We'll see.

It will be super if that new direction also includes making it easier for the community to contribute to it's open source code, rather than resistance to such. I know at least a few members of this community that would have rather been working to improve condenser than building their own versions.

The team agrees and we are already discussing how we can make contributing code a more satisfactory experience. The challenge is that engineers cannot develop code and review code at the same time, meaning that we are faced with a choice: make the site better, or review code that might make the site better. It's a challenging problem, especially during times when the organization is strapped for resources, but we definitely want to tackle it. Thanks!

that's where decentralization comes in handy, because there are community members who are also qualified to review code. js. no response necessary.

That's true in general but if the code will run on their servers, they have a responsibility to review it themselves.

Still they could have community members do some of the work like the initial obvious things (coding style/comments/tests/pr is proprely formatted) and not have to spend so much time.

And it's not like there is no incentives for such a system with tools like utopian.io.

one step forward is if SteemIt's CONTRIBUTING.md was a bit more defined like Bitcoin's CONTRIBUTING.md.

Code review is supposed to be the first and easiest step in contributing to an open source project.

The only reason I bother is that when I found Steemit, part of the proposed appeal was decentralization. Every move in that direction will make this project more interesting, if there is really any hope for this instance of the Steem network.

Steemit Inc keeps saying "resources resources" while refusing to loosen their grip and support decentralization. Supporting community contributions, and further decentralization, means less resources required from steemit, and steem begins to look more like an actual blockchain.

I doubt it works that way. They own the dream, they have to shape it and let it reach a stage first before fully opening it up. Plus, they are a company and have responsibilities acknowledge by us, if things go wrong due to contributed code, we will still come out and hold them responsible. While i am not an expert, i understand better now how huge these things are. I went from just posting to steemgigs.org and ulogs.org and even as small scale as it currently is and even though it is open source and receive contributions, in looking for contributors, i still have to look for the exact dev aligned with the vision cos the vision is still building and i want that vision to stay intact, with its framework fully understood before, i leave it all out. cos yes, the vision can so easily change and turn into something else. The current steemgigs.org is the sixth version already. cos i was still learning at the outset, it was mostly seen as a fiverr replacement by contributing developers but in my eyes it was more of a dream-building social interface than a freelancing one with the freelancing just the surface. Also, i wanted to add value to steem in new ways using my interfaces, so contributors didnt understand e.g why i would want whole-post testimonials that are curateable as opposed to just simple reviews etc. so when they build they would go away from my vision and i sometmes at the time, would sway and leave my vision and accept what they offer cos i didnt know about coding at the time and because of wasted time and because i would thinki in my mind it is actually hard for these developers. now i created an entire enterprise called macrohard to solve these things and in the near future i want to create my own progtamming lanugage that people can code in etc. In general, steemit is still fresh and can very much be considered an experiment cos nothing like it ever existed and till date none exists. when i started steem, there was akasha, yours and synereo and some others and i don't see any of those having attain success today and whatever exists out there currently has steemians on it. steem and steemit i am sure has been a learning experience for steemit inc itself and i am very very very sure it is a big deal and would be big deal or even bigger deal, where it is fully open to contribution where the main vision of steemit inc is not set and stable, at least its framework. regardless of what is contributed as well, steemit inc may be held responsible or at least feel responsibile even where the comunity is proven and love steem. I just left this comment here to related my own small experience. overall, entire decentralization doesnt exist and doesn't mean success. even on steemit, it is obvious, someone will still come out and say he has more knowledge and your post has no value. The steem blockchain host humans. where there is ever entire decentralization, that system or tech will be flawed too cos it will still host humans.

I support your comment for sure but perhaps, it isn't so time just yet.
Steemit inc may have been considered slow and all, but i so doubt that no one will not be slow, where steemit and steem is an entirely new tech, never done and without much prior to steem to learn from. those who pop up now and say they are the best and fast in development, is mostly cos they have been on steem and seen steem and build off of that experience.

Its super lame you are justifying and encouraging their centralized position.

we're talking about the community helping with the front-end website.. so many amazingly talented developers in this community that have been cast aside by steemit to make 100 renditions of the steemit website rather than improve this one that hasn't changed in over a year.

