This post is co-written by @donkeypong and @the-alien

If there is something that we learned from steemfest it is that the steemit community is one of the most valuable assets we have.

Some of us weren’t lucky to be there due to prior commitments, but nonetheless we received countless messages of fellow steemians saying something in the lines of: “After meeting so many amazing people this weekend, my faith in steemit is stronger than ever”.

Two things are clear:

First of all, @roelandp you have got to host at least another one! And secondly, this is community effort everyone coming together, this is too valuable to ignore.

The weekend might be over, but we can still be an active vibrant community, this is not over. And more importantly, the fun is not over.

Fun, Friends and Virality

Today, we’re starting to reward new categories such us #funny and #til where you’ll be rewarded well for posting AND commenting with good content in these tags.

Yes, comments will be rewarded too! Because human interaction is one of the most important aspects not only of social media, but in life itself.

On addition to that, we’re also jumpstarting the #news tag on Steemit to make sure that people get rewarded well for posting and commenting on news stories.

Let’s face it, most people get their news today from social media. So why go elsewhere to get your news updates while you can get rewarded for posting and commenting here in this amazing platform?

The Power of Catchy

Now, as you might have noticed, /r/funny, /r/news and /r/til (Today I Learned), are some of the most popular Reddit subs.

One of the reasons we chose those tags is to attract redditors giving them the choice to post and comment on reddit for no rewards, or joining Steemit where they can get paid to do both.

And more importantly, we just want to make things fun and easy for you fellow steemians, and rewarding comments is a great way to encourage interaction and engagment, because sometimes it’s easy to forget how vibrant of a community we have here.

Let’s make Steemit the “go to” source for news and for fun!

Rewarding Short Content + Links

While Steemit has an invaluable number of high quality longer length articles on a daily basis. We would like to open the door to other shorter content as well.

Why limit ourselves? We can have all sorts of content, long, short and medium.

Many people like Reddit because they all they do is post links, and many people don’t have the attention nor the time for long form content no matter how valuable it is.

On the plus side, if some links catch on, we only need a few viral posts to drive an influx of new comers here to steemit.

For sharing pictures and memes, we recommend using http://www.steemimg.com/ and if it’s undergoing maintenance, then you can try https://postimage.org/ or others that you prefer. Youtube video links embed directly on Steemit.com. Oh and by the ways, you can link to other sites, also.

Just give us a little bit more with the links. Tell us something about the content in your own words, and then drop the link.

Rewarding Comments

Also, let’s reward good comments with the payouts they deserve. Not everyone writes articles. Many great community members post amazing comments. They stimulate discussions, they encourage content creation, and they make this site better.

Please feel free to post, comment, and curate in #news , #funny and #til !

And more importantly, let’s have some fun!

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank @smooth for giving us the idea to focus on Reddit-style tags. @smooth @berniesanders and @nextgencrypto are generously providing voting support to these new tags – thank you.

Also many thanks to the Members of Project Curie and The Steem Guild, as well as members of Steemtrails, Steemprentice, and other individuals have helped. You truly care about this community. Steemit is a better place because of you!

Also, we would like to thank the dozens of Steemians who have helped plan and create these new tags.

Thank you!

@the-alien and @donkeypong

To kick off this new initiative and encourage both comments and short content, we like to present you with a fun promo that hopefully gets traction and drives some attention to steemit.

Let the fun begin!

Short Content Kick Off: Steemit Fun Promo

Image Sources: 1 - 2

P.S: Let's make some noise!