokens have a concept of an Oracle which is a human being empowered to maintain the preferences of that community and exclude some people from the rewards pool for that token (at least, that's my understanding of it). If we experiment there and find common things which work in all communities, maybe that can be ported back to STEEM.
I'm sorry you're being flagged, and I personally know how frustrating that can be. Stick with it and don't let the bullies win. Post because you want to. Don't let others control your experience here.
Good advice, thank you. I wish I had a larger upvote available to me at the moment. :D
It seems like he's leaving me alone now, we'll see.
As far as suggestions for witnesses, just voicing the complaints of people who are being silenced by him and helping people to understand that there are better ways for them to earn here that supporting someone who engages in mass flagging.
Uhmm, really? Not valid because we don't understand it? You are sounding too much like the Priest Class in religion which doesn't listen to the laity because the laity just don't understand how things work. Kind of reminds me too of when Marie-Antoinette (bride of France's King Louis XVI) was told her French subjects had no bread, she sniffed, “Qu'ils mangent de la brioche”—“Let them eat cake.” Sir, we can all have an opinion about our user experience, or lack thereof. And Steemit Inc.'s ~$300 Million stake in SteemPower gives them no excuse for not hiring a small army of developers to make the user experience second to none.
Are you familiar with the Mythical Man Month? Hiring more developers doesn't mean a project will get finished in less time. In some cases, the exact opposite is true. You can't have a baby in one month using nine women. It just doesn't work that way.
You make an interesting analogy but to me it has a fundamental flaw. Anyone can learn to code. Truly, anyone can. This isn't like we're speaking in Latin and only the upper class can access Latin education. Coding is quickly becoming the universal language and anyone who cares to offer useful criticism is free to learn it as long as they have a computer and an Internet connection. Unlike a priestly class claiming divine, gnostic revelation openly only to chosen class, anyone can access and contribute to open-source projects. I've spent many decades learning to code. Others chose other paths. I would be out of place telling a surgeon how to do their job, even if I was the one using their services. The same thing applies here. For those who want to criticize, I'm simply advocating they become informed before doing so. That's understood and expected in every other advanced field of study. Why not here as well?
Not everyone is qualified to give useful feedback. Whether or not we are comfortable with that is not relevant to the fact.
As to Steemit's Steem Power holdings and their use of it, I throughly agree with you that they are open to criticism there, as is any company putting out a product with a public understanding of the resources at their disposal. If you have suggestions (other than just hire more developers because, again, that might actually make things worse), let's discuss them and do what we can to help. That's the point of my post. Steemit, inc's focus is not just Steemit.com (see my STEEM is more valuable than Steemit post for more on that). They are thinking long term and that strategy involves Smart Media Tokens and a massively scalable and modular STEEM blockchain.
I guess it depends on what the criticism is about, and perhaps I jumped to conclusions to what exactly your "put up or shut up" comment was directed . I just know I don't need to know anything about coding to have a valid opinion about how Steemit can be or should be improved from a user experience standpoint. I've designed websites, done SEO professionally, have my own blog, and spent a ton of time on Facebook and theologyonline.com which has 18K members and where I can sign up, make a few posts, get noticed by the owner, and get voted as the best new member by the community, so I guess that should be enough credibility to make suggestions about how not to lose people in Steemit.
Someone like @dan could come along having hired the right people to put together a kickass social platform, riding on a blockchain, with financial incentives, and suck the wind right out of Steemit's sails, just like Facebook did to MySpace which did the same thing to Xanga. It doesn't take a coder to see that.
BTW, you make learning the code sound easy. What's the best code to learn to understand this platform or better yet contribute to its development? Or to understand the flow of digital assets within the social media?
Exactly!
If you criticize the next hardfork without having any coding background, then maybe you're on the wrong path. Still a blogger, a content creator, a curator - a Steem user - would definitely be able to have a solid opinion about user experience. If there were no people using this currency and believing in it, then it would be of no value. So I definitely think that the average user - as we have been categorized here - has a right to voice their opinion about user experience.