>have responsibilities acknowledge by us, if things go wrong due to contributed code, we will still come out and hold them responsible

FALSE!!!

They have 0 responsibility to users of the platform, and we have 0 power except to vote with our feet, or forking. Unfortunately for most, this system is so complicated by the time anyone learns how fucked it is they are invested too deep to get out.

I'm only angry because I care, and really love the idea of what this platform is supposed to be about

I'm sorry but there needs to be guidance (which is centralization), there is a difference between, individuals with many different goals and a corporate structure which goal is to figure what is needed for the project and focusing only on the project for the projects sake.

otherwise you have this which I did a year ago...

I do love your comments, and I feel your pain. I was working on condenser for a short time, it was so lame, I just gave up before I got started, but I was not encouraged very much, and for that I am still sore...

https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfDkimtry9vBHjctVyywTnqLy9MLKin63kooMJkuKnKqz/steemitdesignproblems.jpg

Reviewing the reviews is generally a lot easier than reviewing the code itself.

'steemit's new direction' is towards the slammer . this platform is so criminal it boggles the mind !

This is not exactly true, one hour of reviewing code doesn't equals one hour of producing code in terms of productivity.

Unless the guy who wrote the code did an awful job that makes it super hard to read. You can expect the one hour of reviewing to produce much more than the one hour of coding because he is reviewing like 2-10 hours of code in that one hour.

And it's not even about reviewing code, it's about the community making changes and then having their PR shut down because steemit inc doesn't agree with them. I would have contributed to condenser or steem core myself but I know I'll never do that because there is a moderate to high chance that I'll be wasting my time. And basically all of the devs that I know on steem have the same mindset. We dont want to work on steemit inc owned repositories because history has proven that it's a waste of time and we be better off working on other things.

" make the site better, or review code that might make the site better." => This is the core issue. You guys believe that you can carry all the weight by yourselves and do all the changes because you believe that your time is worth more than everyone elses because you are better than everyone else.

And this breeds this current situation where everyone is just like "well steemit inc will do it"

And this is what happens : Even though you have a lot of knowledge about your own product (obviously) you can't be everywhere at once. A simple example is canonical links. A feature that is vital for a front end (especially steemit.com that's the biggest) to have a healty ecosystem of dapps and yet despite multiple calls to steemit inc to do it we had to wait two years for a community dev to finally do it.

I don't think this is an accurate picture of what we "believe". We believe that we need to do better with respect to helping community members submit code. We understand that it hasn't felt this way in the past. We're doing our best to change that in the midst of very challenging times, we're sorry if you feel our best isn't good enough.

It's definitely moving in the right directly though. I am harsh in regards to the past not the future.

It's not your best and you know it

Bump @darkflame @rawbe

Hey @andrarchy, remember when you introduced yourself as Steemit's Content Director?
https://steemit.com/steem/@andrarchy/i-m-steemit-s-content-director

You muted me forever for asking questions about content from Steemit and making suggestions to improve content? Oh the IRONY...

I left you this comment in regards to how you treated me.

> #### I just want to point out the irony of your statement.
> As a content director responsible for ensuring "production of Content coming out of Steemit Inc", and yet your first official public interaction as content director is to make a statement to ignore the people that have concerns and suggestions about content coming out of Steemit Inc.

Let's see if you have any inclination of changing. Oh wait, you can't read this since you've muted me forever. lol

Good one, @socky! 😆

> I would have contributed to condenser or steem core myself but I know I'll never do that because there is a moderate to high chance that I'll be wasting my time. And basically all of the devs that I know on steem have the same mindset. We dont want to work on steemit inc owned repositories because history has proven that it's a waste of time and we be better off working on other things.

Well said. Upvoting specifically for this bit.

The problems you mention are easily solved with a properly defined contribution process.

