Note: I write this article because Steemit is still in beta.
I’ve been noticing a few things about Steemit and the one thing that stands out the most is amount of views people get on their blogs. I have read some really bad articles on Steemit that received over a hundred up votes, while other well done articles receive one or two up votes. And oddly enough, I have gotten up votes on my articles before anyone could possibly have read them. Almost as if the up vote was automatic. This is because of the people who follow you over to Steemit from other platforms; the Clique.
I came to Steemit on my own, without a clique. I didn’t think I needed one, but it obviously is the key to success on Steemit. Without the clique, no one will see your articles. There is no notification system that I have seen, that will notify you of a new post by people you follow. I have 223 followers, but none of them have seen my posts, and I don’t know these people. They just randomly followed me. They were probably just trying to get noticed. I followed them all back out of courtesy. None of these followers of mine will be participating in my experience on Steemit. Another reason no one has seen my posts is because the feed is one line of articles that, without scrolling down, only 5 are visible. As time goes on my articles get pushed down farther and farther. The only way to read my content now is to go to my page. There are only notifications for comments, that is all. You can not subscribe to a person, and you can’t tailor the feed. If you would like to read an interesting article, you have to go sifting through the pile of lost articles to find one.
Unless you brought your clique to Steemit with you, you have nothing. This is a huge fail on Steemit’s part. It shows that Steemit can’t function without the other platforms and the offering of tokens of monetary value. Most bloggers here on Steem it, are content creators someplace else and they just repost here for the cash. In that sense, Steemit is like a whore. If you took away the Steem tokens, this platform would die. And the only way to assure that you, as a content creator, survive is to bring your clique. –Paul Fitzpatrick