Information and knowledge: two currencies that have never gone out of style. - Neil Gaiman

There are currently half a million active Steem accounts and it's quite complicated to get a representative idea on the general user experience by simply starting one-on-one conversations on the blockchain.

That's why I decided to open The Steem Summer Survey 10 days ago.

I was actually hoping that several hundreds of participants would spend 5 minutes on completing the form, but in the end we were only 112. Considering that we're ~56-58,000 different accounts transacting on the Steem blockchain daily, that's a participation quota of 0.2%.

Even though the results are not representative from a scientific point of view, they can be seen as an indicator for some general trends. Also it's quite interesting to read the personal comments and suggestions given.

Here's how some of us experience Steem!

We're a an innovative, rewards-driven and socially active family!

That might be one possible headline to summarize the results of the Steem Summer Survey.

1) How did we find Steem?

outlined box: user defined (free) answers

Family and friends are the no. 1 recruiters.

To me it was especially interesting to see that more than a third of the here participating users were introduced to Steem by their family and friends.

From a marketing perspective that might lead to two different strategic options:

1. Strengthen and foster the strongest recruitment channel and offer incentives for user acquisition (e.g. through friends invitation programs).
2. Focus on and strengthen the currently rather weak channels such as the media.

2) Life span vs. activity on Steem

Half of the participants have 1-1.5 years of experience on Steem.

If this was a representative study, then it might provide some interesting conclusions regarding the engagement level of users according to their life span on Steem.

I really wonder why there were so few established users participating in the survey.

@paulag: Do you have any information on how many of all the active users we currently have on Steem, joined the platform before 2017?

3) Which are our favourite Steem dApps?

outlined box: user defined (free) answers

Not surprisingly Steemit.com is our favourite Steem user interface.

I'd even dare to suppose that this won't change shortly, independently how many Steem dApps will be built on the blockchain in the near future.

Since the news feed on Steemit.com displays content published through almost all Steem dApps, it's especially comfortable to use Steemit.com as the main cockpit to navigate through the blockchain.

From a strategic point of view that might unterline the importance of future improvements and developments on Steemit.com. Maybe HF20 and Hivemind are not even enough, especially if you considered the answers given to question number 14.

I hope @ned is reading this.

4) How Steem addicted are we?

40% of us spend 1-3 hours daily on Steem, which is corresponding with the average time spent on social media.

It's interesting to see that even 58% of us spend 1-5 hours on Steem. Supposing that the average online user does spend 2:15 hours on social media in total, one might conclude that steemians don't spend much time in other social networks than Steem.

Hence, we could assume that steemians are especially loyal social media users.

Source: globalwebindex.com

5) How do we spend most of our time on Steem?

Content creation is our main activity.

That may not be surprising to most of us. Yet, an interesting question in that context might be: Are we content creators since that's the most lucrative way for an average user to earn money on Steem?

It seems to be. Go check no. 6.

6) What's our goal?

Knowing that many of us got attracted by Steemit's advertising claim Your voice is worth something, it's not really surprising to see that financial rewards are our main purpose, followed by social connection.

Considering once more the results of questions no. 5, it looks as if the average Steem user is spending most of their time producing content in order to get financially rewarded.

From a marketing point of view it's great to see that Steem's first unique selling proposition - giving value back to those who create value - is still considered being the single most important driver on the platform.

Furthermore, it's a bracing fact that more than 1/4 of the here participating users considers the social aspect being of capital importance.

From a strategic point of view, that might underline the importance of the interests of the community and future developments that foster social engagement and connection.

7) Why do we love Steem?

I highly recommend you to read all the original comments, since it's really inspiring.

To those who don't have that much time, here's a short summary of the things we like best about Steem:

1. Community, worldwide connections, cultural diversity, friendship: 35
2. Technology, innovation, potential, gateway to crypto, change the world: 26
3. Financial aspect, ecosystem, getting paid for what you love: 24
4. Distributing / consuming content and knowledge, education: 10
5. Freedom (of speech), decentralized aspect, lack of censorship: 7
6. Others: 9

It was especially interesting to see that there were more people underlining the technological progress, innovation and Steem's general potential as their favourite than people mentioning the financial rewards.

8) How important is curation to us?

According to the feedback given on the survey, many had trouble in understanding the question number 8, which is why we shouldn't overvalue the results.

I actually wanted to know if there is much "unused Voting Power" in our Steem accounts. I should have asked in a different way though and apologize.

Independently from these issues, to me it was surprising that 4.4% of the here participating users (= 5 people of 112) indicated that they don't even know what Voting Power is.

9) Is delegation something we like to practice on Steem?

I think it's great to see that more than half of the here participating users have already used the option to delegate Steem Power or receive a delegation of someone else so far.