• Make contributors sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA)
• Add in linting rules (tabs vs spaces, indentation, file naming, function naming, structure)
• Make unit tests absolutely essential. Enforce a hard, no test, no merge rule. Unit tests alone will ensure the quality of the contributions is higher than random code with no tests.
• Incentivise contributions by partnering with @utopian-io in exchange for delegating them Steem power, Steemit can partner and help set goals/expectations for contributions. People will gladly contribute if they get a nice hefty upvote as Utopian has already proven
• A clear roadmap of what Steemit wants to do, what features they want help with, things they want to improve (use Github issues, projects and boards to help manage this)

Look at StackOverflow, it's the perfect example of a platform that entrusted the community to maintain it and it has worked quite well, which is impressive given the size of StackOverflow and other StackExchange platform sites.

I actually am a core team member of a large open source Javascript framework that is very friendly to open source contributions. We have found that requiring unit tests alone takes a lot of the work out of reviewing, and in most cases changes are simply optimisations or linter warnings.

I haven't examined the Condenser codebase extensively, but from the outset it doesn't look like it has a whole lot of test coverage and I think that should be one of the first places to start. If we can get tests covering most of the current codebase, then we can use those tests to refactor and guide new features, whilst ensuring nothing breaks.

So many talented developers in the community are being wasted, a huge missed opportunity. I don't speak for everyone but as an experienced front-end developer with eleven years experience, I can say if STINC were more receptive to community contributions and trusting, I would gladly help improve not only Steemit but other apps as well.

I think what it comes down to is STINC seems to distrust the very community that keeps this site and blockchain running. Many of us want to see Steem succeed, many of us are working on ways to improve Steem and Steemit itself.

Seems like great advice! Thanks!

dead on...I can tell you've worked on improving legacy systems doing QA in a large development project or two.

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPtH12w5jKtERSYaWH9o24pzHU3barkCL96ZKGJ62bhJF/contributionthumbsup_aplusasset.jpg]

Super excellent advice by a seasoned dev; and in my experience these kinds of views take time to digest in any large O. Source SW group. Egos take time to put aside, critical issues take time to dismiss, and then we have time to start including the community in development.

You guys seriously don't have a clue. Steemit Inc is an embarrassment and so are most of the top 20 ass kissing witnesses.

Elaborate.

Why, there is nothing in his statement that hasn't been common knowledge for a couple years now.

I just wanna know his thoughs on that statement. What do you think? :D

It's a long story of disappointments, collusion, sneaky behaviors, non-existent management skills, embarrassing and unprofessional behaviors and on and on. You kinda had to be here for a while to see it all, but the gist is, nothing is as advertised, and most of the stuff that happens here is heavily skewed to favor insiders, whether they are known entities or not.

Thanks. I guess I just want to confirm what i already thought or started to think.

I suppose a proper cynic would point out that all Proof of Stake systems are inherently designed to favor insiders. That's the very definition of the protocol. The more you have, the more power you have, and the more it is in your best interest to protect the circle of who has the resource from anyone outside of the circle as it existed when you joined. Likewise, it's in your best interest to try and force out anyone who was an insider when you managed to join the circle.

As a social dynamic driver, it's fascinating. I'm not sure it's the best design for a commodity.

You know I understand stake Lex, naturally, but you also know what I mean about the arrangements around here that were established before non-insiders, aka outsiders, could even get legitimate stake.

I figured there might be some members of the audience in the cheap seats who weren't up to date on Proof of Stake or who might not have actually thought about what it actually means. There's always a few. You have to play to the audience.

I absolutely understand what you mean about previously extant arrangements. There has been a couple of really good posts about the earliest activity on the blockchain, looking at the posts, looking at the exchanges, and looking at the comments on the code itself, which I have found extremely interesting.

Two rounds of ninja mining, deliberately obscured configuration and design (which still seems to be the order of the day, having looked at some of the stuff that passes for "documentation"), and a standoff organization. That trench was dug around the perimeter from day one.

