Introduction
The Steem blockchain is much more than steemit.com. There are many applications through which you can post to the blockchain and every month the list grows a little bit longer.
If you were to take the steem data for May, for example, and carefully tease it apart, you would find it has arrived on the blockchain through no less than one hundred and eighty-five different sources. Some of these are small and experimental; a single test post from a single account. Others are fully-fledged websites and smartphone apps, capable of channeling a hundred-thousand voices to the blockchain each month. In between the range of options keeps on growing. Whether you're a vlogger, a live-streamer, a coder or a singer, there's a platform already built for you, or one that will shortly be coming your way.
Scope
Luckily for you, in this analysis I do all the hard work. I break down the May 2018 steem data by source application and list out the top 50 choices by author numbers. By comparison to the April figures I highlight which apps are heading up the charts and explain why some may be falling. Finally I look into the future, uncovering some new hidden gems that could soon see the light of day.
Results
May 2018
First of all the May results. Applications are listed by number of individual authors posting to the blockchain in the month of May. Rankings are also provided for numbers of posts (not comments) and payout amounts (curation payout plus author payout but excluding beneficiaries and based on payouts made in May rather than from posts made in May).
Top 50 steem applications ordered by number of authors posting in May
It should be noted that some applications do not lend themselves to the above ranking approach. For example, "steemgar" has only one account that produces posts but many accounts that compete in the game and produce comments. This is something I will look at for next month.
Top 10 steem applications ordered by number of authors posting in May
A visual breakdown of the top ten applications, again ordered by author numbers.
April 2018
For comparison, April 2018: same approach, different month.
Findings
Risers and Fallers
There has been no change in the order of the top 5 applications. Steemit.com is still way out in front overall, although its market-share of the user base shaved slightly from 60.8% to 59.7%.
Steemhunt.com is one of the biggest risers; up from 23rd to 15th with a 300% rise in users posting. For those of you who are yet to visit, Steemhunt is all about discovering new tech and sharing it with the community. There is a daily contest to find the most popular discoveries with the top "hunts" receiving some additional upvotes. It's also one of the best looking sites accessing the steem blockchain, with some great web design. Definitely worth checking out if you're at all tech-minded!
On the meme front, memeit.lol is up two spots to 19th while dMania is heading in the opposite direction - down one place to 7th following its off-again, on-again production saga. Plenty of options out there if memes are your thing.
Partiko is a completely new entrant in the top 25 for May, appearing on the list at number 22. It's an Android based mobile app and is getting some great reviews. I can't tell you much more than that as I'm pretty much all Apple, but you can read more about it on the 
Finally you may have noticed utopian.io sliding down to a surprisingly low position in the table. Of course this is simply due to these stats being based on the choice of underlying application used to post to the blockchain and the utopian site being down after a recent hack. Utopian is still going strong with its community posting through other steem applications while a new utopian front-end is completed - soon to be back up fitter and stronger than ever!
Apps to Watch
One of the most interesting results from breaking down the steem data by application is that it reveals numerous applications in test and development stages. Here are a couple that I've picked to keep an eye on:
tasteem Already up at number 16 in the table this one has passed under my radar to date, perhaps due to the beta being mainly Korea focused. It's a restaurant guide site with weekly contests and looks like it could be a lot of fun. You can check out the beta at https://kr.tasteem.io/ or https://tasteem.io for a taste of things to come!
Appics After their very successful fund-raising it's good to see appics-testing hitting the blockchain. Details on the first Alpha version of the app will be on their site shortly.
Conclusion
There are more ways to post to the Steem blockchain than you might have imagined. With the list of applications growing each month, there are more and more opportunities for Steem users to find the niche and the community that suits them best, and still plenty of opportunities for developers to add to the cause. Although the competition is rising during 2018, Steem remains well positioned as the market-leader in cryptocurrency content creation and social media.
Repository
https://github.com/steemit/steem
Tools and Scripts
I used the following script to obtain the data:
Full month run grouped by date and app
SELECT
Convert(date, Comments.created),
IIF(isjson(json_metadata) = 1, IIF(CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')) > 0, SUBSTRING(json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'), 1, CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'))-1),json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')), null) as [SummarisedApp],
Count(Comments.author) AS [Posts],
Count(distinct Comments.author) AS [DistinctCommentAuthor],
sum(CONVERT(REAL,Comments.pending_payout_value)) AS [PendingPayoutValue],
sum(CONVERT(REAL,Comments.curator_payout_value)) AS [CuratorPayoutValue],
sum(CONVERT(REAL,Comments.total_payout_value)) AS [TotalPayoutValue]
FROM
Comments (NOLOCK)
WHERE
(Convert(date, Comments.created) >= '2018-04-24' AND Convert(date, Comments.created) <= '2018-05-31') AND
depth = 0
GROUP BY
Convert(date, Comments.created),
IIF(isjson(json_metadata) = 1, IIF(CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')) > 0, SUBSTRING(json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'), 1, CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'))-1),json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')), null)
Distinct authors run grouped by app
SELECT
IIF(isjson(json_metadata) = 1, IIF(CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')) > 0, SUBSTRING(json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'), 1, CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'))-1),json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')), null) as [SummarisedApp],
Count(Comments.author) AS [Posts],
Count(distinct Comments.author) AS [DistinctCommentAuthor]
FROM
Comments (NOLOCK)
WHERE
YEAR(Comments.created) = 2018 AND
MONTH(Comments.created) = 5 AND
depth = 0
GROUP BY
IIF(isjson(json_metadata) = 1, IIF(CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')) > 0, SUBSTRING(json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'), 1, CHARINDEX('/', json_value(json_metadata, '$.app'))-1),json_value(json_metadata, '$.app')), null)
No double counting run
SELECT
Count(Comments.author) AS [Posts],
Count(distinct Comments.author) AS [DistinctCommentAuthor]
FROM
Comments (NOLOCK)
WHERE
YEAR(Comments.created) = 2018 AND
MONTH(Comments.created) = 5 AND
Depth = 0
Relevant Links and Resources
Links are provided in the text.
Thanks for reading!