It's a known fact to all Steemers that here we are having a hard time to find the content we like. We have some basic tools like tags and following to keep track of the content we are interested in but we are still missing tones of good articles and see a lot of crappy ones.
Facing the problem
The reason is that Steemers rarely keep posting about only one category of content with their account. Someone may write an article about the benefits of a multi-sig wallet in Bitcoin and the next day send a cute photo of his dog. Reach to non relevant content kills attraction and weaken the chances of users coming back into platform.
Also if we rely on following we are missing tones of articles that are written by new authors that we still do not follow. So times to times we should go to latest articles section and after ignoring dozens of article we may find a new author we might like (or do we?).
Tags are also killing us in another way. We like them because they categorize content but there is no sorting based on the quality or relevance of article. Hot and Trending section are mostly showing us authors with more popularity or friends in Steem platform. We already know that best articles in Steemit are not necessarily the trending articles. That's fine but we still need to reach to good articles to upvote them right? How to make good articles trending while we cannot reach to good articles at all?
All of this aside, recent growth is making it look like an emergency as new users are having a hard time to reach to their audience since they are simply ignored in the new tab due to the high volume of posts in the platform.
Please not like Facebook
We dislike how corporate tech companies like Facebook or Twitter make us to only see what we like to see. I agree, that's BS. We don't want to get under controlled media again but we want to have better reachability to content we are looking for. That's why we need a different model of personalized feed which probably is not implemented yet. We need Optional Personalized Feed.
How it should look like?
We can have two optional button on top of homepage so users can have the freedom to use the chronological timeline or smart timeline based on their interests. The settings of Smart timeline can appear the first time users click on it and can be accessible on settings menu.
How it could be?
1. Should be discretionary (optional)
Users should not be obliged to use this feature at all or in any way this feature should not replace the chronological feed for users.
2. Should be simply configurable
Users should be able to configure it in a clear and concise manner. A JSON configurations string (which can be generated for less advanced users by any UI) seems to be a good option.
3. The algorithm should be open source
The algorithm to generate the feed based on the configuration should be open source and well documented so it can be reviewed by anyone. Developers of other apps (like Busy or eSteem) could have the freedom to fork the algorithm and implement their own smart feed based on the same pre-defined configuration standard (in case of implementing it off-chain).
4. The dataset should be protected by encryption and be stored on user's device
The dataset of user's previous engagement and interactions, likes, dislikes, reading time etc should be stored and used by machine learning algorithms to make a real personalized experience for users. In companies like Facebook this dataset is usually stored at centralized databases and used for other commercial purposes like target marketing. It's crucial that users should be able to protect their privacy and reading habits by encrypting this data using their posting WIF and store it on their own devices.
Storing datasets on personal devices has many interoperability and synchronization issues that could be solved by providing centralized tools to access this data. For example UI platforms like Steemit, eSteem or Busy can provide cloud features to store the encrypted data for users in a centralized manner (without having access to keys to decrypt them) but it should be optional for users.
How it should be implemented? (technical)
There are two stages of making a smart and personalized feed. The first stage is to ask user what they want to see? For example users can indicated they want to see posts from a small list of users at first. They want to see posts related to books and politics. These are relatively simple but very important to implement. But the second stage is to gather information about what users actually like by observing their interactions on user interface. If they vote, read or ignore a post, the features of the post should be stored and flagged with the behavior so it can later be used in a classification machine learning algorithm to prioritize the feed for users.
Here I am suggesting some solutions which I think all have their own pros and cons. It would be very good if you can also share your own thoughts about this as I believe non of my ideas are perfect at all.
Off chain, solution 1:
We can keep the blockchain neutral and have user interfaces implement their own version of algorithm. The only problem is that it needs many centralized indexing applications to provide the feed off-chain and the centralized apps should receive the decrypted info of users's engagement data-sets to generate the data so you should trust the centralized app is not storing and using your private data later.
Off-chain, solution 2:
Machine learning algorithms can be implemented on front-end also. Your browser can handle the whole process of storing the engagement data and use it to show you relevant content. However it cannot index data and fetch content in the way you need it because it doesn't have access to the whole database of content to pick the articles you really like. Even so, it can change the sorting and emphasize the content you are interested in and ignore those you probably are not in the normal chronological feed.