I do find it mildly ironic that all of those choices are coming back to bite them in the ass because of the difficulty of making the database architecture truly decentralized. If, from the beginning, it was fast and easy to set up full witness nodes – it would have been done already. If, from the beginning, Condenser was well documented and clearly coded, and if they had accepted design ideas from outside – half of the things that have been in the last two roadmaps would've been implemented by now. If they actually wanted to implement a good, customer-servicing social media platform, they've had more than enough opportunity and more than enough feedback to actually start implementing things moving in that direction – but their big innovation is adding advertising to their front insight, nearly half a decade (or a full decade, at this point) from the introduction and widespread adoption of ad blockers.

If one wanted to cynically wonder if they had deliberately hamstrung themselves, there is plenty of material to make that argument.

And now you have deftly outlined what has swirled in my head, broadcasts, and pain filled rants since early 2017

Spot on i guess.

It's almost like you have no idea how open source works Andrarchy. Surely github is just a dump of projects that cannot advance, because engineers can't do two things at once then.

More bullshit. Don't buy it people.

Whats the matter @novacandian, truth hurt? lol the skins around here, so thin because there isn't much substance under some of them.

Eat your own Dogfood Gentleman... You're new replacement Gal cannot even respond to her own comments because she lacks resource credits on this network... YOU of all people should be on this platform EVERY DAMN DAY! Until you and other STINC representatives begin to swim in these waters rather than dipping a toe every now and then; you will continue to look and sound like liars and conmen...

Making changes to code IS important yes, but so is actually BEING HERE rather than Telegram and Twitter... It's provable you guys use the competition and other networks WAYYYY more!

And before you get all indignant with me, just remember you represent a group of people on the network who obnoxiously make a great many of us feel like CHUMPS and SUCKERS. Before you get long winded... be SURE not to whine about trying your best... after this many years and false promises, many of us straight up know you guys are a complete set of CONs.

I'm Frank Bacon and this is MY 5555th post! you have 2110 posts... @ned has half that...
Tell your new Gal to start eating the Dogfood, it's the only way to get through this properly.

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVp155NjsY9WpYrP6GDNkrTr6HA1PDNm7KsBhiZpZuvGc/Screen%20Shot%202019-01-24%20at%209.18.08%20AM.png]

Reading wallets can also be an enlightening experience for the community . This platform is drenched in bot-snot that leads to a handful of people.

Good to have some communication from you guys, over the last couple of weeks. I think we can all appreciate that, at least. Let's hope this continues.

Posted using Partiko Android

It's been a challenging time, but we're eager to keep the communications coming. We've even started appearing on some discord shows, so be sure to keep an eye out if you're into more communication!

challenging times are coming for you , when investigation starts into all rigging that is done here

I'm excited with the groundworks and updates! Am sure this new government will effectively skyrocket steemit to the next level. Please keep the updates coming!

I’d love to see ad opportunities explored that may be equally beneficial to the community, and possibly more aligned with the crypto community overall; although understandably you’ll want to maximize revenue and if a model like Adsense does that, so be it.

Exciting ad possibilities to me would be exploring integrations with crypto friendly services like Basic Attention Token and Anonymous Ads, or a revamp of the official promoted system which improves placement of promoted posts and perhaps integrates a percentage token burn and percentage to Steemit Inc.

Looking forward to what lies ahead regardless!

Great suggestions! We're definitely eager to explore more innovative ad solutions.

Apropos Basic Attention Token:
My Brave Browser tells me the following:
"You’ve designated 8.8 BAT for creators who haven’t yet signed up to receive contributions. Your browser will keep trying to contribute until they verify, or until 90 days have passed."

steemit.com is one of these sites which haven't signed up yet to receive contributions.

Read more here.

Ironic. I discovered steem when I was trading BAT about two years ago.

Heres's an idea; take some of the ad revenue and automatically buy steem tokens with it, then give the tokens to the community, even if it's a small amount, it creates guaranteed demand for the tokens/more stable price, giving people more confidence to hold for the long term, like a stock dividend.

Welcome Elizabeth! I love that N3d has been coming around more and sharing his time and thoughts. This is a sincere appreciation for efforts being shared. I’ve only been around for 14 months, and almost a dolphin ... my positivity and enthusiasm for this platform has not changed from day 1. This is a leader in crypto platforms and although BETA and a “test,” I am still encouraged every day that I spend my time here. Further, I am LinkSeven77 No. 8 member for the marketing efforts being led by @NathanMars7 and currently the effort is on Twitter. many have left, but those who have stayed are strengthened by each other and our team player mindset. Steem on!

