SteemMag – Steemit’s Weekend Digest #28: Of Gamification, Rising Steem Price and Engagement: Chats with A Steem Dev (SteemWhales.com) …. A Chat with A Steem Trader… This Week on Steemit and lots more

Hello. I welcome you to this month’s second edition of SteemMag, (the twenty-eight edition), a weekend digest for Steemians.

Every week, I take a look at some of the most important/trending topics and have a chat with top Steemians who have expert views on such topics.

In case you missed it, here are links to Issue #1 , #2 , #3 , #4 , 5 , #6, #7 , #8, #9, #10, #11, #12 , #13, #14, #15, 16,#17, #18 , #19 , 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, #26 and #27

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In page 1, SteemMag had a chat with @heimindanger, creator of SteemWhales.com – one of the most used Steem tools. Its leader board ranking is a nice gamification tool. And it’s interesting to see how fast or slow Steemians rise through the ranks.

I also had a chat with @thefuture, the author of one of the most engaging post this week and was #1 trending for a while.

Also had a chat with @kingscrown on the latest Steem price gains.

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In page 2, I had a chat with @snowflake, one of the most consistent SP power uppers this week. We had a chat last week about the recent spike in more people powering up. And with the massive influx of capital into steem over the weekend, @snowflake’s updated remarks are a great read.

SteemMag also had a chat with @thecryptofiend.

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A Chat With @heimindanger

SM: What inspired you to create Steemwhales?

@heimindanger:
When I first joined steem, a lot of users like @biophil were thinking about how to optimize rewards and play the steem game with a game theory approach. FIDE holds a public ranking website for chess players, lolking.net does it for League of Legends, SocialBlade for Youtube, etc etc.

So in a way it made sense to do it for STEEM. Everyone is curious, including myself. We want to know who biggest players are and how they are playing the game.

SM: It's been 8 months now. How has it been received by the community? And what are its most used features?

@heimindanger:
I have received a good amount of feedback (I have like 40 contacts on steemit.chat in total) That helped me understand what people wanted me to add, so I added a bunch of options through time, that were always well received. Also I notice very often while browsing that a lot of people screenshot the website, or even promote it, giving it random spikes of new visitors, which proves the tool is healthy and serves its purpose.

The profile pages represent a very large majority of the total page hits (75%), I think a lot of people just want to see how they are doing (the graphs), and compare to their friends maybe(?).

Random Facts: The most used sort method for the rankings is by far the reputation. The most used trendings is the 7 days curators.

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SM: How would you rate the developer community on Steemit? And what are your favorite Steem tools?

@heimindanger:
Hard question honestly, especially with current news about @dantheman. First I need to explain that I personally believe 100% that Steem is the best blockchain technology right now simply for the fact that you can write any data on it for 0 fees (see the steem whitepaper).

I think the main tools to interact easily with the blockchain are available and stable now. Like steemjs for javascript devs, piston for python devs, and so on. This makes it relatively easy for many projects to attempt to create great products using the STEEM blockchain as a database, where user actions wont cost any tokens. The foundations are good, compared to other older blockchains with better marketing but worse tech.

I think the coolest tools around are Busy or SteepShot as they attempt to give different/easier ways to start earning/spending your Steem to more casual/mobile users. But overall I mostly only use SteemIt.com, steemd.com and SteemWhales.

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SM: You took a break from posting on steemit but have been around following important updates. What is your opinion on the current state of Steemit?

@heimindanger:
The hardfork with economy changes seems to be good. It's been 13 weeks now since these changes, so people who sold are done with their widthdraws. I'm not a steem whale, but I'm still holding my Steem Power. SteemIt.com the website will probably remain as the 'forum' of steem.

It's a very good concept app of what the STEEM blockchain can achieve. I lurk it quite a bit to be honest, and some comments also. I hope the UI will keep on improving like it has been in the past 8 months.

Overall Steem still has a few problems I believe, but they can be overcome in the future communities update. Rewards formula probably needs to be tuned; a lot of people use bots for votes because doing 40 legit upvotes a day as a human is very time-consuming; the downvote button isn't really working as it should: people use it as a punishment method instead of a curation tool.
I believe the more people who start downvoting, the better the content on the homepage of steemit. Maybe we should have it like reddit where both the upvote and downvote button take the same space on the screen for the users. This way we will get better curation. Right now it feels a lot like the high reputation players only upvoting themselves through bots and I think a lot of minnows/dolphins understand and dislike that.

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Thanks so much for having a chat with SteemMag @heimindanger. It was a pleasure having a chat with developer of a favorite steem too of mine.

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Steemians Talk - What is the most exciting thing that has happened to you this week on Steemit?

@the-future:
The most exciting thing that happened to me this week and I think the best moment of my life since I joined Steemit was the engagement I get yesterday in my post! I'm looking to my post and I can't believe that so many people wrote me and it's just amazing.

Yesterday, I have spent more than 6 hours to reply to my comments, and people keep coming and comment. Plus I never was on trending page, and that's also a new record for me

Steem price is rising rapidly. What’s happening? Your take on the reasons why?

@kingscrown:
Two events occured same time - the experiment of whales giving more power to the people and Dan quitting Steem INC. On the other hand Bitcoin seems in trouble which may make it cut into two coins - just like with Ethereum before.

All this happens simultanesly. BTC problems made altcoins pump lately - its a fact. Now we dont know if iniders who knew INC cant move Steem until somethign happens took a move now after he quit and they pump the coin since they know whats coming, or if the small users felt what it is to give 2-5 cents per vote and bought cheap STEEM to now have more powers.

Sure thing is that there was biggest number of buys of STEEM lately in history in single days. Looks like we may have good times ahead again.

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Thanks so much @kingscrown and @the-future. It was nice having a quick chat with you guys on SteemMag. :)

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P.S Are there new features you would like to see on SteemWhales? What would you like to see in the next editions of SteemMag? Someone you have in mind? I would love to hear from you.

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Check out page 2 for more interesting chats and features Thanks :)
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