This wireframe can be a good way to show how different it is:
On-chain
First of all, I'm not the right person to propose chain features since I'm honestly bad in it. However, I assume more knowledgable people can come up with a way to have a neutral smart-feed configuration on chain per users. Obviously we cannot store the whole user engagement data on-chain because it's heavy and expensive. However, users can address their datastore along with a hash to their smart feed config json to make it safely accessible to steem's blockchain to use it.
Having an embedded on-chain feature for smart-feeds has a huge advantage since there is no need for any centralized server to index data, and in the same time the chain has full access to chain and can provide feed APIs for all the apps. It omits the flexibility of other Steem UI apps (Busy, eSteem etc) to make their own algorithm of smart feeds, though make it very easy to implement on every platform for users.
Conclusion
Smart and personalized feeds are proved to increase the engagement for users and save their time significantly on internet. For example Google is a simple example of smart and personalized feed. Even so, they are not much popular these days because the algorithms are kept as secret and the data are used for other purposes outside the user's control. I believe we need it for Steemit as soon as possible to move the platform to the next level and I hope we can figure out how to implement this feature with a high respect to privacy and use it as a powerful tool to leverage the connectivity of platform for new users.
If you agree with this feature, please re-esteem so it would be noticed more. Thank you.
These are great ideas @p0o. I guess Steemit being in beta there are a lot of features that could be added like searching for users, keywords, and even a search within a certain profile so you don't have to scroll through thousands of posts to find the one relevant to what you want to read. UpVoted.
hey @p0o!!! This post is dead on. Some of us are okay with wading through all kinds of posts to find the gems, but for most users, there needs to be better ways to access content.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, in addition to other UI changes.
Last night, I finally got started coding a chrome plugin that begins to address this with resteems on Profile pages. In the process, I've had some thoughts about how one might go about building more robust infrastructure on TOP of Steemit.com within the browser.
Take a look, I outlined my thoughts here. And I think there are some really creative ways we could work on this, without needing permission from anyone.
That's a very nice addition and you are right, we can start and do it small. By the way, in busy we don't show re-esteems in the blog page and have a different page for it. Take a look: https://busy.org/@itchykitten
oh nice!!! I didn't realize we were on the same chain! Who started busy? Thats super cool
@itchykitten - There are several apps being built ontop of the STEEM blockchain. Steemit.com is only one "Window" into the STEEM blockchain itself. Busy.org is also a tool you can use to look/interact with the STEEM blockchain. You should also check out SteepShot if you have an android or apple phone - search the store for "SteepShot". Its an Instagram like app built on the STEEM blockchain currently in alpha testing.
SteemQ is also on the way - it is a decentralized video hosting site like YouTube built on the STEEM blockchain.
I heard SteemQ was cancelled or something.
No, it is still in development.
Oh! Someone made a post about it saying it was dead. If it is still in development that is so great!!
mmmhmmm....!! curious! That's super cool, I knew there were some different 'portals' in, like chainbb, but I didn't know know the others. That's so wild, that we can have a big blockchain fungal mass buried in our internet, and as many different ways of accessing it as people are willing to build.
SteemQ sounds like it could be really useful. Do you know what they're planning on using for storage?
They are keeping it under wraps, will know more soon. IPFS is also going to be integrated into STEEM.
Who is doing SteemQ and how can I follow the progress?
I'm looking forward to see the result ;)
@fabien and @ekitcho started busy months ago and yes it's a really cool project on the same chain as steemit.
please follow me and reward i'll do the same ...thanks!!!!
intermediate steps i see before we could implement your very flexible and smart idea , is something i've been thinking for busy.org, and very easy to do:
With that, you can navigate on your feed (posts from ppl you follow) on a specific tag like #photography (with one or more tags)
With that feature, you could create a custom Feed called "MyBestFriend", with friend1, friend2, friend3, to only display their posts, and another custom Feed named "Photography", where you would add triggers for all posts in multiple tags related to photography #steemitphotochallenge #picture #travel
Awesome. I believe permanent tag filter in busy timeline can solve a lot of problems here however the process gets in the way since users should bother with filtering every time their interests change. Also tag filters in the main timeline doesn't show new posts from users we don't follow so both of you solutions are needed to be implemented to fix it. I don't think really doing it with smart feeds would take much more time since the ML algorithms are already available.
@ekitcho, I like how you're thinking! I don't wonder if it might be confusing to to be able to access a raw tag versus filtering your feed through a tag. But you're right, we need to get specific. Maybe it's a silly one but what about..
Being able to view other people's feeds?