SMTs here we come. Let's goooo! :D

Posted using Partiko Android

Thank you for sharing your plans! I look forward to further update and I know we all appreciate communication!

Posted using Partiko iOS

I can understand to some extent the need for ad revenue, however I do have serious questions on how it would be implemented.. Do we now need to be concerned with our personal data and information being sold to the highest bidder as it is on other social media sites?

We are definitely excited to see serious actions towards improving the whole Steem "ecosystem", on all different fronts including restructuring, serious development effort, revenue generation and better communication. We were delighted to listen to @elipowell yesterday, and looking forward to see some more progress and further signs of success in light of those changes.
Although only time will tell, we do have high hopes for the upcoming period. I hope they'll be proven right.

I sincerely wish all the best for steemit and hope it continues to support the communities that were built here. Steemit and the friends we made here has helped us all in more ways than anybody else has, not even extended family has done that.

Maybe you can work with a Steem based/future SMT adnetwork?
@dclick

One thing is for sure...this will generate again a lot of debates, and shit loads of posts will be written about it!
PS: Let's see if this "fresh air" will take Steemit out of BETA!

This is an exciting development!
There's sure to be some change and some pushback, but, Steemit the front end, needs grow and mature.

I applaud the move to try something new.
After all, something needs to change in order to draw in new finding sources, or investors.

I am interested in seeing more, and today's session in State of Steem, with @elipowell will be a good chance.

This was a good update. Thanks for the information.

Thanks for the update!

Please reinstate the Dsound deligation!

SECONDED!

Good to see that someone is both thinking these things through and communicating those thoughts with the community. The lack of the latter has often led us to question the presence of the former.

Good luck in the next step, which is showing us that you can follow through.

I can accept that advertising may help cover costs for now. If people don't like them they have other ways to access Steem. I really hope we can see community features soon as that's going to make Steem more attractive.

Instead of making us pay by being spammed to and propagandized, why not just collect taxes from us? We already have to hold STEEM (and spend our RCs) in order to access the blockchain now. Might as well throw up even more barriers to entry so that the trickle of new members finally stops completely. Then we'll be out of Beta and ready to go to the moon!

I dont mind advertisement but I do wish you provided a means to support the site without having to see ads. Something like Youtube Premium, perhaps at a lower cost because we are not talking about videos here which take significantly more bandwidth.

Communication is good and I have no objection for more. We can all agree for a stronger #steemit.
Respectfully I wish #steemit follows the route of busy.org or other UI to incentivize steemians to use their platform.
Hope they consider that.
Wish you guys well.
Keep on postin

Posted using Partiko iOS

Advertising is definitely a welcoming edition! Thanks for the update!

Yes, thats some great news. Steemit is missing so much(hell, I'm even doing a front end test right now and am on stemit right now), but it has some things that others don't. If someone else could implement everything thats only in steemit, steemit could be a lot less of a priority and a lot more focus could be given on making the STEEM blockchain great.

I initiated a site last June which makes use of an advertising model for STEEM.
Here is the FAQ which describes the process. If the team is interested, I will share details in greater depth.

> We have an amazing team of developers ... The Steemit Team

Who exactly are the members of the team now (STEEM user names)? Or is Steemit, Inc. kind of a secret organisation? :)

Anyway, I am thankful for your recent communication efforts.

Ned laid off nine people correct...... From a team of twelve correct.... Now we have a team of twelve?????

