This last week of the 100 Days of Steem project is moving at a feverish pace.

As well as doing our best to keep up with the fantastic growth of The Diary Game, we are working hard to put in place an ambitious plan for what comes next.

As we laid out last week in our Roadmap post, the core of our strategy going forward will be the 3 R’s - Recruitment, Retention and Reward.

With that in mind, we are now reviewing all the projects and processes that have evolved during the 100 Days to see how they can be most effectively utilized for the next phase of Steem’s growth and development.

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Community Curators and the STEEM POD

The Community Curators project and the STEEM POD have both evolved during the course of the 100 Days of Steem.

They have been quite experimental as neither had been attempted before on the Steem blockchain.

Both have been beneficial to help Steem move forward over the past couple of months, but we don’t feel they have been as effective as they might have been.

That has most likely been due to our lack of clear direction and guidance – a not unexpected outcome of the experimental nature of the two projects.

The end of the 100 Days is for us an appropriate time to review how the Community Curators and the STEEM POD have worked so far, and how they might be more effective in the next phase.

In the second half of the 100 Days, The Diary Game has been increasingly influential in guiding our plans going forward.

We have learned so much from that particularly about recruitment and retention.

It is with this in mind that we are now planning to make more significant changes to the Community Curators project and the STEEM POD.

We did post our initial plans for Community Curators 2.0 last week, but following feedback on that and other wider changes taking place we are retracting that and setting out a new direction for the project.

The STEEM POD has so far operated separately from the Community Curators but we now feel there could be significant mutual benefit to bring the two projects together.

We will be going into more depth on the new arrangements in posts after the 100 Days ends, but for now the key changes are…

• The Community Curator accounts will not be offered to the community to apply for each month.

• The two 500K SP Curator accounts will, at least for the duration of Season 2, be utilized as additional curation accounts for The Diary Game. They will be operated by additional members being brought into the Steemit team to help with the growth of The Diary Game.

• The remaining five 200K SP Curator accounts will be allocated to teams from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America to support Steemians in their respective continents.

• These Continental Curator accounts will be run by members of the STEEM POD who live in each respective continent.

• It is planned to have at least three STEEM POD members per continent to start, with that number increasing as more suitable people become available.

• There will be a new phase of recruitment to the STEEM POD to ensure sufficient team members for each continent.

• STEEM POD members will be offered an improved incentive package with new rewards and increased direct delegations.

• Existing STEEM POD members will be offered ‘first option’ to apply for these new enhanced roles.

• Full details of how to apply for the new STEEM POD roles will be released next week.

• It is planned that the full transition to the new setup will take place over the remainder of July.

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We see this as an exciting progression of the Community Curator and STEEM POD projects.

With further announcements that we will be making very shortly, we hope you will be able to share our enthusiasm for the great potential these new developments will offer for the growth of the Steem community.

We appreciate there might be disappointment from the art and music communities that there will not currently be the option for the curation accounts, but we will be continuing to support those communities through upvotes and prize sponsorships.

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The 100 Days of Steem has been an informative and educational project for us.

The large majority of what has been done over the last 3 months had not been attempted on Steem before.

As we move into the next stage of Steem’s re-evolution we hope we can take what has been learned from the 100 Days to make even better use of the resources available.

We are excited about what comes next and what it will mean for the future growth of Steem.

Thank you,

The Steemit Team

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Notes from the Community...

Music For Steem Week 4 - Winners

Music For Steem have announced the winners of Week 4 of their weekly music contest.

Congratulations to @danieldedosd2, @esouthern3 & @cmp2020, @leomolina, @futuremind and @yusmi ...

• MUSIC FOR STEEM WEEK 4 - THE WINNERS - WEEK 5 OPEN NOW

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SPUD4STEEM Positive Statistics

SPUD4STEEM organizer @kiwiscanfly has posted some positive statistics coming from the latest round of the event...

• SPUD4STEEM STATS

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The rewards from this post go to support the work of @fundacorazon in Venezuela and @thegreens in Cameroon.

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