Steem has always been advertized as the gateway coin to mainstream cryptocurrency. Well if you want to bring non-crypto people in touch with this currency and "tokenize the internet", then you might let these crypto newbies talk about their user experience then.
Couldn't have said it better! The killer argument of "learn to code, before you speak your mind about the platform" is a very lame way of trying to silence the "stupid masses". Steemit Inc should listen a lot more to the users and investors here and the fact alone, that we need users to highlight advancements on GitHub instead of the Dev team communicating (at least) weekly with us, speaks for itself.
I hope my post didn't come across as trying to silence anyone, but I see how "shut up" pretty clearly implies that. I was more hoping to emphasize how important it is to understand context before telling others (who may have far more context than we do) what they should be doing and how they should prioritize their resources. Unless we have experience and understanding, it makes us look silly. I prefer we not look silly and instead work to understand and be helpful.
I've been talking with @corinnestokes about the language I used in my post, and she reminded me it's not accurate to say a criticism isn't "valid" unless it really isn't valid. It would have been better for me to say something like, "valid, but possibly not helpful right now without more understanding and context."
Here's what I mean:
What if Steemit, inc is more focused on the underlying blockchain performance and scaling and needs to get that done before more people join Steemit? So many people are frustrated with the retention rate, the lack of marketing, the UX/UI issues, etc, etc. What if Steemit focused on all that first and then turned their attention to performance on the blockchain? From my perspective, that would cause a lot of problems right now, and we'd probably have even more bandwidth and blockchain bloat problems.
Based on what I see going on, it seems they are focusing on important things. If we think "They should be doing A right now!" but "B" is way better and doing "A" might actually hurt the whole ecosystem right now, then saying "A is broken, go fix it! Why aren't they fixing it yet!?!" doesn't actually benefit anyone.
That said, they (IMO) should certainly focus a lot more on communication. I've been saying this for a long time now.
Thanks for your comment. Sorry it took me a while to reply as I've been at a conference the last few days.
Thanks for clarifying. The thing is, that there seems to be no reason to work on a blockchain, that is No 1 in Tx and has a network load of <1% - outperforming every other blockchain anyway. Yes, I´m no dev, but then again it would be the job of Steemit Inc to explain what they are doing instead of us speculating on the real reasons. It´s great if there are really lots of people working on the performance of the blockchain, but as with any other company, you have to hire some Marketing/PR person who does this job of informing everyone what´s going on - even the smallest companies do that (and for a good reason).
Thanks for your reply. You may also appreciate my reply to @surfermarly below.
I probably should not have said a criticism isn't "valid" but instead could have said it may be valid but not helpful and, from that perspective, not valid right now as far as prioritizing what Steemit, inc should be doing.
It's easy for us to focus on Steemit and the problems there (retention, UI/UX, onboarding, marketing, etc), but it's much harder to get a good perspective on the issues of the underlying blockchain which they are focusing on to bring us to millions and millions of users. If that's not ready yet, fixing the front-end issues will only make things worse if done right now.
Here's an analogy:
Let's say we're building a bus. The passengers get on and are like, "What the hell? There are only egg-crates for seats? They need to fix this right now and put in more comfortable, padded seats so people don't get off the bus right away. So few people are using this thing right now because of that."
That would be a "valid" criticism for sure. But... with a little bit of perspective, it may not be very informative or helpful or even valid in terms of setting current priorities. To stay with our analogy, what if the bus actually had a small car engine in it just to test things out. It can only pull about 5 people. From that perspective, adding amazing seats for another 100 people doesn't make much sense before upgrading the engine, right? In fact, if they did fix the seats first, and those 100 people jump on board, the bus might stop working completely.
That's obviously an extreme example, but the point being the underlying blockchain engine is the most important thing Steemit, inc is working on right now. That's what will lay the framework for many years from now. That's what has to be rock solid. Once that's done, as we improve the front-end, we'll have the capacity to handle it.
Again, thank you for your comment and for disagreeing with me respectfully. I really do appreciate that.
