A couple week ago, 
My Curation Trail
So starting last night, I crunched some numbers, and decided to take my own shot at it.
Currently, every post made via chainBB is getting a 0.05% upvote from my account. While my account isn't as large as many others, this tiny fraction of a vote still awards $0.20 in estimated value, and doesn't drain my voting power quite as harshly as using larger percentages. Over the last 12 hours I've cast votes on roughly 350 posts made via chainBB and my voting power has remained quite steady above 99%.
I am not sure how long I'll be running this experiment, but for the time being, it's on until it becomes a problem or needs adjusting. It may be discontinued at any point in time, at my discretion.
Larger upvotes for Feedback & Bugs
Another thing I've been doing is giving larger upvotes to those users who find (new) bugs and provide great feedback. This type of information is incredibly useful to me as I'm building out chainBB so I want to encourage it as much as possible.
You can participate by using the following forums:
Within the bugs forum - unique (and unreported) bugs will by far receive the largest votes on my behalf, and the more details/effort put into the report, the higher I'm likely to upvote.
For suggestions - I really want to know, in detail, what you think of the platform and what it would take for you to make it your permanent home for Steem. Writing "I want this!" and nothing more isn't incredibly helpful, but if you explain why you want a specific feature, cite examples (with links) of places that do that well, and even go so far as to technically describe implementation... those are all factors that influence my vote. I'd love to engage with you on your ideas! As a community we can truly build something great.
This is all subjective from my opinion of course - so please keep that in mind.
Others are welcome to join my trail or even delegate SP
I'd encourage others who are capable (and know how to setup either a trail or a bot to autovote) to follow my curation trail and promote 3rd party platform usage of Steem. Simply follow my voting patterns and I will do my best to not deplete your voting power, while still awarding those users who are giving the new platform a shot.
Edit - It's also been suggested to me that a different way to support this experiment would be to delegate some Steem Power to my account. You're more than welcome to delegate SP to my account (and revoke it at will) for the duration of this experiment. Just remember, it takes 7 days to return to your account after revoking :)
Did this whole thing sound confusing, and you're not sure what chainBB even is?
Here's a few posts to get you started, some by me, some by other users:
- chainBB - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- chainBB.com - a blockchain forum platform for Steem (by @jesta)
- ChainBB - A Review of what may become way bigger than steemit.com (by @cryptoctopus)
- Diversifying My Steemit Experience: In Over My Head With Awesome ChainBB (by @prufarchy)
Success in Steem via multiple platforms (besides steemit.com)
Bitcoin isn't at it's level of success because a single website implemented and is using it, and the same holds true for Steem.
We need thousands of websites with different purposes powered by the Steem blockchain to truly levels of global penetration. As a user, I'd encourage you to check out all the various websites and apps that integrate into the Steem blockchain, and help them all reach their maximum potential.
If I had a post I could link to that highlights the various platforms and their differences, I would link it here, but I don't have one on hand.
This ecosystem revolving around Steem is going to grow at an exponential pace as we fan out across the internet, and I hope you are all as excited as I am to be a part of that!