[Steemhunt] Direct Signup started

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Hi, Hive account@jayplayco here.
Hive account@steemhunt 's announcement hit Steemit yesterday. Steemhunt is now offering a direct signup. We were able to see that Steemhunt is stacking the accounts under steemd. There are now 1,821 pending claimed accounts and increasing.

0. Repository

https://github.com/Steemhunt/web

1. Account creation on Steem

To be able to be active on Steem, Steemit or any Steem based D'apps you need a Steem account. Before HF-20(Hardfork 20) you needed to wait for 2-3weeks before your account got activated, or pay at least 3 Steem to start right away. For a Non-Steemian or a Non-cryptocurrency user, these conditions made it really difficult to start with Steem.

Starting with HF-20 it is now possible to create discounted accounts based on Resource Credits. Long story short, if an account has enough Steempower (delegated or owned) it is possible to create accounts.

2. Direct Signup

Before HF-20 easier and faster methods to get an account was, for example, to create a Github account and claim a Steem account with Utopian-io. Or buy a Starterpack at Steemmonsters with Fiat and get an account.

After HF-20, Steemhunt has now created the first direct signup interface. The difference is that a new user can create an account directly on the Steemhunt interface and does not need to jump over to Steemit. Additionally, users can use their newly created account directly on Steemhunt.

3. Softlanding on Steemhunt and Steem

A new user will not really understand in the first moment that the created account at Steemhunt is a "STEEM" account. A real difficulty for new users at Steem is that a lot of information and services are clustered around. Steemhunt is trying to give the users a soft landing on Steem and explaining the most important parts directly at the signup page.

As an example, the screenshots on the phones above are showing different services based on Steem.

In my opinion, for an even better soft landing, the first explanation would need a much easier and direct explanation what the new user is actually doing. A first section with "You are creating a Steem account on Steemhunt, this is like creating a Google account to be able to login to a lot of cool services based on Steem like Steemit, Dtube, Tasteem, etc." could be helpful.

4. Meaning for the Steem community

A great part of Steemhunt is, that the team is operating it as Open source.

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Source: Steemhunt Github

Other D'apps based on Steem also need new users outside of the community to grow. Services like Tasteem, Tripsteem could easily adapt the source to match their needs. In the end, it will be a "win-win" situation for D`apps and the Steem community when new users can easily be boarded into the Steem economy.

Github: https://github.com/Steemhunt/web/pull/273

5. Next steps

Creating an account at Steem does have a cost. Even with 1.6Mil Steempower, it is at max about 60 accounts a day that can be created without harming the operation. If the Resource Credits cost will increase, the number of accounts will be even lower.

Where money is, there is always the possibility of abusing. Steemhunt has implemented a phone number check as a first barrier. A priority is also to implement a system to detect and stop any attempt to milk this direct signup system.

3. Conclusion

The direct signup is one of the most important parts to start active marketing campaigns outside of Steem. Referral marketing, traditional SEM, Facebook marketing and Influencer marketing are the parts that come directly into my mind. If Dclick(Google Adsense like service based on Steem) grows fast enough outside of Steem, Steemhunt could even do marketing at low cost. We are heading to a very bright Steem future!

Vote for Steemhunt as a witness
or, go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and look for Hive account@steemhunt to vote manually.

"Keep the hunt on"

Thanks for reading!