Bits and Pieces - Shattered into 1000 Followers.

News, Rants and Thoughts -

Covering several topics. I just like to write.

First

No slumped shoulders? No words of encouragement as people meander around Steemit wondering what's happening?

Yeah. Talking hardfork

This one was a success! It seems everyone is happy that their little blue up arrow makes the numbers go up at last. But, now I am hearing how people are discovering what voting power is and how it works. It's the top question I am getting.

If dented voting power is the worst thing that comes out of this, I have to hand it to the team of developers. They rocked it this time. They were shooting for five votes per day many months ago. This fork gives us ten. That's a decent compromise.

I also think it is a great time for people to learn how check their power, learn how long it takes to recover, and think about how to ration voting power. Quality will come as everyone becomes more selective with what they vote on and how much they give each post or comment. Growing pains.

Second

My second point is related to the first. I had only one day to experiment with the new HF economy, and it was time to award someone with the #takemyvotes prize today. I went experimental. I had no idea how much to assign. My 100% vote was able to give $100-200 for a single click! I needed the winner to work with me and let me make adjustments as the night progressed.

The contest, as many of you know, is to give someone the power to toss around a good size vote for an entire evening. Many run their own contests, comment, vote and tell others how they got more power. I see it as a way to maybe show people that Steemit is more than a place where you can post, get paid, then cash out for worthless paper notes. It's a place where some of your money should be stored and put to good use.

If I were to give full power to the winner, they would be done in 15 votes.

That kind of misses the point.

Here is an example of community building by Hive account@jaybird - finding quality.

Hear the song here

I was glad to have Hive account@jaybird at the wheel. He was choosy and selective. He was given my power for as long as it took to run it down to 80% (from 100%). He was able to continue for eight hours straight - Great job! The power he had ranged from 10% to 40% throughout the night each vote slamming the recipient with $20 to $40. It is critical for me to find the magic sweet-spot in order to give then intended prize without having winners building up expectations only to be done before they get started.

And at the end, Hive account@jaybird got some of those 100% votes because he had neglected his own blog posts, only having voted on three of them. I did what he couldn't and voted on his blogs. After all, he gave me the night off! He was also able to connect with on-lookers and make a few new dedicated followers as well.

Third

My third point segues from others' followers to mine. A huge thanks to all my new followers and a bigger thanks to those who stuck with me through the weaker moments.

I am just into my fourth month here and I just hit 1000 followers.

Epic!

Fourth

I really hope I am the only one with these problems.

• It has been more than two weeks since I wrote about Steem being missing from shapeshift.io
  They were nice about it and tweeted me back saying they are working on it. Still nothing.

• At the same time, Steem is temporarily disabled in Poloniex with no explanations (2 days)
  I could be wrong - if you are in a different country, you may have withdrawals. My VPN service is down and I can't test all regions.

• I lost an Ether withdrawal this week. Poloniex said "Completed" but the Ether blockchain shows nothing. I opened a ticket and there was an empty promise that it would be re-broadcast soon. That was 12 hours ago.

I will be doing my own testing, sending Ether from one wallet to another to see if Ethereum is becoming the next Bitcoin. I tend to quit each coin as they become Not Fast, Not Inexpensive, and Not Reliable.

Edit:

This morning nnobody is getting Ether out of Poloniex.

Thanks for reading - just thinking with my keyboard really. 👍

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Twitter: @at_htooms

Long time 🐟 turned 🐋 to have a voice.

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