Edit: I forgot to answer your question. Learning code in general is easy. You can start with building games in Scratch as an example. Learning blockchain C++ may not be as easy. That's pretty advanced stuff and though I've programmed in a half a dozen languages myself since 1996, I don't have much experience with C++ which is something I plan to fix in the future as I continue to dig into this codebase. I plan to start with some C++ tutorials online.
Have you used Lynda.com before? $30/mo. and you can take as many courses as you want during that month. Here's the link to C++ https://www.lynda.com/learning-paths/Developer/become-a-c-plus-plus-developer
Thank you Luke for the explanation and analogy. I was unaware the blockchain was at risk from increased usage. So they really don't want to make steemit better until they make the blockchain more robust? OK, good to know, and had I kept silent I wouldn't have learned that from you because steemit inc. doesn't even have a corporate website to post such information.
However, I'm still not convinced steemit inc. can't or shouldn't improve steemit. Can't that be done offline so a better version will be waiting in the wings for the moment the blockchain has been improved, instead of waiting for the blockchain improvements before allocating resources toward that end?
Do you agree with my contention that the longer steemit inc. waits before upgrading to a world-class social media platform the more likely someone else - like Dan Larimer - beats them to it and ends up sucking the wind out of steemit's sails?
I agree with your last sentence. They should do that just to show us that they care about our opinions.
I'm hopeful Steemit, inc will prioritize communication in the future.
They should realize that is very important for the happy community. Thanks for your time.
Thank you for this information, Luke. It is useful for me in one certain way. Whenever I login to Utopian and wish to add a suggestion, I do not understand what repository to use. How you have helped me is by briefly explaining all the Steem(it) repositories. I now have some perspective and information on that.
I am not a developer. Coding is not my thing but I can analyze statistics and user behavior. I can read charts and understand the problems without the need to understand codes first. My first ever Utopian contribution highlighted why and how user retention must be improved by Steemit Inc. Not knowing code did not stop me from making a contribution.
Not knowing the code is a blessing for me. Counterintuitive but true. I use my analytical ability to trace things from the frontend and find out how they work. Since I am not a technical guy, my language and delivery helps the non-technical userbase; which is in vast majority I suppose. For example, my detailed guides on Reputation Score and Reward System are strictly non technical, plain-language tutorials. They helped thousands of people so far (apparent from the number of comments and views on posts). That is how I am contributing to the platform. I will never stop doing it.
Thank you for being there, Luke. Always a pleasure to read your posts and learn from your wisdom. Wishing you and your family all the health and happiness in the world!
Excellent point. There are many ways we can contribute, not just code. The thing I was trying to point out in my post was how we need a larger perspective to understand prioritization between various things which need to get done. When we see a problem within our area of expertise, it's easy to think, "Oh man, they totally need to fix this now!" but there may be reasons fixing something else first is a much better approach.
Keep on providing great value here! I think you're doing a lot of great work.
this snowball is rolling. no doubt about that.
that said, would like to see more communication from the leadership. engineering is one thing, but community outreach is vital in this space.
I agree and have been pushing for this since last year. Until we become truly decentralized, those with the control need to be heard from to help everyone else make good decisions about the system. I think we're going to start seeing more communication.
I agree, ill be standing by to stand by, eyes peeled lol
Great write up mate. They really just need to communicate more. If Steemit were an ICO in the market today I really don't think it would succeed purely on the complete lack of communications by the team.
When you look at projects such as Powerledger, Ethos, Horizon State etc, they are always saying something.
If @andrachy is the community liason, he needs to be out there saying something by Steemit. Sure there isn't always a big announcement, even if it was just on twitter "Friday arvo beers with the Dev Team after a solid week Steeming it up"
@ned needs to pick up the game as well, he is the boss, he's the one responsible. From the outside looking in for a potential investor (ignoring the tech) the place seems to be run haphazard and iwouldn't want to put my money into it.
Agreed.
Great points, @lukestokes and thanks for sharing the Github screenshots and links. As someone who both regularly asks my followers for improvement ideas, and calls out the currently inconveniences, I really appreciate what you are trying to do here.
