This is a review of the Fundamentals of Steemit after 1 month of use. I've broken this down for the average Joe/Jane to understand.
The Site
Lets start off with why we're here. Steemit.com. The latest and greatest thing for all of us Social media heads out there, myself included. Each and every one of us were skeptical at first but now we each know, this is real and we're getting paid! Money is a universal language and this site speaks volumes.
It's currently in Beta phase. To those that don't know what that is, it means that the site is still being developed. It's not complete. In software design or game design, developers release a beta version of their product so people can rigorously trial & test an application and help developers improve the application for final release; "Alpha" release. This is great news to everyone that's here already. It means that the site is going to get better, and better, and better. Imagine joining Facebook when it was still being developed inside of a college dorm room, yeah, it would've sucked. This is like that except it doesn't suck. At all.
The site so far is easy to navigate. The homepage gives us a list of all the currently trending posts. This is cool. You can see exactly who's about to get a big chunk of the pie. This also helps to attract more users. People see those dollar signs and their eyes light up like a kid hearing the Ice Cream man driving past.
We can also see in the top left corner a drop menu that lets us categorize the home page. I like to use the "Hot" category when looking for posts to upvote because this shows you what posts are currently getting a lot of attention. You've also got the Payout Time, New, Active, Responses, and Popular sections. These are mostly self explanatory. The Responses page is still a little vague to me but my best guess is that it shows posts that're being commented on with most recent at the top.
The last part of the Steemit homepage to cover is the topic list on the right. This is in order of what topics are currently being up-voted the most/have the most pending payout. You can also pull up a full list of the most popular topics by scrolling down and clicking the "Show More Topics" link on the right.
Steem White Paper
This is the main reason I'm doing this review. I spent the day reading through the white paper and figured I'd break it down for everyone that can't be bothered reading it themselves. I should've read this weeks ago...
First of all, everything we already know has been outlined inside the document. Including Steem itself, its Dollar, and Steem Power. These are broken down in easy to understand terms. Basically, each is a different asset class that helps contribute to the capital of users, investors, and Steem itself. The bread and butter of what makes Steem tick.
What you may not know is that the Steemit team have really focused on transparency, quality of information, and equality. They mention these factors multiple times throughout the article. It's clear just by reading the introduction of the Whitepaper that the intent of the developers is benevolent. They have created this platform with every intent to benefit the users and not themselves. They've explained this numerous times in the Whitepaper under different sections, explaining how the site is a free market of information. That information is subjective, meaning it's entirely up to the community and the way it develops to decide what information gets voted for and paid. These votes and the money you're earning is a dividend of all the vesting interest being accumulated; Steem Power Interest being shared. What this means is that they've created a fair and equal pay system. Whether or not you're sitting on a $3000 post is irrelevant. In the long term, so long as you post content the community likes, you'll be rewarded.
That's the money side of the White Paper. The rest of the Whitepaper is mostly technical information relating to Algorithms, Transactions and Scalability. These are important factors to those wanting to work behind the scenes and help this project grow, especially Miners and Investors. As an Investor/trader, an underlying issue I assumed would be inevitable has also been outlined. That without buy-ins the currency could fail. Mining addresses this by creating Capital through Proof-Of-Work. That'll probably go over a lot of heads but in layman terms; money is being printed, legally, and it's sustaining the Capital value of Steem and Steem Dollars. Add the compound interest being earned through vests and you realize the full value of Steemit is incredibly undervalued. At least that's how I understand it.
Community Development
A very important part of Steemit is the community. Arguably the most important aspect. Without the curators and content creators there wouldn't be a Decentralized Social Media platform to begin with. And as this community grows our thirst for quality information becomes greater. It's important, if you're reading this, that we ensure the quality of both our own posts and others are of a high quality. Of course right now we're all having fun, but in the future those of us who become "Whales" will be responsible for quality within the site.
What's a Whale?
An important part of our community is Curators. Without Curators you don't get paid. As laid out in the Whitepaper those with a lot of Steem Power have a lot of liquidity to share around. These are people who give you over $100 for each upvote. Right now they're having a hard time trying to share around the wealth, and understandably so. From my estimation there's less than two hundred users whose voting power is strong enough to give someone that kind of payout. But don't worry! We have Dolphins too. These guys give people a nice $10 payout for each vote, but again, there's only so many of them too. There is however a lot of Minnows like myself throwing around Dollars and Cents. There's enough of us to make a post start trending which is good for all. Trending posts usually get picked up by Whales sooner or later.
As the community grows, we'll see a lot more species of fish in the wading pool, maybe even some Submarines throwing around 5 or 6 figure votes. Now that's the dream! Know that you fit somewhere within this equation and that you too have a responsibility in the future to ensure that only those putting in real work toward Steem's future and development should get rewarded. In saying that, don't stop posting the fun stuff. If not for the money then for the community. No community has ever thrived without a good laugh and giggle.
Other Stuff You Should Know
You should know that you can only vote so many times per day. As I've explained above when you vote you're sharing the interest gained by your Steem Power over every post you like. If you vote too many times per day you actually decrease the value of your vote and sometimes even decrease the value of the posts you're voting on. Think for a second if that were your post you're bringing down, that would suck. You're responsible for ensuring that doesn't happen.
You can check the amount of vote power you have left here - just enter your name in the "add an account to watch" bar on the left(info provided by 
You should also know that there is a lot of bots within the community. Bots are designed by programmers to act as users by voting and posting generic comments. Some of these bots are good, like 
(courtesy of
Flagging is another great part about the site. Flag anything you see that's spam, unoriginal, copyrighted, or just plain wrong. Do your part by flagging it. And if you get flagged, it's not necessarily a bad thing. People will click a flagged post just to see why it's been flagged.
Conclusion
The last thing I'd like to review is the contribution that everyone has been giving to the community and its development. One of my favorite users on this site is 
- Also, I reviewed my own individual contributions, which up until now have been somewhat mixed. I've made tutorials, posted testimonies, but have also posted a lot of crap. Stuff that's fun sure, but with how I want to develop my voice on here, I know now I should just stick to the good stuff. I'm sure a few others here feel the same. So, although I like that there's no delete button for posts, sometimes I wish there were one. This will remain in my head from now and is a motivating force behind informative posts such as this one.
I hope others follow the same suit, especially the friends of mine who've joined thinking they can get a quick buck for any old thing. That's simply not true. The community is what matters here and contributing beneficial material is what really counts. Then again you can do whatever you want.
If you're someone who's posting purely inspirational, motivational, informative and beneficial stuff then kudos to you! Feel free to link those posts in the comments below.
So that's my full review and the knowledge that I've gained after almost 1 month on the site. I hope you've all enjoyed this review from a self-taught everyday ordinary guy (Jon Lajoie comes to mind here). I'm currently looking at ways to invest in Steem, though as they say in the Whitepaper, people have more spare time then they have spare cash. That's me. Anyway, I hope you all took something from this and now know a bit more about Steemit and the fundamentals fueling it.
Peace and Love
The Sensei