▶️ Speak on Steem Update: Playlists, The Revamped Promoted section and much more

Happy year 2026!

Today we are excited to bring you the first update of the year which is loaded with new on-chain features that will further enhance the Steem experience. This update is aimed at taking advantage of some existing features of Steem and taking them to the highest level using different implementations that nourish the ecosystem with different strategies that promote growth.

Follow this post to find out in detail everything new that Speak on Steem brings to you and learn how we implement it.

We continue to make Speak on Steem a place for you and for this we continue to work on improving the algorithm that knows your tastes and recommends videos that might interest you; previously we added the possibility of selecting a series of categories that were of interest to you and the algorithm would try to give you videos related to those categories.

Today we take this experience to the next level now allowing you to select your mother tongue to make sure we offer you content that can be understood by you and that you can enjoy much more. Our algorithm receives parameters that make it more precise, with this update at least 100 parameters were added related to nationalities, countries and languages.

It is important that users use the tags of their country and the language tag of their videos to make it easier for the algorithm to recommend your content to the right people. We have added the most used languages on the platform and the most used by Steem's current video community.

^{* You will still receive videos from other languages, but the algorithm will try to do so to the least extent.}

For the first time on the platform we are very excited to present to you a new way of organizing content and sharing it with other users. Playlists will allow you to save, organize and share your favorite content in packages so that other users can easily access it.

Playlists are ideal for creating Courses, series, or simply to store the content that you like the most and watch it later. Playlists are created in public information available from your profile so other developers can easily take advantage of playlists in their applications.

From now on you can create and edit playlists as well as add and delete any video or blog in Steem. To create a playlist we are going to go to any publication and we are going to open the drop-down menu that is in the upper right corner.

There we will find the button to add to a playlist. We will see a floating window with all our previously created playlists and the button to create a new playlist.

It's as simple as writing a title, a small description and adding a cover if you want. We recommend making the cover in horizontal size 16:9 for a better aspect ratio. The cover and description are optional and the title is mandatory. This operation will ask us for the active key, since the data will be saved in the json_metadata of your account, to make the system as secure as possible the website will ask for your password to be used only once, this will not be saved in local storages or sent to servers, everything happens on the client and is deleted at the end of the operation!

NOTE: If you prefer, all these operations also support the use of Steem Keychain.

With the playlist already created we can proceed to add the publications we want simply by pressing the playlist we want in the list.

Now we can visit the playlists that we have created and see all the content that we have saved in an organized and comfortable way so that we can have a smooth experience and not miss any content that is of your interest. The playlists will be created with a unique ID which will consist of the username followed by six unique digits. e.g: null-123456, this ID will be used to access the playlists through the URL.

If you are the creator of a playlist you will have the ability to edit it and delete items directly from the playlist page. Again all interaction with this system is compatible using private keys or the Steem Keychain extension to make it compatible with all and maximize its use.

Very few people know it, but if you send SBD to @null and in the Memo you place the link to your publications you can pay for promotion to the blockchain. The idea is good, but for years it has been poorly implemented, it is like asking YouTube users to see ads just for fun, in Steemit, for example it is implemented as a totally isolated section and hidden for practically the entire community so the interest of people in paying for promotion has been really low.

Today we turn that concept around and instead of attracting users to /promoted, /promoted goes to users appearing as subtle ads while people browse the content.

Every 20 publications our algorithm will embed a post from the /promoted section in the User Feed thus giving true visibility to people who pay for promotion and further encourage the purchase and burning of SBD. To ensure that more people join the promotion purchase we will make sure to vote with the accounts that Steemit provides us each month to reward the content to the people who pay for promotion and appear in our Feed while we are distributing the votes.

The more SBD you bume, the more likely you are to appear. For now we will only take into account the first 20 posts of the /promoted section. But that's not all we have created a tool to carry out an advertising campaign in the simplest way possible to ensure that even less experienced users can take advantage of this feature without human errors by correctly sending the memo to null.

For this we have added a button to promote publications easily, due to Blockchain limitations this button will only be available in publications that have not expired.

The tool is very simple but powerful, it will provide users with the most accurate information possible to make a successful promotion, in the tool we briefly explain how the promotion works by sending SBD to @null. In addition, we provide the user with relevant information such as the highest amount he must submit to be in the first position of the / promoted section, and the minimum amount he should send to enter the TOP 20 and be able to gain visibility in Speak on Steem, we also provide the user with the amount of SBD that he currently has available to make the transfer.

NOTE: You must have SBD previously available, if not you must buy it in the domestic market or on exchange platforms such as HTX.

You just have to establish the amount and confirm the operation with your active password, again you will use the system once, safely and without complications you can promote any publication on the platform you want. This entire system is also compatible with the Steem Keychain extension.

One of the main problems when paying for promotion in the Blockchain is that people tend to make mistakes by writing to the Memo or sending the money; with this tool no more human errors, and as simple as simply deciding the amount you will use, selecting the publication you want to promote and that's it.

Simple, and effective. For now, posts with promotion will only be displayed on the main pages and on the community pages; the user profile and other sections of the platform remain as they were previously, we will implement this in other sections depending on the community's response.

We have added the feedback session to the user profile to complement the experience and offer all the tools that users may need when using the website.

We have added a small tool to organize people's videos by the most viewed (Top) or the most recent ones in order to find the content in an easier way.

We have added the ability to update the public profile directly from the website, allowing you to modify all the parameters that make up the profile including the name, the cover, the profile photo, the description, the location, among others.

IMPORTANT: From February 1st, the Plus plan will require a 500 SP delegation.
Remember that upgrading your plan gives you:

Priority for curation
Much more storage for uploading videos
An automatic expiration system to free up your space