Sure, I can complain at times about the seemingly lack of enhancements and upgrades to the Steemit.com website, I realize that anyone can build a front-end for the Steem blockchain and I've been evaluating such an opportunity. I do realize that Steem >> Steemit.
I should mention that I've been giving quite a few presentations on Steem(it) recently and the most common pieces of feedback I get is how the user interface lacks in so many areas. Look, I know the dev team is working hard, it can be seen in Github, but it doesn't matter if ppl constantly say that the UI is one reason that they leave the platform.
As much as we want to brush over it, taking care of the user experience is the "last mile" of any app and helping users feel at home is important. I won't link to it, but one of my recent posts lists at least 15 improvements to Steemit that I think would help increase engagement and retention.
Now, if we could think of a solid revenue model that would incentivize us to build a better front-end...we could give Steemit a bit more competition and improve the community as a whole.
For now, I find myself using Steemit more than Busy because i've grown accustom to how to dance around this interface.
Thanks again for your dedication to the platform. You constantly provide value.
-Ashe
PS: Do you know if anyone has re-visited the 2017 Roadmap and compared what was planned vs implemented? Also, 3 months ago @ned asked for feedback on the 2018 Roadmap...has it been released yet? https://steemit.com/roadmap2018/@steemitblog/steemit-roadmap-2018-community-input-requested
The interesting thing for me to think about is the larger goals and how they relate to current motivations and short-term focus. Based on conversations I had with Sneak at Steemfest, people leaving the platform right now were not a huge concern for them. That bothered me a lot, but I really spent some time thinking about it. It doesn't mean they don't care about people right now. They still have their contact info and can still market to them once the many improvements they want are completed.
Steemit appears to me to be building for hundreds of millions of users. Compared to them, if 50k or even 100k join today and leave because it's not ready yet, that's comparatively (statistically) not relevant when compared to 100M+ users. That's an eye-opening way to think about things. If there are things they have to do now to prepare for those future users, then that certainly should be the priority. As you said, other people can fork the front end or make their own. Other people can't (yet) make significant improvements to the blockchain itself which would enable it to support many, many million more users. That's all on Steemit, inc right now.
I don't have any updates regarding the roadmap. I think the approach of making hard goals like they did last year won't be repeated. What they do end up communicating, is yet to be seen.
Hey @lukestokes,
I was talking about this same concept today in my blog.
"Talk is cheap" as we all know. At a point, its not long bogus words that we need. Its action.
Steem/Steemit wants people that would go-the-go so to speak.
Excellent post, thanks for sharing. I agree with you completely that actions speak louder than words and what we do defines us more than what we care to complain about.
I can appreciate that the developers are too busy to blog, but the marketing team could do more to update those who won't be checking Github. Even something once a month would be great.
There's a marketing team?! WHERE?
They are very rarely seen. I think they are awaiting hardfork 20 before they kick into action
They really shouldn't be.
Are you sure about that?
Can the STEEM blockchain handle millions and millions of new users right now? If they did fire up a powerful marketing engine to really explode the growth here (including contacting everyone who has already signed up and since left), would everything come to a screeching halt or would it run just fine?
Your comment highlights a point I was trying to make in my post. Without perspective, understanding, and context of what's going on behind the scenes, our strong opinionated suggestions for what should be done right now might be completely backwards. What we think is helping might actually be hurting.
I prefer we think through the whole picture and argue from first principles. Believe it or not, some very capable developers on this blockchain have actually complained about the organic SEO growth we're getting now is too much. Surprised? When it comes to complex systems, we have to understand the entire system in order to effectively suggest priorities. I'm hoping we all do what we can to understand things and actually help instead of just thinking we're helping.
I'm not saying you're for certain wrong, I'm just asking, "Are you sure?"
For me, I'm not sure. I think the priority is and should be the STEEM blockchain itself. That's the priority, and that's what Steemit, inc is working on right now in ways no one else could easily do. They have a plan with AppBase to modularize the blockchain as explained at Steemfest2, and I think that has to be done first.