There are lots of friends whom I really like on steemit...and I can view their following list, but wouldn't it be sweet to drop in on someone elses feed for a moment?
average length of comments
I don't know what level you could do this on, it might have to be onchain, or pre-processed by a server running steemd...but that would be pretty cool to filter a feed by posts that have longer average comments
multiple $$$ levels of trending?
what if you isolated a few levels of trending, like you could click on $5, $25, $125, $500+, and it would show you all the 'trending' posts that are around that reward level. part of the problem now it seems is that you can get whatever support you garner from your followers, but after that, your sources of fresh eyes are either resteems, or trending. Maybe this would help some of those smaller and inbetween posts get some fresh eyes, and it would be a great place for curators to scout too
sort by upvote and comment percentages?
so posts that have a really high percentage of upvotes/comments per views might show up higher in this sort
just a few thoughts
I like your ideas most.
thankyou swiss! I thought they were pretty good myself =)
Great post @p0o!
I too, feel like missing on a lot of good content because let's face it, a ton of good content gets burried pretty quick if you're following a lot of people (like myself).. so your suggestion is a thing that could be experimented with and put to the test, I believe it should help a lot of people including myself.
On the other hand, I think with the introduction of 'communities' and the ability to have sort of 'subreddits', it will help a lot in having things organized. I cant wait till we have that feature to be honest, I think it will change a lot of our experience with steemit. So lets wait and see!
Yeah, I think it will be huge. Moderated communities of some sort or another would go a long ways.
Definitely! I honestly can't wait till the race of setting up communities begin. I have a lot of interest in many very unrelated topics, so let's just try to be patient and wait for it :)
I've been using this site for one day and I feel like so much of it is fake. There's really good content here but it feels too commercial most of the time.
It would be nice to see more community here and less self promotion.
have you seen MY FEED?!?!?! :P /s
but actually...it's very true...there are some amazing people here, but they're hard to find
You're onto something here, we need better features to encourage content consumption, right now it feels like everything is designed for creators - which is great, BUT, at some point we need to get more people coming here as consumers!
One devil's advocate sort of note - isn't this how Facebook feed started? First it was an optional, experimental feature, next thing you know it was permanent and could not be taken away. Your ideas about keeping it off-chain would help avoid this, although it doesnt stop the main portal (right now steemit.com) from eventually adopting a "permanent" smart feed that warps who gets seen.
I don't think it would be like Facebook anytime. Facebook has a private centralized and closed-source backend and it's pretty quick and easy to change things. For us, if it's on-chain everyone can see the algorithm and community should approve to adapt. If it's off-chain still the algorithm is visible (since condenser is open source) and if someone doesn't like it they can use another solution like Busy or eSteem.
Yeah, good point.
I think this is a huge reason for building some of these tools into the front end via browser extensions + a steem-rpc call to the blockchain. It would also allow for endless and more personal customization.
yeah i posted something similar about this about profile pictures some time back, i think those kind of curated or smart feeds based on reputation and other factors might end up being outside of the main site which is a shame as i'd also like them here.
i agree humble, but the cool thing is I bet this could be done in a javascript browser extension TO the site. Have you seen the reddit enhancement suite?? super inspiring!!! why should we wait for the devs to make changes, we can do all this on the front end querying the blockchain through steem-rpc.
sweet, if that can be done or discussed then it should be!
I agree, I'm going to be slowly aspiring my way up to something like that. My javascript and software engineering abilities are somewhat fragile :P
Totally agree about smart feed though. How about doing something similar like the search in Quora? I mean there has to be a better way to classify content. I was thinking more in the line of favorite topics on the individual basis.
Now, since everyone of us have different interests, we can simply list the ones we most interested in. That way, there's no need for complex algorithm that "feeds" us content.
What do you guys think about that?
i personally think that some kind of viewer app, a bit like flipboard would better as a third party app, i'm always seeing the main website steemit getting 503 loading errors these days, not sure it could handle doing smart feeds unless it was all client side, the servers need some serious load balancing work moving forward if we want a million users here..
I don't think there's a main server for Steemit since its running on blockchain. There's definitely work to be done. Besides, Steemit don't seem to run well with third party app like Grammarly. I'm quite sure the developers are working hard to get the coding done right.
of course there is a server with steemit.com that does'nt live on the blockchain, it calls the data from the blockchain, but i've seen 503 errors which is normally load issues on the webserver end, imagine hundreds of thousands of people loading the webpage all at once. why would steemit run well with grammarly. it will not be designed for the way that text is displayed on steemit probably so the problem is not with steem it's with the plugin from grammerly. you could always just write in grammerly and come back to steemit to post.
hmm interesting. I didn't know that. Well, I'm not a programmer or coder but I'm interested in learning more about how webpages and the Internet works. Definitely learn something new here.
