I thought it might be nice to recount the story of how the introduceyourself tag came about.

Is it really you?

Shortly after I discovered Steemit, I introduced Hive account@mummyimperfect to the platform. She had been blogging for about a year on her website. Steemit seemed the perfect opportunity for her to really monetised her talent and expose her work to a wider audience.

So she started blogging here. On her second post she got the following comment.

The comment made sense. She could have been anyone pretending to be her. So I suggested she do an introduction post.

She was a little skeptical however I reminded her she wasn't putting anything in the Steemit post that she hadn't already put on her website.

So she wrote the post. She also confirmed who she was by writing a blog post about Steemit on her website.

"What should I tag it?" She asked me.

I'm sure there were other people that have done introductions however none of the tags grabbed us. We bounced ideas... introduction.. introducingme... introduceyourself, I said (my claim to fame!).

Invitation

I think the reason why introduceyourself works as a tag is that it's not just the writer introducing themselves. The tag itself is an invitation for the reader to introduce themself. The money that the posts generate works to create a perfect storm. Why would you not sign up and introduce yourself!

It took off from there and it was really rewarding to see other people benefiting from introducing themselves and giving the site a real community feel.

Raising the bar

There are two things I personally like in an introduceyourself post,

When someone goes the extra mile to verify themselves with their existing on-line presence (be it a website or facebook account) or
When someone builds a reputation on Steemit then reveals the person behind the reputation

Unfortunately, and I guess it's inevitable people are trying to game the tag. I suspect this will die down as voters catch-on and start to raise the bar on what they choose to upvote.