Quite sure. Though I think we may have a different definition of what a marketing department does.
A company can't just abandon its userbase the way I feel steemit inc is abandoning us as a community. We can't have context, perspective and understanding without a marketing team whose job is (among others) community relations - explaining to us what is happening on the platform we invest our time and money in. You're right, my suggestions might be totally wrong because I truly have no idea what is being done on any front aside from the technical one. And that is EXACTLY why Steemit inc needs a marketing department with someone managing PR.
From my perspective, it looks like steemit is prioritizing the technology over the product, and the product over its existing and potential user base. Which may or may not be the right business decision. I honestly don't know.
Marketing is similar to User Experience in that they both require communication, and both are important to a company's success. Marketing faces outward and gets you new users, while UX faces inward and helps the ones you have be successful, stick around, and tell their friends.
I think you are really talking about UX, not marketing.
90% users don't even distinguish between steem and steemit or steem and SBD. Github? WTF is that?
So isn't that an opportunity for us all? Can't we all start helping that 90%? If everyone who's been here longer than someone else helped them get up to speed, how much better would everything be?
I'm hoping for more communication as well. Stay tuned to the official accounts.
You are very right!
You did give us an update.
The best update sits in github.
this is another story for me to dig and understand.
I did open an account there.
I will follow steem in there.
Thanks.
Keep on steemin'
See, this is why I firmly believe that you belong in the Top 10 STEEM witnesses. Other than I personally know you to be a genuinely awesome person, you have the ability to objectively put things in perspective so that everyone can have a calm forum to discuss. That is a gift, Luke.
Admittedly, I have voiced some criticism in the past as well, not as intense or vocal as others, but I have raised concerns. But, upon further evaluation, I had come to realize the error in that. Steemit, Inc does do great work and whatever they have planned for the platform would surely be something innovative. People talk about how anyone could do what the people at Steemit has achieved, but when you look around, no one else has even come close. The UI might look simple, but the technology behind it is mind-blowingly awesome. I'm totally behind what these guys are doing, and I could only wish to be able to contribute something meaningful to the platform someday.
Great work distinguishing every term here for the benefit of the people who might still be confused. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Steemconnect a project of the guys that develop Busy?
Thanks Jed.
Yes, Busy started Steemconnect, but I think Steemit, inc took it over to ensure people could trust it going forward as it will be the "official" recommended way for third party applications to deal with user permissions.
Ooohhh that's interesting. I didn't know that. Thanks for the clarification, Luke!
Also, @utopian-io . Since all of these are open source, they qualify.
I do agree that additional transparency is needed. Even a weekly blog post on the steemit blog would be enough to give us a clue on what is being done on the development front, the marketing front and the ecosystem as a whole. We're a community in the dark, except for maybe the really techie ones who can make sense of all that code.
Thank you for this post.
Thanks for commenting. Yes, I'm hopeful we'll soon see more active communication and engagement from the Steemit team. I also agree, Utopian is an excellent way for people to help, even if it's just to write documentation.
I've tried to offer my time and skills to steemit inc last year, but never heard back. I am currently working on the marketing and social media stuff for utopian as they, well, took me up on my offer.
Well, considering some of the comments you directed towards a friend of mine a while back (and the things you accused him of), maybe they had second thoughts. I don't know. I don't speak for them nor have I talked to them about their marketing or communication hires.
I have no idea what you're talking about, but this was back in late 2016. What comments? What friend?
Great article. People are quick to shoot their mouths off without being fully informed. Take time to understand the situation and your constructive criticism will carry more weight...
People, including myself. It's a good reminder for us all to be informed and helpful instead of just blindly pointing at things we don't like.
Right on good word. Keepin us focused.
Great post @lukestokes im excited for the future and I think the road ahead is a very long one. Glad to be here, glad to be a part of the future! Thanks for all the informative blogs you do! I'm trying to do my part!
Thank you for the update about steem and software development in its ecosystem. Voted for you as witness.
Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.
You're welcome!
