Here are the two reasons why the 12 hour payout time is the best thing to happen to Steem:
1 You get paid SOONER!
Do you remember the dark ages (yesterday) when you had to wait a day or sometimes a day and a half to get paid? That was brutal! Now the posts you made last night are getting paid out this afternoon.
2 The trending page has much more movement.
Back int he dark ages the very popular post would be at the top of trending page for up to two days. Now we get move movement and more exposure to new posts!
This great for people like me who have short attention spans and are not the most patient. The 12 hour payout time was the best change so far!
The trending page does have more movement, but I think there is an unintended downside as well. The posts that start trending after the initial 12 hours has passed will likely stay trending for the entire 30 days before the final payout. It definitely opens up the playing field though!
Trending for the entire 30 days is problematic in my opinion. I just wrote a post on this: https://steemit.com/steem/@riensen/are-you-ready-for-cheetah-being-on-the-front-page-for-the-next-30-days
I saw that post about the cheetah bot and thought the exact same thing! Great write up. But on the other hand, I had my first true trending post yesterday after the new 12 hr cycle was implemented so I can't really complain. It was a short story too which is crazy to me. I never write fiction. Go figure. Here it is if anyone wants to check it out! https://steemit.com/fiction/@mindover/nobody-will-ever-believe-you-an-original-sci-fi-short-story
I didn't consider that, it will be interesting to see how the 30 day period plays out with huge posts.
That why we need more quality content to fill those spaces
On the flipside, posts have much less time to prove themselves and be upvoted. Not everyone is on Steemit every 12 hours.
I feel that most the proving happens in the first 30 minutes. There is always a chance that a post will catch on after the 12 hours and they will have to wait for the 30 day payout. I could see a few 12 hour blocks initially being a good way to run it going forward.
That's certainly very true. It's unfortunate because 30 minutes is a matter of lottery. I see so many great posts get lost in the void so quickly. It's quite upsetting.
The only way to combat that is gaining a lot of steem power and using the influence!
Indeed! It's happening, more and more people are gaining Steem Power. I've been working on a post for the last couple of weeks to map out the trend. Should be posting this weekend.
I see your post has made it to the many-minnows-no-whales category as well.
My only concern is that the trending posts seem to stay on the front page even longer now. I don't think that was the intention. However I might be wrong and some of those posts deserve to be there for longer.