The Steem Blogger's Unrecognized and Underutilized Secret Weapons

I believe that authors could improve the quality and value of content on the Steem blockchain by making use of beneficiary rewards to promote and enhance collaboration. Here's why.

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Introduction

It must be about 15 years ago that I read a paper on blogging activity whose general finding I still remember today. I'll never find the paper again, but as I recall, the researchers studied the way that blogs link to each other, and they determined that the blogs containing the most outbound links generally also received the most inbound links.

What this implied to me then, and now, is that linking out to other blogs is an easy way to market your own blog, especially if you link to smaller blogs, where people can keep up with their incoming links.

Steem aims to extend the blogging concept by adding a so-called "proof of brain" layer that we all hope will eventually become good at content discovery, although few might say that it has realized that goal so far. Let's fade back from that concept, "proof of brain", and ask ourselves, "What makes proof of brain?"

From my limited understanding of the topic, it seems that the brain requires neurons and synapses in order to function. Neurons are a sort-of tiny processing cell, and synapses are the connections between the cells. The neurons are all interconnected in a complex mesh network, where a single neuron will have numerous neighbors. When a neuron receives sufficient input, it fires, which passes a charge through the synapse to all adjacent neurons. Those, in turn, fire when they receive sufficient inputs from their own neighbors, and so on, ad infinitum. The connections that receive more firings gradually become stronger and faster than the ones that don't.

So if Steem demonstrates, "proof of brain", where are the neurons and synapses? Well, at the simplest layer, I guess we all have brains with their own neurons and synapses, but the facts that automatons participate in the block-chain activity, and that it's very hard to distinguish between automatons and humans, imply that the term is somewhat of a misnomer. What if we extend the concept to a higher level and say that Steem itself is a sort of artificial intelligence that is being trained to do content discovery? Where, then, are it's neurons and synapses?

For the sake of this post, let's say that the neurons are accounts and blog posts, and the synapses are votes, links between posts, transfers, and the various types of rewards (author, curation, and beneficiary).

Fast forward, and apply these concepts to today, and you realize that content discovery involves more than just voting. Starting (I believe) with @randowhale, the bid-bots have added transfers of STEEM and SBD to the content-discovery equation, but there are also other on-chain tools to add to the mix, namely links between posts, and beneficiary awards. In this post, I am going to focus on the beneficiary reward as a super-powered way to market your blog. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that this tool is mostly ignored, and it also seems that if linking out from your blog is a good marketing technique, then suitably targeted reward sharing should be an even better technique, although I'll admit that my own efforts to date have shown little evidence to support this belief.

In the following two sections, I'll discuss my line of reasoning on the idea of building stronger synapses by reward sharing and linking out. As background, I'd invite you to look at the (aging) posts from the @classical-music account and my more recent #rsslog posts.

Reward sharing

My first effort at reward sharing involved the @classical-music account, which - unfortunately - I have not been able to keep up with recently. The idea was that I would share excellent #classical-music posts that I found on Steem through a facebook page, and produce a Steem curation post with all the links that I had shared on facebook to gain compensation for some of the time spent promoting Steem that way. I also decided to share the rewards from the curation post with the authors whose content I was highlighting.

The thinking was that the facebook page would attract classical music enthusiasts to the Steem blockchain, and that sharing rewards would help content producers to produce exceptional content. The project became too time consuming, and @steemsql stopped having free access, so I have been stalled, but I may eventually get back to it. The difficulty of this method for reward sharing was that at first, I didn't know about beneficiary rewards, and even when I learned of them, I didn't have an easy method for implementing them for reward sharing.

More recently, I switched to using the @steempeak interface, and one of its very nice features is the ability to set beneficiary rewards easily. You can even include beneficiary rewards in a template, so you don't have to do add a repeat beneficiary for every single post. (although, be forewarned, if you set it in a scheduled post and then revert to draft, the setting will be lost)

My second initiative with reward sharing is with my #rsslog series of posts, which I started in March, and continued through April and to the present, with daily posts since early April. The series has evolved over time, but as it stands now, I am including 8 or 9 daily posts from off the Steem blockchain and 1 or 2 posts from on the Steem blockchain. For each of the Steem authors, I allocate 5% of the post's rewards to the author, making use of beneficiary rewards through the @steempeak interface.

It seems to me that sharing rewards like this is sort-of like a "tip" in the service industry. If we're harnessing someone else's work in order to generate rewards for ourselves, some amount of beneficiary reward should probably become customary. In addition to being fair, I also believe that this would develop collaboration, enhance the sense of community, and strengthen the value of the Steem blockchain.

In mid-2016, when I got here, votes were the strongest content discovery synapses in the Steem brain. Now, bidbots have arguably strengthened the STEEM/SBD transfer synapses so that they have overtaken voting in importance. No matter where discussions of economic changes on the blockchain lead, I don't think that this is the end of the story. Reward sharing is a lightly used tyype of synapse that might, conceivably, be strengthened.

Linking Out

As mentioned, in addition to reward sharing, my #rsslog post also makes use of another technique, as a sort-of marketing effort. Two Steem authors get a share of my rewards, eight Internet authors do not.

Now, I'd invite yourself to put yourself in the mind of someone on the Internet who is not familiar with Steem, but they get a notification from one of these posts in their blog's dashboard. Imagine that they're curious about who linked to them and why, so they follow the link back to the post. Now, they read through the post, and they see a list of 10 articles, one of which is theirs. They look through some of the articles, and they notice that 2 of them are singled out as "receiving 5% of rewards from this post". Is the next thought that occurs to them, "I could have received a payout for this article, if I had only blogged on that platform."?

So, in addition to providing original content and a plethora of potential discussion topics to the blockchain, by linking out from the #rsslog series of posts (500+ links out, so far), I believe that I am accomplishing 2 things. First, bringing eyeballs to the Steem blockchain, and second, providing a subtle suggestion as to why the visiting author might wish to move their blog to Steem.

Discussion

So, to strengthen the "proof of brain" concept, and improve content discovery, I would suggest that authors and voters need to begin making use of all forms of on-blockchain connections among various authors & posts. In addition to the presently used mechanisms of votes and transfers, other possible connections include links between posts, and the use of the beneficiary reward mechanism.

Although I have to admit that my own efforts with reward sharing have seen only limited success, I still believe that the concept is sound. If harnessed right, reward sharing among collaborators may just be a super-charged marketing tool for the Steem blogger, and it could give the Steem platform an edge, even over other platforms that pay rewards for content.

Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".

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Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.

Steve is also a co-founder of the Steem's Best Classical Music Facebook page, and the @classical-music steemit curation account.