AND I think it's valid to expect more "official" communication from Steemit, inc via the accounts @steemitblog and @steemitdev
This..so VERY much...This
.
along that line of thought.
some months ago there was a big To-Do about Steemit hiring a marketing guy.
after a couple of weeks...nada.
I assume , based upon the data that I have, that he was incompetent and fired shortly thereafter.
Am I wrong?
I'm am wrong why isn't there more 'official communication from Steemit'...wouldn't that be part of his job?
I don't know the details of Steemit's marketing hires, but that sounds plausible to me. Maybe @andrarchy could chime in with more thought there.
"community liaison" :
Last post:
:(
Yeah, I know he's been busy. I'd love to see him posting more often also, even if it's just to tell us all what types of things are keeping him busy.
cc @andrarchy
I agree with you. They should do that just to show us that they care about our opinions.
Yeah... it’s still being slept on. People will see soon enough I imagine.
Thank you for helping us see what goes on “behind the scenes” because the pictures you shared give us clear data to feed our rational minds with proof Steemit Inc is doing a lot to improve and evolve above what is being communicated. I enjoyed meeting you at Steemfest and appreciate your service to our blockchain!
How do you make time to run your company and participate in so many conversations here, write posts, and raise three children that are homeschooled? I am about to get a shed office in the backyard so I can at least get out of the house because I am basically in the same position!
Congratulations also on rising in the top 20 since making it in October to number 10 or so now. I will vote for you again if you need it to stay in at some point!
Hurray @banfield!
Thank you for the resteem which brought me to this post x
Hey Jerry. I enjoyed meeting you as well. Thanks for stopping by.
We all get 24 hours a day. Lately I've been focusing a bit more on STEEM than my business, but ultimately it's all about prioritization. I don't spend as much time in chat as that can often drain a lot of time. If a separate office will help for you, that sounds like a great plan. @corinnestokes does the home schooling, for which I am supremely grateful.
Thanks for the congratulations. It's quite humbling, and I will be working hard to continue earning that position, starting with helpful community delegations and hopefully also learning C++ and the core blockchain code so I can further contribute at that level. I was happy to give a brief code review of the recent DDOS protection updates that went out, but I'd like to do more and hopefully some day contribute code directly.
Hey @lukestokes!
An interesting read to say the least! I have to admit without you I would have been lost after steem js and I've been here for over 5 months now! Thank you for outlining this information in the post as this is actually really helping for some user feedback I've been working on... I just made a contribution via utopian which got accepted, but I wasn't exactly sure about the next steps to pushing this idea out there... You've actually brought me a good deal of insight...
Maybe, however, you might bring me some more? I recently made a post trying to highlight a new UI and user experience that would involve some combination of BlogSpot style pages, (much like @howo's recent attempts at integrating Steem with WordPress) and fully customizable "Steem Pages" on a new open-source open-code front-end that would resemble the "Wix" style of web-page creation...
I also highlight how we could use proprietary Widgets that integrate the entire experience and create a real, concrete demand for Steem and Steem-related products, by integrating Widgets that could be added to customize our "blogs" (which would resemble the fully customizable aspects of the old MySpace pages) using blockchain-enabled Steem "Shops" or pay-walls (via some kind of uploading/encryption-decrypting algorithms and servers, whether off-chain, or on a side-chain, IDK)
Because of my coding illiteracy, I would be eternally grateful to you if you had any insight into the actual technical aspect of actually constructing or at least laying out the blueprints of such an idea?
If you have any time and would like to take a look at a novel approach of conceiving Steem and future front-ends, it would truly make my day if you gave this article a quick gander... Maybe the idea is crap but on the off-shoot that you see potential in it I would love to ask you for some basic pointers with regards to the coding and how to even navigate something like git-hub to start doing research on how it could be achieved!
My discord is @ imp.unity#3467
Thank you for a great post and in advance for your time if you have any (of course a busy father and witness may not!); but I think the ideas would at least peak your interest! And I don't claim to own them, I genuinely just want Steem to fulfill its potential and promise and take down all these other centralized internet giants who are polluting our minds
Peace!