I only know that recently @elipowell stated:

> I am working alongside Ned, the Board of Directors and 12 amazing team members

I am just curious who the persons behind these numbers are?
Other companies proudly present their whole teams (including photos of everybody) on their websites ...

when contributing code is the same as "working", well then you can simply watch live who is working

https://github.com/steemit/steem/graphs/contributors

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYEUCbazQNwp5hJa3U9Z5z7ivusEy2cQnnGuxjuYKMJa2/image.png]

when it comes to main contributions we are at an all time low
but this does not mean that there is no working in other fields

Here you see all the fields devs are working on
https://github.com/steemit

recently it was mainly hivemind

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXNYfLgH9rv46syMnyVVhrjLGvm96NAg5JgroGPEqA3fP/image.png]

and some work on the image hoster and as we have noticed on the post pinning on the condenser

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPWeeKNuMXVLnw7WiDDTVNB6hDP25Mz2TwTbG23u9omkG/image.png]

Thanks for your help offer, I am sure one can find out who the staff members are ... but that's not my point: why should I make any efforts at all? WHY THE HELL doesn't Steemit, Inc. present its team like every other company does? If I had a great team I wouldn't hide it, but instead of that say: "Hey, people, look at my great staff: these are the members ...!" :)

I see :D those are all webdevelopers and a software engineer. The problem in Blockchain is that you need blockchain designer it is a highly competitive field where the winner takes it all. Frontend development is not solving any scaling or safety issues.

When you look in Ethereum or Bitcoin you have mathematicians like Andrew Poelstra or Vitalik. Those people are high IQ geniuses.

dPOS
as consensus mechanism for permissioned consortium database has possible problems with DDOS Attacks... a nice looking front end does not help with those fundamental problems. You don't learn Byzantine fault tolerance mechanics in programming schools.

this really does not attract any investors. In other teams the problem is solved with angels and VC-Investors, their key role is not to provide money (money is more than enough, look at Eos/block.ones 1billion dollar development fund) Their role is to provide intelligent money, they have skin in the game and want the project to succeed, therefore they provide human capital. But steem had no pre-funding and no ICO...so there are no Angels and VCs, biggest shareholders were miners from a bitcoin forum (all they had to proof, is that they can run a script lel)... Steem was a one-man army.

This game is not as easy as we think it is. Now the only way for real investors to buy the Plattform is a STEEM/USD pair...but there is none. Intelligent money cant access the ecosystem.

or in chess terms ...stalemate/patt

> I see :D those are all webdevelopers and a software engineer.

And you think that's the reason why they bashfully try to hide their names? :-)

> Those people are high IQ geniuses.

Again: high or low IQ, red or black hair, green or brown eyes, what speaks against revealing the names of the team members?!? :)
Is Steemit, Inc. a software company or a secret organization?

Your right it looks like hiding

but yes, I think that's the reason why they don't prioritize it. Others are showing their team because of the names and the track record. Like "Brandon Eich Ex CEO of Mozilla and inventor of JavaScript".

Brandon Blumer from Eos has a quite solid track record in building solid online and real estate businesses. His net-worth is 700 Million. How many people with a net-worth of over half a billion are behind steemit.inc? Sadly this is how people are measured.

Investors are interested in teams and not in ideas and therefore venture capitalists and angels are focussing on a good looking teams. Thats the "Aushängeschild" for later investors. They even clean it if there are problems like in TenX, where there are still webinars on the internet, of the CEO how he gives advice to scam people. Steemit.inc has no experienced marketing layer because there are no big early stage investors. Or is there a Andreessen Horowitz baking them up? I dont think so. Now we have elipowell, thats a good step.

They don't hide their team, they simply don't stress it. But maybe I´m completely wrong. Maybe @elipowell or some of the devs can quick fix this issue.

> Maybe @elipowell or some of the devs can quick fix this issue.

So far neither @andrarchy nor @elipowell replied to my harmless question ... :)

This attainment of reality is unacceptable. lol

I’m just trying to figure out what is happening LOL 🙃

Source steem.com
[IMAGE: https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmNSE8AapyDtqxSWV1o8ETmZymWrPevzyi7dsGH9oRXJLT]

Well, I guess it's @ned and his 11 other personalities.

lol hahahahha

Ads and decentralization ! Ha ha ha ha !

"the only blockchain powering real applications with thousands of ordinary users"

It's the only one I use, but I didn't know this. That's a big deal, and more people should know about it.