Having a list of most interested topics with personalized list is totally different. Yes with most popular lists you can attract the crowd but does not necessarily bring a great experience for all of your users. And as I said, algorithms with their data should be controlled by community so instead of it "feeding us" it will "curate for us"
Really good idea. Cleverly thought out! I also feel like I'm missing great content, and people that I want to connect with. I'm spending a lot of time looking for interesting people, likeminded people and content providers. Upvoted and followed!
Thank you very much :-)
@p0o I agree with you here. There should be a filter of some kind my news feed is almost feels like adds now. Thanks for this post.... Have you looked into ONG.social? It's starting to pick up and it might be something big soon. Would like to know your thoughts.
Very interesting dashboard. I like the concept to be implemented for Steem but making good dashboards take time :-)
Excellent post.
Well written and an important subject i wholeheartedly agree with. I love Steemit but it does need to add some more functions to get really competitive in the social media niche, to have a smart feed function as you suggest and give clear examples off is great to see.
Just a clear simple to use filter when searching for posts would be nice as a start, would be awesome to be able to choose different categories/users and make a more advanced search.
Thanks for bringing up the subject and also giving ideas on how to fix it.
Upvoted and Resteemed, ChooChoo!!!:)
Thank you and ChooChoo :-D
Thanks man! I love your voice message and yes I'm a dev mostly working on busy.org product for steem. Your idea is very similar to what @ekitcho described above (if I get it right?) and I think there is a huge chance that we are going to have it in busy soon. For steemit website though I'm not sure as it's a decision for their product design team and I'm not sure if they want to go that way.
Resteemed! I think we're on to something here!
Thank you. Yes considering how positive the community respond I will follow up this topic to get some results in some ways soon :-)
@p0o, I love the idea. For me that one of my biggest problems here finding great content. Youtube for example does an amazing job at presenting you with what you looking for and keeping you consuming by presenting you with other great stuff once your done. You have my vote for getting this implemented.
Thank you, yes I agree youtube's algorithm is very efficient.
Genius. Would also be nice to have some sticky tags on the right that each user can customize. And find a way to intermingle the promotion area into the feeds...otherwise they are just a waste of money.
Yes I also think promotions should be on the feed not on a different tab. Very easy to implement though, maybe we open a PR for it in busy soon.
Is there an official way to open a pr on steemit?
Sure you can do it in github here
Thanks!
Great idea. I agree that most popular posts get there because of friends and connections that have strong voting power, leaving out most of the good articles in the desert.
In my opinion a simpler solutions is for people to build their following here but still keep in touch in other social networks like twitter and facebook. Where the steem content can be shared. That way people that really love some content can follow their favourite creators and also get their updates on that social networks. Allowing as well the steem content getting more attention and visualizations from outside the steemit world. 😁
It is only one of several problems.
New users cannot offer much voting power so they are ignored by many because nothing can be benefitted from them.
So they resort to making many mediocre posts just to earn more.
Other people does the same.
@cryptopie got you a $0.01 @minnowbooster upgoat, nice! (Image: pixabay.com)
Want a boost? Click here to read more!
I was thinking about this exact idea a few hours ago when i realized just how hard it gets for me to find content I like, and how hard it is for people to find my content if it's the type that they will like. It should probably be like a recommendation engine that's based on previous content that the user has upvoted and it could also factor in the amount of time spent on an article, or employ a cloud of keywords generated by the posts that a user reads over time.
@imwatsi ~ I write poems
I always wanted a topic follow. There is also the idea floating around that a robot is configured to scrape and link to all the new post each hour in a topic and send out the list. Then a follower to the robot wouldn't miss anything. I saw this last year but no one has done it.
If it's only one topic why not just going to the tag page (like this: steemit.com/created/food) instead of using a bot?
Because I want it in my feed. I can then just get my feed which will have all new post from multiple topics that I follow. For instance I would follow the dash bot the icn bot the ethereum bot and the monero bot
The idea is excellent.
I think the easiest way to start is to be able to specify the tags of interest. And then already wind on top of a variety of settings.
