Let's admit it. Curation on Steemit is tiring and time-consuming. It literally takes hours to find that one gold nugget in the ocean of spammy, garbage posts. And usually, you miss the train because that golden post already has several dozen upvotes. I wouldn't be worrying if it was on Facebook or Reddit... But being one of the first upvoters is crucial on Steemit. That's why I decided to create SteemUps
How it works?
SteemUps analyzes new posts by a number of words, included photos and author's previous results. Then Steemups calculates Viral Score - a probability for a new post to go viral on Steemit. Only posts with a high enough score are shown on SteemUps page.
SteemUps displays:
- Post's Viral Score (Normal, Medium, High);
- Post's words count;
- Post's photos count;
- If the post's author is a top rated Steemit author;
- If the post's author is a Whale.
The History
So yesterday, I started thinking what makes trending posts and how I could discover them before anyone else without investing so much time.
Obviously, content is the king. Longer, detailed posts perform better than short ones. Just read this and this. Google loves it, Medium loves it, Reddit loves it... Why shouldn't Steemit? So longer = better. Surely, content is not only a text. Photos and videos are on fire right now. Trending Steemit posts usually consist at least several photos. And of course, a creator is an essential ingredient for the post's success. If user's posts constantly appear on the front page, why shouldn't his/her future posts be successful as well?
So I came up with this formula:
Post's Words Count + Post's Photos Count + Post's Authors Reputation = Viral Score
It was time to bring the formula into life. As Quickly and dirty as possible, without learning new skills, languages or frameworks. Only with skills, I've. I found @fabien's Steem API, brushed up on my PHP skills, made a few quick designs with an ol' good pencil and paper and started coding.
8 hours passed and my app was ready. The only problem was it didn't have a name. The first one that came to my mind was SteemGuru.com... Certainly, it was taken. Then I followed with SteemCurator, SteemExpert, SteemGeek, SteemBe but none of them stuck with me. And then I had a eureka moment - SteemUp (Steem + Up for upvote-worthy content)... Guess what? God damn it, someone registered SteemUp before me. I didn't want to waste my time anymore, so ended up with SteemUps. Pretty neat hack huh? P.S. If the guy, who bought SteemUp, is reading this right now. You better create something beautiful and useful with that domain!
The Future
- Tune up the algorithm;
- Add new parameters for more accurate results (i.e. rate post's readability, detect original photos, compare post tags vs Steemit's popular tags);
- Add filtering by a number of words, photos, Viral score, tags.
- [Place For Your Sugggestions]