Posted using Partiko Android

I think this is great move in the right direction Steemit Team @steemitblog , and im looking forward to a new bright future for Steemit.com ! 👍🙋👌
https://render.bitstrips.com/v2/cpanel/07c1858a-7acb-47e4-8f2a-252a1fe9f362-2b851cb9-3222-436b-9bb7-ff7645be9ace-v1.png?transparent=1&palette=1

I appreciate Steemit’s openess and transparency in this situation and having the nads to let the community know there has been some lingering financial hardship. We are investors in this blockchain so is it not our civic duty to stand beside the company we believe in, in these troubling times?

>we are now primed to make rapid progress on efforts like RocksDB and Version 1 of SMTs.

that's really great to hear! now we can hodl tight to STEEM for the coming lunar new year period. :)

> advertising

I wrote a massive article tearing apart the conversation between the brain trust, but this update actually made me decide not to post it. It's hard not posting something I worked hard on but it actually seems like things are set to improve. Good job.

Finally some movement. I'm not sure how advertisements are going to work...you want to find a way to make it so that advertisements make bidbots redundant, otherwise the amount of genuine content here is going to never get seen because those who want to spend money to advertise are all going to dominate our attention. That will not work for a very long.

Making someone with no posts or comments managing director is retarded.

But there are still real costs associated with running front ends like steemit.com, and the back-end infrastructure necessary to power them.

Because steemit.com was engineered like a traditional website, despite the fact that its database is decentralized.

Just look at html source of any steemit page, it will serve the steem content, meaning that your server is actually doing server-side rendering on every call to format the page and get the steem content in the html. In 2019 it shouldn't work like that. People should just download a static app and fetch directly the steem information from the steem nodes.

DTube website is served statically, like an image, and therefore doesn't have any the cost associated to serving the website (we actually use GitHub pages), even though we have other costs (video encoding & storage). Also we hit on your full nodes, but we could hit on community nodes or eventually get our own api booted up as Hivemind is sub 100GB ram requirement.

Ads are okay but you use an evil ad platform.

I suggest making a 'advertise' link in the side menu or something. Look at how coinmarketcap did it, they are making much more money than if they just used fucking Google ads

Sounds like a constructive and beneficial suggestion to me.
Good ideas and implementation will
Make for better results. Win

The new direction of Steemit sounds great and as alaways Im sure that our community will have a bright future! Steem on everyone!

Congratulations @steemitblog!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:

• Comments - Ranked 7 with 71 comments

> @ned has moved to a higher level position

What is higher than CEO?

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmegW3ADANAHDTp88A4byE25A6zLEKJ9mcWxaKMyd3mza6/cat%20jump%20fail.gif]

Good point. I don't know how one could move to a higher position when they are already CEO. Perhaps he moved on to another company?

Using advertising to monetize steemit.com makes sense. However, it may just drive more users to competing frontends. Which will reduce the revenue generated and continue to use resources.
>but most of these interfaces also use the infrastructure that was created to power steemit.com (Steemit’s APIs and full nodes), increasing our costs even further.

I support the idea of incorporating ads to steemit.com, there are other platforms that do not have ads and if someone doesn't like they can either add "adblocker" or just go to a different steem explorer.

Do we have any ETA for the ads?

Looking forward to what the future of steemit will bring!

Just created a poll on Dpoll.xyz to see what the community sentiment was regarding the decision to have Ads on Steemit.com. Maybe it helps you measure the community opinion on the subject: https://dpoll.xyz/detail/@chitty/do-you-support-the-recent-decision-of-steemit-inc-to-show-ads-on-steemitcom/

I see that a popular choice is to include to option for Steem and SBD paid Ads.

Best of luck!

Summary: Steemit is a very expensive blog site to run, and will have to shut down unless we put up spam and advertising on your blogs. You will still have to buy and hold Steem in order to use the site, as before, but now you'll also be paying with your ad impressions and clicks. And we're still going to pretend the site is 'free'. If you don't like it, you can use a different front end to access your funds and blog.

Question: How can you say this to the site's users, who joined up thinking they might get paid for their participation here, as the signup page promises? ('It is free to post, comment, and vote on steemit.com. You might even get paid for it!')

