Defining The Problem
You read a post, maybe read the comments, maybe even add a comment yourself; but when you have finished interacting with that particular post, where do you go?
Well, I might look at that author's other articles, or I might go back to the tag-stream I was browsing, or possibly back to my own feed. Thing is, there is no obvious one-click way to go to similar content on Steemit or chainBB. It is also very difficult to find relevant posts that are already 2 or 3 days old. The chainBB forum is great if an article has plenty of comments as the forum structure promotes discussions. But the vast majority of members use the Steemit platform and the choices tend to be either brand new posts that are a few minutes old or trending posts that have envious earnings.
What about all the interesting stuff buried in the middle of the Steemit stream?
The Related Posts Widget
Wouldn't it be good to automatically generate links to content that is related to the article being read?
Wouldn't it be good to have your articles promoted at the end of other articles on the same subject?
Wouldn't it be good that your article can be seen and read for the whole of the 7 day earning period?
I call it a "widget" merely because that is the term used for apps added to blogging platforms. Essentially it is a small code snippet added to the end of your post that automatically generates Related Posts similar to yours. At the same time, other authors will also be promoting your article at the foot of their post.
This will keep readers engaged and "on topic", discovering both new and established authors and keeping up to date with a range of recent opinions on their favourite subject.
Phase One: The Personal "Read my other posts"
To get people accustomed to inserting code snippets at the end of their articles, this personal app would search your recent active posts, check the tags, and post the four most relevant other articles that you have written.
This saves readers having to look at your profile and browse the other articles in your blog. This is a handy one-click solution to keeping readers engaged with your content.
Phase Two: The Curated Posts Network
There are now so many curation initiatives that it is sometimes hard to keep up with every development. Wouldn't it be good to have all this curated content fed into a new Related Posts Search Engine? This Related Posts Engine would generate the best four articles on a similar topic to the one being read. It would still require curators, but their efforts would be multiplied by spreading their content gems throughout Steemit. The Related Posts Engine could follow all the myriad trails and curation groups and bring them together into a "super-trail".
If you have set up automatic voting for your favourite curators, that's fine and won't change, but this Related Posts Engine will put those articles in front of real reading humans who can upvote, comment and follow new authors.
Phase Three: Integration into Steemit
This one is for the future, but I think this would make a great permanent feature integrated into the Steemit User Interface (UI). It would probably be easier to program too if it was part of the UI as there would not be the limitations into what can be inserted into an article.
I would welcome contact from the site developers to pick up this idea and develop it.
The Here and Now: Development Time!
I have discussed this with a few people and I now throw this idea open to the Steemit community. All earnings from this post will go towards developing this concept. I am starting from scratch - from an idea, a brainwave I had 2 days ago!
If you agree with me that this is a great idea and would increase reading time and engagement and new friendships, then please upvote and resteem this article.
If you would like to develop this new app, then please get in touch and we can discuss its feasibility.
And finally, I have made a simple table mock-up of what the widget/app would look like at the bottom of an article. I hope it looks OK on all screens; if it doesn't, then my apologies, it just shows four small thumbnails and a truncated title of each post.
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