Hae-Joo
Wow, that's a long article. I didn't get through it all, but I did give you an upvote. That's too big of a project for me to give much useful feedback on right now, but I think the focus of Steemit, inc at the moment is the blockchain itself and not so much the front end improvements we can make to Condenser.
That works too 😍
No problem, totally understand... I'll keep chugging along and try to refine the idea... My next plan is to finish some sketches and make a mock-up on illustrator... Hopefully with some visual props it would make the communicating of the idea a lot easier and more compelling...
"A picture paints a thousand words" - thanks at least for taking a look! And good luck with the future and making the blockchain better! Thank you for your work! xx
This post came just in time. I started to get frustrated again by the flaws of steemit and your post puts things in perspective.
Glad to hear it. Sites that don't work the way we expect them to are certainly frustrating, and I'm not arguing we should ignore that. I think we should channel it towards something constructive. Maybe even search Github for an issue and if there isn't one, create one. If there is, leave a comment with details of how to reproduce the issue. Let's be helpful and not just critical.
Well, this post is basically targeted at the techy brains. I learnt a thing or two though. So, the real drive and push for steemit is the token, which is steem. Invariably, I could say that at the long run, my investment here will be based on how many steem I have been able to hold on to. I don't know if I am right on this though. Thanks for this enlightenment. Mind blowing I must say.
Your posts are always educative in all respect. Thanks @lukestokes.
I read your post twice. Second time it made "click". Now I see the connection to SMTs!!! And why Steem is more valuable than Steemit. So to me it was your comment, that was mind blowing! ^^
People on the internet criticize everything way too much, it's probably down to the time we live in where everyone is has a "freedom of speech" boner.
A fantastic point. People need to realize that even though they have a right to an opinion, they need to have some knowledge about the subject for their opinion to be taken seriously.
I disagree. If it's a valid opinion it's a valid opinion, based on the merits of the opinion.
So if I never ate an apple in my life, can I say "in my opinion apples taste like crap"?
People would say yes I can because I have the right of freedom of speech, but all rights come with responsibilities, and it is my responsibility as a human being to educate myself before formulating an opinion.
How do you define "valid opinion" or the "merits" of an opinion? If someone doesn't understand much about the domain in question, how effective will their opinions be? Maybe they could repeat the opinions of others who have done the work to understand, but in that case it wouldn't really be their opinion anyway. It would be a repetition of someone else's opinion.
Nice
I must admit, I don't understand many things going on here. But you gave me a little more of an idea what's going on and how the whole thing works. That there are highly intelligent people here, who are creating something brandnew to this world: so far I understood it before. But I am glad, you showed me, that at least I got THIS thing right. It makes it easier for me to trust in it. I though understand, why many people don't understand. Steemit in first place just looks like a new social media platform. That there are many more things behind it, I am starting to realize slowly, now that I am here for two months. I hope, this comment wasn't too much like something you would say to: "better shut up!" In fact I feel a little bit cowed right now. ^^
It's not about "you better shut up" as much as "Please, think before you speak if your speech is just criticism for something you may not understand." I don't think that's a very controversial statement. I'm all about constructive criticism. I just think uninformed criticism is near useless. It might even be less than useless.
Random example: I've seen some people say, "It should be one account, one vote, with no regards to Steem Power." Statements like this are ignorant of Sybil attacks or the game theory involved that makes all of this work. Actually implementing a solution like that would eventually destroy all the value we enjoy here.
Yes I see, what you mean. I didn't mean to attack you in any way. I enjoy your posts and I enjoy learning from you. Avoiding Sybil attacks is a very valid argument.
To me Steemit has become something very political. I am also a person who likes equality and who wants wealth to be kind of fairly distributed on our planet. But fair also means, that some people earn more and have more power, because they do very valuable things for the whole community (at least it should be this way). Your posts are very valuable to me, so it's fine you have more Steem Power than me and your upvotes are more worth than mine. Giving power to you means trusting you. So use your influence well.
It's not Steemit that needs to be criticized for some things going wrong. It's the users who upvote content that has questionable value or who just want to take money out of it without doing something valuable. Same in the "real world".
