We should implement more useful features.

While there are many reasons that I consider Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to be far from perfect there are still features that I find valuable. One of the things that continues to annoy me about Steemit is how difficult it can be to find quality content creators on the platform. Should we really expect users to spend hours scrolling through the different feeds in search of new steemians to follow?

Personally I think the answer should be a definitive no. Using the available feeds can continue to be an option, but we need something else as well. Steemit devs should consider adding a "Suggested Steemians" feature. This could work similar to other social sites that suggest users that are being followed by accounts that you currently follow.

The busy interface currently has an "interesting people" feature that helps in this regard although it looks like it only suggest the most reputable people on the platform. I'm not quite sure what the perfect parameters would be when picking steemians to feature, but I do think more than reputation should be taken into account (this may already be the case)🤷‍♂️.

It's no secret that retention is a current problem and most would agree that engagement is a big factor in keeping new users around. If there is a way to extrapolate a positive engagement score from users that could potentially be a beneficial data set used to feature those steemians who are most likely to engage with others. This feature would provide a shortlist of quality users for new steemians to follow immediately upon creating an account. This combined with the "Suggested Steemians" feature would go a long way towards connecting people across the platform.

Potential ways to implement this feature.

I have no idea what kind of coding this would require, but I do have some ideas of how it could be integrated from a visual standpoint. Both features could be introduced in two separate ways. One being a static display below the "Links" box on the right side of the feed page. Similar to the busy setup it would have the user's profile picture, username, and a "follow" button. I've included a rough design above and I do suggest that you follow the two steemians Hive account@meno and Hive account@hanshotfirst if you haven't already. 😁

The second option would be to mix in a "Suggested Steemians" most recent post into users feeds with a small visual identifier that makes it standout from the other post. The identifier could be a shadow cast around the post itself or something more subtle like a tiny star in the same location as the symbol when post are rewarded in 100% SP.

What are your thoughts?

At this point you may be saying to yourself if busy has a similar feature already then why stress about having it directly on Steemit. My argument for that is if we are promoting Steemit then as a result we are promoting the steemit.com site, which needs every feature available that will encourage users/investors to stick around.

This is obviously more of an incomplete idea than a well articulated post with all the details ironed out. Hopefully my tired mind has made enough sense to start the conversation. I'd love to hear your opinion on the matter as well as suggestions from the community of ways to improve upon it. Do you like the idea? What are some potential unforeseen issues? Feel free to start the conversation in the comments below.