Today is my 28th birthday and I see that one of my wishes has already just come true.
We can now adjust the weight of our votes!
In our pilot episode of the Steem Smart Podcast, I mentioned this as a feature I would love to see and voila! Here it is! Many thanks to whichever of the devs is responsible for this one. I think it will make a big difference around here.
So what do I have planned for the year ahead? LOTS. I just went out shopping for offices in a brand new building here in Valdivia and I'll soon be opening Steem Center, an international Steemit support company. The inspiration began when @stellabelle began calling me the Minnow Shepherd because of all the assistance I've been providing to newcomers. It has kind of become my thing around here, I guess. So now imagine a call center that offers live help service for newbies in all major languages. Now add a new currency exchange and media studio and you'll start to get an idea of what I've been up to down here ;-)
Fostering adoption has always been my primary concern and since Steemit is so amazing that it damn-well sells itself, I believe the real challenge we have is in retaining newcomers. I've been noticing a lot of people making good money from their first introduction posts only to then get stuck at the cash-out step and lose their initial enthusiasm. I can only help so many people alone and I already have another business to run but with this new professional support center, I'm intend to clone myself and assist people all over the world, from The US to Europe to China. Might even be able to offer support in Klingon too, just for grins.
Anyway, this is why I have been powering down. Getting this place up and running called for some working capital and powering down seemed like one obvious solution. There are definitely investment opportunities here to for anyone that's looking for a fun new project to get involved in but everything is on track regardless and I'll be dropping updates here as we get closer to the official launch. The website is under construction, an app is in development, and I'm recruiting multilingual operators now. It's a huge undertaking but I've been incredibly inspired and motivated to get this rolling so as to make Steemit more "sticky" and drive adoption. When we're ready for launch, I'll make the appropriate announcements here in the mean time, if you know someone that speaks a bunch of languages well and would like a part time job as a Steemit support operator, mention this to them and see if they'd be interested in a position. There will be a hiring page on the website with more information but in the mean time, they can inquire by contacting me directly at piedpiper@steemcenter.com