Since the time I arrived here on Steemit, I've seen the "Busy.org" site being mentioned around quite a lot, but only decided to check it out after I read this post (in Portuguese) by @igalapagos.
Busy.org is another social network site that uses the STEEM blockchain. All posts on Steemit can be viewed from Busy and vice versa. So, in practice, it can be used as an alternative interface to Steemit, and what's interesting about Busy is that it has some features that Steemit doesn't. For example:
It shows your current voting power percentage, and how much your vote is worth.
It shows how much voting power other people used when they voted.
It has a slider for you to adjust your voting weight. On Steemit, such a slider only appears for people with at least 500 SP.
It has a bookmarks function for you to save other posts to read later.
It has a drafts section where it keeps your drafts you can publish later or discard.
It has more fields to display on your profile, like links to other social networks you're part of, and a signature (the text you put in it will be inserted automatically below your future posts).
It shows the users' rank according to how much SP they have (Plankton, Minnow, Dolphin etc.) on the user profile pages.
On a post page, it displays a list of suggested posts to read.
Unlike Steemit that relies on Google for search, Busy has its own internal search engine which allows searching for both posts and users.
It has an activity panel that shows everything you did and when. Everyone you followed/unfollowed, what you posted, replied to, upvoted/downvoted, how much your vote was worth and how much was your voting power at the time.
It shows STEEM and SBD prices compared to US Dollar (USD) and Bitcoin (BTC), and shows the current prices of other cryptocurrencies if they are mentioned in the tag of the post you are reading.
If you post from the Busy.org site and use "busy" as one of the tags, you may get a free upvote from their bot, @busy.org (only one vote per user per 12 hours). This can be a nice little help to give more visibility to your post. However, it'll only upvote you if the total sum of all your followers' SP is (at the moment of this writing) at least 10000 SP (or 20000000 VESTS). . To check the current value (as it may have changed at the time you read this), go to:
https://github.com/busyorg/busy-robot/blob/master/events/vote.js#L14-L15
Currently, the comment on line 13 says:
// Amount required to get the minimum upvote (1%) is 20000000 VESTS ~ 2 Dolphins ~ 10 000 SP
And the comment on line 15 says:
// Amount required to get 100% upvote is 4000000000000 VESTS ~ 2 000 Whales ~ 2 000 000 000 SP
To check if you qualify, go to
https://steemdb.com/api/accounts?account=yourusername
Replace "yourusername" by your username without the @, and look for the "followers_mvest" field. If the value is greater than the minimum required, you qualify to get a upvote from the bot (I still don't :P ).
The features sounded cool to me, and I considered the possibility of using Busy instead of Steemit. I went to Busy.org and logged in using my Steemit credentials. I was able to edit the extra fields in my profile, the settings, read posts, check my followers, my activity panel, my wallet, use the internal search engine, go to the posting page, and do almost everything. Almost. I ran into a problem most users won't run into, because it only affects screen reader users (screen readers are software that read aloud the text on the screen, and are used mostly by visually impaired people, like my). Basically, there are icons on the site that are image only, with no text or anything screen reader software can identify. This includes the upvote and downvote buttons, the buttons on the post editor (though I use only markdown and don't intend to use the editor buttons anyway), and probably the post bookmark button as well because I couldn't find it anywhere. The popout menus that require mouse clicks and can't be accessed using only the keyboard are a bit problematic for me as well. Thankfully, most options that appear on that menu are available as normal links at the "Edit profile" page and can be accessed from the keyboard (though I couldn't find the "logout" option...).
The bottom line for my specific case is that I can use Busy to read posts, but can't vote! Ah well... I guess I'll use Busy to check my voting power percentage, write posts, and discover more content via the internal search engine and the suggested posts, and continue using Steemit to vote (so, no voting slider for me, but since my vote is currently worth nothing anyway, this probably doesn't matter). Busy's features sound interesting, though, and I hope it becomes more screen reader-friendly in the future!
What about you? Did the features sound interesting to you too? Have you already used Busy? Have you had any experience or problem different from mine? If you've never used it and are curious, click here to visit the site and check it out!