Strength in Numbers! - New Initiatives to Help the Small Users

At the beginning of the week, I learned about a few new community initiatives to help keep the small Steemit users active and motivated.

Minnowuprising

Image source: Pixabay

#Minnowuprising is an initiative by Hive account@taskmaster4450. Plankton, red fish, minnows, or whatever you prefer to call the little users (though some only consider those who reached the 500 SP mark to be "minnows") are the vast majority of the active users on Steemit, but currently the largest accounts are the ones who receive most of the rewards from the reward pool (where the payouts distributed every day come from). But what the small fish lack in influence (SP), they have in numbers. The #minnowuprising initiative intends to encourage the small but numerous users to post and interact more, in order to try to change this reality, and to increase the distribution of the reward pool rewards to the smaller accounts. This post explains the idea in more detail.

The initiative encourages publishing at least two posts a day, and also using the different sites in the STEEM blockchain besides Steemit, such as:

DTube - a video-sharing site (similar to YouTube).
DSound - an audio-sharing site (similar to SoundCloud).
DLive - a video live-streaming site (like Twitch).
DMania - a site for posting memes (like 9gag).
Steepshot - a site for posting photos (similar to Instagram).
Zappl - a microblogging platform (similar to Twitter).
Parley - a site for sharing links and discussing them (like Reddit).
Steemhunt - a site for product-hunting, with reviews of new products and gadgets.
DLike - a site to share links and images related to your interests (like Pinterest).

Sites like DMania (memes), Steepshot (photos), Zappl (short statuses), Parley and DLike (links) require little effort to produce content compared to full-blown blog posts with elaborate texts. If you use upvote services, keep in mind that, because of the short and generally not elaborate nature of content published through these sites, upvote services such as Hive account@qurator and other bots will not upvote such posts (some may even put you in their blacklists if you send them "low effort content," so, be careful. It's best to avoid using upvote bots to promote posts created on these sites). Other than that, as easy as it may be to publish this kind of content, and even though #minnowuprising incentivises users to post more, don't abuse it. Use common sense, post interesting and / or informative things, and don't spam!

Upvoteplankton

Another initiative, by @ kabir88, is the #upvoteplankton tag, which planktons can use to have their posts found more easily, and where supporters of the movement can search for interesting posts to vote instead of going to the "Trending" page. Simple as that! It reminds me of the #newbieresteemday tag (that's been around for some time now), which veterans keep an eye on to vote and resteem posts by newbies and small users.

For the post explaining the idea of the #upvoteplankton initiative, read this post.

MinnowsMith

Minnowsmith.party is a website that uses your browser to mine the Monero cryptocurrency and converts the currency into SBD. You specify a steemian's username before starting to mine (it can be your own username, or the username of someone you want to support), and then the SBD payments go directly to the specified steemian's wallet once your mining has managed to accumulate at least $0.001 SBD. Payments are made daily and posts with statistics are posted to the Hive account@minnowsmith profile.

Apparently, mining is slow and a computer alone takes a lot of time to earn a few SBD cents, but instead of each user mining for him/herself, the idea would be to have several people support a particular plankton and mine for him/her. I liked the idea, but I still haven't tested it, and don't know whether it's feasible (whether it has much impact on the computer's CPU, or the impact on electricity use and costs etc.). If anyone has tried it and can share their experiences and clarify these issues, please do!

All these initiatives convey the notion of strength in numbers, and encourage small users to unite and grow together. I loved the saying in this comment by @kabir88:

If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.

For more events that help the small fish, see also my previous post, if you haven't come across it already:

#feedme - Events to Earn Upvotes and SBD!

If you decide to take part in any of the events, be sure to visit the corresponding users' profiles and check if the rules haven't changed.

There is also this big contest going on along the week, the Minnow/Newbie Palooza contest by Hive account@newbiegames, with more than $100 SBD in prizes! Prizes include big upvotes, credit to use the Hive account@dustsweeper service, Steem Monsters cards, and Hive account@steembasicincome shares.

PS: this post is participating in @qurator's Toss Up Thursday contest, whose prize is a month of bigger upvotes. If you are also a member of Hive account@qurator, and if you liked my post and would like to support me, please upvote the comment with my entry (only upvotes from Qurator members count). Thank you!