Great proposal! It would be a useful addition to the platform.
That would be a pretty good idea and the smart feed only brings in specific content maybe if it has a certain tag in or specific key words.
Most of the time you follow someone for a certain type of content.
For now, a simple tool in which you can select topics+authors would work (and you should see those articles). And also, some suggested posts based on what topics and users you have selected earlier (beside the topic+author combination)
would be wonderful to have a smartfeed just like you suggested, its pretty overwhelming having to sort through the mass of post and resteems of people you are following.
Great Idea. !!
Like... Id love to see posts only from Art, Photography Tags :)
Thank You For Bringing Attention to this....
Me over here posting the most valuable content ever, get's 50cents payoff and 3 comments but not caring too much cause I Know People are slowly waking up
It's hard work but worth it in the long run, I really like your idea about smart feeds... I'm dropping so much value, that is going un-noticed; despite doing all the promotion on chat, and minnowsupport, etc.
Keep Up The Good Work
Keep it up my friend. In my experience in Steem making the best content is not the key. Users should be able to relate to your content or know who you are. The first one takes studies and the second one takes time. Hope you enjoy the ride.
Personalized feeds?.... Smart?... Where will all my stupid, rubish posts go. :(
Facebook?
Naw already tried that
Not on my feed lol
It would be nice if there was at least some sort of.... area where there were sections or topics, I know there are the suggestions on the side but that seems a bit too broad
I mean, i like random stuff as much as the next guy , but Im a bit tired of seeing people posting articles that they havent written, posting photos of flowers, and the amount of conspiracy theorists posting every 14 seconds on here is just out of control
hey man!!! those flowers are programming our brains!!! Well, in some sense, it sounds like you're talking about moderated communities.
This made me think of the Netflix/Spotify recommendation system. If Steemit could introduce an algorithm that would sort results based on prior behaviour that would be awesome!
ronni
It would definitely help to have better organization of articles, whether 'smart feeds' or not. I'm pretty new to all of this, but one thing that's annoying me already is seeing a massive pile of articles and having to sort through them manually. I suppose there are tags and topics, but it still feels like there needs to be something more to connect users with what they're interested in and help them navigate the massive amount of posts more efficiently.
Great ideas! We all love Steemit I think for its decentralization of media and interchange but hate it as writers getting little to no traction. I definitely agree that steemit should not become like the other controlling sites out there!
The feed and search are the two most lacking features. Good article.
really good idea, and nice to speak about it...
I've got enought of seing a cat dancing over one post on two :(
some great ideas there, hope they get traction and changes come!
I was thinking the same thing earlier today. The amount of content is vast an the tags system is limiting in discovery of content that interests me
Smart feed based on your interest would be pretty neat indeed
Really hit the point i can only agree. thoughtful
Spot on! Well written my friend!
Seconded and thirded. I would add a refresh of a feed should randomly include minnow posts to improve visibility and optimize access and potential for rewards for late adopters like me who want to hammer out potentially valuable content that is washed down in the rapid-fire "New" tab and don't have a snowballs chance in hell against promoted whales. Especially the douchey ones that aren't really that interesting but pay for family vacations by rambling a bunch of nonsense with an embedded video.
It even mixes up different languages.
Thank you,
This opportunity to show that I master the topic you are in. Give an answer. That means you are cultivating a reputation and building a porto-folio as an expert.
If this I do well, then this will bring a lot of targeted traffic, and build a brand.
Thanks :-)
I've been thinking we need a better system to help users find the content they enjoy. Navigating this site can be a bitch it seems. Like seeing other sharp minds are thinking about this too. Thank you!
Thank you very much for reading.
Technically way over my head - but the idea makes sense.
Thanks for reading it. Feel free to spread the word.
Resteemed!
Hey @p0o, great idea, this would also make it easier for users to build followings that are interested about the topics they write about.
I agree completely, it's overwhelming sorting through.
I absolutely agree! Steemit won't become mainstream if it hasn't a better access to content and a more user-friendly ui and menue. And it still lacks many features and functions fb has.
It took me a while today to find a few articles that I consider valuable. I'm not into IT, but I still think that Steemit could be a great source of not only technical knowledge. Unfortunately recently all I see is a lot of memes and people begging for upvotes. It all goes in a wrong direction I'm affraid.
Solid points and ideas. To think that I found this 12 days after it was posted makes your points more valid.
Followed.
want a sense of his and an honor to me can be familiar with you.