Steem Powered

So, Tsu is dead. Last week the site shut down leaving hundreds of users wondering what they should do now. A lot of them won't get the money they had accumulated as it's not up to the payout threshold. They have added the ability to download your posts and photos. The posts are in xml and json format, so it will depend on whether you can do anything with those. I may file them away somewhere for future reference, but it's better if old posts can stay on-line. Tsu posts were not included in Google results, so they are of little value now.

There's discussion on the Tsu Forum about other sites that pay. I'm not really interested in those that just have pictures and/or short posts. I did that on Tsu, but I really prefer longer-form blogging. I'd heard about Steemit a while back. It's based around blockchain technology and has its own cryptocurrencies. I'm still trying to understand how these work, but you earn some based on how many votes your posts get. It's not based on views as the site does not carry advertising apart from on the search page. You can run mining software on your PC, but they discourage running it on multiple machines by requiring that each has your private key (used as a password). If anyone else gets that they could take your money. They also discourage speculation by limiting how quickly you can take money out.

When you look at the homepage you will see posts that show a value of thousands of dollars. That's certainly impressive. It seems to depend on getting votes by 'whales' who hold a lot of currency as their votes have more influence. Comments also have a value, so it's worth making good comments. I'd hope nobody is voting up 'nice' comments.

I am getting comments from bots. Steemit iswas fairly open for developers. The code for the site is open source and people can access the blockchain of posts to produce their own stats.This post lists a few plus a Chrome extension that gives you notifications. The site itself is lacking some of the features you would expect. There are notifications. You can follow people, but can't go straight to their feeds. Perhaps they are relying on others to add to it. This may be an opportunity for me to find some programming projects to work on.

Unlike Tsu you can pay into your account using Bitcoin. I had a small amount from various faucets and it was simple to buy some 'Steem'. I think that has increased my reputation there. They want people to hold currency. You get $7 worth when you join, but you can't take it straight out. I haven't invested much yet and am happy to wait a while to see where it goes. The Steem price has fluctuated a lot as you would expect. I understand that some people have already taken out large amounts, but you would  have to do it via a Bitcoin exchange to get cash.

If you join up then you can find me here. I'm using my standard name of steevc. Posts do appear on Google and I've already had one about prog rock shared on Facebook. Note that I do not earn anything if you join. There is no referral scheme that I know of.

Update in 2021: The Steemit platform became corrupted by a hostile takeover, so links have been updated to point to the Hive platform that is still decentralised. You can find me there.