Steemit is a big mirror to our society and it can be a great mirror to each one of us, that we can learn from lots about ourselves. Greetings! :-)
Thanks a lot for sharing your valuable post....
Carry on next
Best of luck..
I will still wait for your next post....
Wow, u just taught me things I never knew...thanks for d post!
👍👍
Good work,nic post.
helpful post..
resteemit done
On point, thanks for the words Luke. I am not a developer myself and I have a hard time finding where i fit in as far as the putting up part goes. I am investing and manually curating posts, commenting and trying to keep the community going and growing.
I understand that Steem is much larger than Steemit, no matter how much vesting power Steemit has. the community is to large, the things everyone are doing here are too good to be stopped. My most recent post I talked about this, and how 'you cannot stop an idea who's time has come' and with dmania, decentmemes, dtube, dlive, zappl, esteem, and all the SMT's that are surely being planned. No CEO miscalculations, and no creator fud will stop it. Or at least, this is my hope
Nice post, thanks for sharing. I think your delegation idea is an interesting one. I personally don't use voting bots because I prefer to be an owner, not a renter.
I really like your post is amazing. i want to follow your way.motifasi good enough. thank you for sharing information.
Yes I certainly agree some of it just goes way over my head as far as the coding is concerned. I did dabble around with coding several years ago, and being back on here is getting the creative juices flowing again. The good thing certainly as far as Apple is concerned you can make apps very easily with not to much hassle through their developer site and X-code, so long as you can get someone with some more knowledge to advise you on where to plug the specific API’s you need in the right places. Could be a good idea as a witness for you to create a think tank for some ideas on how to further the Steem platform.
Stay tuned as something like what you're describing, I think, is in development. The more we decentralize things, the better off we'll all be.
I look forward to hearing more on this!
this is something to ponder on over and over,,,
thanks man @lukestokes
Thank you very much for sharing another very valuable post! It is going to be a PHENOMENAL year for the GREAT STEEMIT COMMUNITY! All the best! Positive Energy! Great Karma! I'm upvoting and resteeming! Your Friend @extraterrestrial :)
Your positivity is infectious. :)
Thanks lukestokes, for this article.
Glad to see more and more apps and implementations on the Steem Blockchain. And hopefully more excellent projects come in the future.
The more ya know! Seems like some interesting developments happening for sure.
nice to get this overview... I take a peek in github occasionally. by clicking the "insights" tab I find more information that's a bit easier for me to digest... I suppose it will take me some time to learn how to navigate github.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks man! Good to hear from you. I need to spend more time checking in on Github activity as well. It's the lifeblood of this whole system.
Hi, thanks for the update, when the SMT tokens will be available? What will happen to Steem/Steemit when EOS will be ready?
No word on SMTs that I know of other than "this year."
What will happen? No way to know for sure. Steem/Steemit has a first-mover advantage as far as the social media blockchain space, but that does not guarantee success or market dominance. I think I've seen the claim that EOS, as a general purpose blockchain, won't be as effective as a blockchain specifically designed for social media interactions. Will that be true? Time will tell. Hopefully competition will be a good thing for our ecosystem.
That said, I also hold and recommend EOS. I think it could be like an AWS for blockchain systems.
I feel like you have a lot of potential to write and post quality content and it would be a shame to make it in vain. Follow me and i will follow u back in order to get more popular and fore more people to view our posts! thanks! Anyone who sees this can do the same, i refollow anyone. We're small but we can grow together!
This post looks like spam to me. It's generic and the "follow back" perspective on any social media platform, IMO, just creates noise. To get value out of social media, follow people worth following.
Thank you for the information although i couldn't understand the crypto jargon. Perhaps in another world and era.
This is an amazing blockchain with a solid development team, and I'm very excited about the future..
Me too am so excited and so glad
I read over and over again, before I got you article right.
In general, if you haven't learnt programming, you should definitely try! It's very fun and really helps you understand how things work.
Good read. I am new to Steemit, and trying to learn as much as i can . Thank your for sharing.