Steemit, the popular social media platform where users are paid to post and vote online, today announced plans to add heavily requested new features to its site, including private messaging, notifications, and follow buttons.
Steemit is rapidly becoming a blogger’s number one destination, as countless new users sign up every week and boasts a current registered user base of over 70,000.
The addition of private messaging, notifications, and follow buttons will enable more connectivity overall between community members, also attract users of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram who are well accustomed to the day-to-day functionality of such universal features.
“Enhancing the diversity of our application-specific blockchain is a natural progression for Steemit. Private messaging is perfectly suited for a decentralized system and will empower users in a similar way to how direct messages empower users on Twitter. The ‘follow’ feature will enable community members to receive notifications as soon as their favorite authors post, and the notifications will work just like Facebook in that users will be alerted immediately upon a new post or upvote from their favorite contributors. These features are the pillars of current social media giants and we look forward to integrating them into Steemit over the coming weeks,” said CEO of Steemit Ned Scott.
Presently, other entrepreneurs are answering the call, with over 60 third-party applications based off Steem built in the last two months.
Steemit is, at the moment, recording staggering levels of traffic, with over 70,000 votes and more than 21,000 posts each day.
“We hope to offer people much more than Reddit and Facebook,” added Scott. “By simply elevating the user experience and rewarding users for their time, Steemit has a fighting chance to compete with the largest social networks. We still have a lot of work to do and we have a lot of room to grow, but on the whole we see this system as more than a new social network, but as the bedrock for an online social economy. Developers and entrepreneurs are recognizing they can go straight to the Steem blockchain to leverage its data, identities, posts and other content. It’s very inspiring to see so much activity on the Steem blockchain.”