You've given me hundreds of small windows on your lives. Some raw and personal, some polished and reflective, some recent, some pulled from the distant past. I've enjoyed them and learned from them. Thankyou.

As this platform's user base grows as intended, more and more contributors are going to post quality content, and I'm unavoidably going to miss most of it. I spend a few hours a day on steemit, but I have a family and a full time job. The more we grow, the more I'll miss, both in quality and quantity.

As the white paper pointed out, the "buy" decision has been bypassed by the upvote feature, but make no mistake; I am still your customer and the tide is rising. I'm perpetually aware that reading one of your articles costs somebody else who may be more dedicated or insightful than you, the chance to be read and upvoted.
It also costs me the chance to read their work; to be enlightened, entertained or challenged.

With that in mind, I offer the following warning.

The early mover advantage has landed you in my 'Following' list, but it won't keep you there indefinitely.
I get my fill of rambling, semi-coherent diatribes, clickbait rubbish and chain letters on facebook; and these are people with whom I already share history, affection and meatspace.

If I see a low quality, phoned-in post, I'll go to your blog and take a hard look at your last 5 posts, if you've consistently failed to show respect for my time and my intellect, I'll give somebody else's content a chance at your expense.

I won't notice if they're hours apart or weeks, (you're not George R. R. Martin), as long as you only post when you have something to contribute.
As your customer, I don't want to see content you created; because you haven't posted in 6 hours, or because your gerbil needs surgery. I want to see content you posted because you had to.
An insight that excited you, an idea that captured your imagination, or an experience you couldn't help but share.

As it stands I currently spend half my time in my feed, and the other half in new/hot/trending, looking for interesting articles. As my feed grows, I imagine that ratio will shift. I'll eventually spend the majority of my time in my feed, only reading, and therefore following, additional users when they've been resteemed by one of you. So while you'll continue to have an excellent chance of winning my upvote, for those I don't yet follow, the door will slowly close, leaving you as the gatekeeper; one of the many benefits of having found steemit early.

There are a lot of people with diverse interests wondering if they should start a second or third account for posting in different categories, to avoid spamming their followers with pieces far removed from the content they originally enjoyed. Feel free to do so, but its not a requirement.
I might enjoy your philosophical musings, while having no interest in your guide to EDM production or stories from crochet camp. As long as they're well written and offered in good faith, I'll probably still upvote them, even if I skim and don't comment, because I'm invested in and feel affection for, the people I'm following. I might just learn something I wasn't expecting to.
I want you to thrive on this platform. I want to build genuine, lasting relationships with real people; people who value my time, and don't punish me for choosing to invest it in their content.

While I realise this might sound a little blunt, understand that most people will do exactly the same, they just won't warn you first.

Respect my time, and I'll give you more.

Have a fantastic day