Just a few minutes ago I discovered the PROMOTE button under my post.
I was updating my (almost) Daily Pick of Hidden Gems - FRENCH Edition and I saw this:
Besides my terrible sense of humor and the astonishing success of the aforementioned post, the trained eye will discover (on the lower right part of the image) this [PROMOTE] button...
What does it do ?
This button (seems to) allows you to add Steem Dollars to the posting-equation.
Meaning: You do not need whales or followers, just put your own money and have your post raise in the "hot" or even the "Trending" list.
As you can see, the money will be "burned" and become a dividend to share holders.
(Question for 
- Does it mean that already rich accounts, loaded with SBD will be able to promote even more their posts ?
YES...
YES BUT... there is more that meets the eye here.
And I believe it is actually good news for us.
Can I promote other's posts or just mine ?
That's the first piece of good news.
You can HELP others by promoting their posts: even if you are a minnow, you can put some of your earned SBD and help others. Now, Whales can help in a different way. And that's great news.
That is a little revolution, especially if you had your posts published by mini whales and got paid in SBD. Instead of having to wait 1 week to get Steem and then power up, you can allocate a small part of your SBD earnings to promote your own posts.
##SteemDollars suddenly became a very interesting tool!
The "promote" feed.
This is the 2nd piece of good news.
As you can see, there is now a new feed in Steemit, along side the famous infamous "trending", and next to the not very usefull "Popular" (I'd rather see here the "Feed"= my followed authors' stories)
Here's the link: https://steemit.com/promoted/
It is good on one hand, because it gives another way to curate content.
But on the other hand, you can be almost sure that the posts featured under this feed did (kind of) buy their success.
Conclusion: Good or bad.
As said, at 1st sight it does not looks fantastic, because it does not solve the "rich getting richer" situation.
But in the end it's a very interesting evolution that will benefit for the whole platform.
- SteemDollars now have a real utility (besides paying authors or trading on bittrex.com...)
That means SBD price SHOULD raise. - Now, anybody can promote any post. It's not about having followers or upvotes anymore: the curation market is now an open market.
Thanks to this evolution, I hope, and believe that Steemit will thrive even more.
Only the future will tell us.
In the meantime, check who promotes what here: https://steemit.com/@null/transfers