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmaaoEm5hJpDE2A4u665MzLBWqAt5zwiHivBpreKGgscqC/image.png]

I think the insiders are positioning themselves to profit off the programmers, developers, and content-creators who actually power this community and chain - forever. They're like a big government who gives themselves raises off the taxpayer dime. Claiming they're keeping us all alive and safe, but really just managing and profiteering from us. Or maybe they're more like the big banks, today's moneychangers, doing little but charging much, bogging the entire system down.

Get back to the vision of this site being 100% free for content-creators! No advertising, and no requirement to buy cryptos to get started! How do you think you're going to grow if you make people PAY to get their start here? And the recent censorship issues also point to this project moving FAR away from the one it started as.

This announcement isn't progress, it's just notice that our cost of accessing our blogs and currency just went up. Fallout from the site leadership crumbling last year. I wish I didn't have so much time and money invested here, and I wish I hadn't been begging everybody I knew to join this amazing site for the past 2 years.

The advertising added by Steemit Inc is only for Steemit.com... In a way, I think that advertising is good to level the playing field for other front-ends that use STEEM blockchian to compete with Steemit.com. This gives us the users more options.

Ohhhh thank goodness we finally got rid of all the spam and advertising here on Steemit! HF20 silenced them all (and anyone without at least $5 in stock here)!
Now there's more room for the insiders and Ned's friends to advertise to us. Yay?
(Calling that "Steemit's new direction" is pretty disturbing. The new direction is to profit off users with ads? Not exactly inspiring.)

So the "NEW DIRECTION" and "FUTURE" is..... you are putting up advertising on our content........?

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmckKddRKrkNkfKeFqc6VH5wbBhFLRK835sBVQfX3Jqn5k/image.png]

oh that looks awful.

Im new here, but i like the idea to run ads. All sites with such larg cost to mantain must generate revenue`s from multiple forms . Wish long life to STEEMIT INC .

The community needs results, tangible results. The sluggishness of SteemitInc many moons ago, is disheartening.

These improvements should be put into place the soonest possible time.
The race on the entire blockchainosphere has started, and no one wants to be left behind.

Good.

ads [IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXXyd95hFB55uCpzm6FmFGd555khHh4kHCsBei2ZRpDNi/tu.png]

i think if you study all the apps and daps and chains and services out there focusing on being non-intrusive that might really be the missing link here ...

fingers crossed for that moonride still but even if, nothing really compares to the steemchain imo

Ads are the most established and mature method for monetizing web interfaces

Ads are the most annoying and aggravating thing on the net, which is why ad blockers are popular.

Do you not think the people who are into alternative economies and looking to the future without such aggravations (ie people on Steemit), are not going to be using an ad blocker?

Welcome and congrats on your new position! I'm really happy to hear about adds being brought in! I know many might not agree but it's a great idea to help with revenue to evolve steemit and run servers. Hopefully one day bloggers can have access to having related adds as well.

I'm not sure how i feel about ads coming to Steem, i think it would completely change the platform...

Steemit is changing... hopefully for the best. Good luck to @elipowell and team!

Yeah Ads, the think that turn us into product. On the top of it, our data are public on the blockchain so the temptation to use them will be to great to dismiss. I will get ready for a GDPR complain if I were you.

No one gives a fuck. Just do things and stop blogging about shit.

Actually , do ı have any chance for job application ? Being part of the STEEM will be awesome

I'm sorry. I can't agree with the ad decision. I switched to Steemit to get away from ads and useless "likes". Why doesn't the Steemit Team fully participate on their own platform and enable payments on their blog posts? They'd get more money that way from me (I never click on ads, with or without the adblocker I've been using for the last couple years).

Congratulations @elipowell for the position :D

Wow.. Something to look forward to. Thanks for the update, Steemit Team

Ads....that didn't take too long.

So now you're going to leverage our content for your own gain just like everybody else while devaluing the content the users post here by making the readers and followers have to interact with ads.

This makes Steemit into just another site for "noise" and not a legitimate place to post blogs and articles.