Apparently, there's still some educational work to do since 7.1% (= 8 people of 112) indicated that they don't even know what delegations are.

From a strategic point of view, that might underline the importance of education with regards to the general concepts and features in the Steem ecosystem. Not knowing these tools is definitely a disadvantage for any user in the Steem network both from a financial and social perspective.

10) Are we well informed by Steemit Inc?

I don't want to say that it's alarming that 25% of the here participating users indicate that they're not well informed about the future changes to be made on the Steem blockchain / on Steemit, but it's definitely a great starting point from where to improve the communication between the Steemit Inc HQ and the Steem community.

As we all noticed, recently there have been much more updates published via the official Steemit account @steemitblog compared to last year.

Yet, it seems that a considerable part of the community still doesn't participate in the information flow. That might have two reasons: they don't find the relevant input or they're not interested in it.

It's been mentioned before: Maybe updates from Steemit, Inc should be visible to everybody at any time, not needing to pusblish them via the general content feed but having a seperated "news window" with an alert function. That option could be also used when a technical problem occurs that affects the whole blockchain/ecosystem.

11) How important are the discord servers to us?

Honestly, I included that question out of a personal curiosity.

From my own behavior as a Steem user I know that one can loose a lot of time in those chatrooms. Yet, they're also an incredibly efficient tool when it comes to community building.

Now it was actually surprising to me that more than half of the here participating users indicated that they don't use discord at all or use it less than 1 hour per day.

Yet, the fact that 40% of us spend 1-3 hours on Steem and 20% of us spend the very same time on discord, underlines the relevance of the complementary service.

What do you think will happen when Hivemind's rolled out and we're able to directly interact with our communities on the Steem blockchain? It seems that this could lead to a considerable rise in activity.

12) How crypto are we?

It's been mentioned quite often: Steem is probably the no. 1 gateway cryptocurrency.

Even 24% of the here participating users indidated that they're not holding other cryptocurrencies besides Steem. That might allow us to assume that thanks to Steem, these 27 people got in touch with the whole crypto world for the very first time. Btw: I count myself in here.

From an educational point of view we might ask ourselves if we're doing enough to inform these crypto newbies about the new world and its potential..?

13) Is Steem building a bridge between the digital and the real world?

Again, these results are not representative due to a low participation rate. Yet, I think it's a great sign that even 30% of those who completed the form have already met other steemians in person.

From my own experience I can tell that meeting your internet friends in real life is an extraordinary chance to strengthen bonds and one's integrity in the Steem network.

Everybody who has ever participated in one of the legendary @steemfest events, might also confirm that.

From a marketing point of view it could be quite interesting to foster these real life encounters, especially if you consider that family and friends are currently our most successful channel for user acquisition (see question no. 1).

14) What would we like to improve on Steem?

Constructive criticism is surely the most valuable feedback a company is able to get from their customers. Chorus of praise is good for the soul, but criticism is good for progress.

To those who don't want to read the original messages, here's a short summary:

1. Rewards / power distribution, stopping voting circles, more fairness: 26
2. User experience, design, content visibility, usability, anti-spam filters, search function: 26
3. Others or no answer: 26
4. Stopping bidbots, self-voting: 12
5. Release SMTs, Hivemind: 5
6. Registration / onboarding: 5
7. Censorship, restrictions, methods to fight abuse: 5
8. Partnerships, incentives for investors, advertising: 4
9. No changes should be made: 4
10. Incentives for curation: 3
11. Communication between Steemit Inc & community, transparency: 3
12. Option to block users / stalkers: 3

Last but not least, I got some really nice feedback from you on the survey itself. These are the things I'd try to improve in the next one:

1. Don't offer too many options for personalized answers, since they can blur the results.
2. Double check the survey / questions with a native speaker before submitting them.
3. Offer financial rewards as incentives in order to increase the participation rate (e.g. doing a lottery among all those who complete the survey).
4. Include geographical data in the survey in order to get a better understanding for the community's background and circumstances.
5. Ask the community which questions they'd like to see included in the next survey (feel free to comment under this post!).

Final note: It would've been great to have a representative data base today, but I think that - independently from the participation rate - the here published information also provides us with some interesting insights into the Steem user experience and great starting points from where to constantly improve our network.

Now let's talk about it in the comments section! :-)

Best,
Marly -
Steem Ambassador
.
.
.

PS: Please consider supporting my charity project @dreamsoftheocean.

This blog was created in July 2016, aiming to provide thought-provoking content for open-minded people who go on adventure, step out of comfort zones and embrace the new.
Thanks for being part of the journey!

PS: This blog post was edited and submitted via eSteem Surfer 1.0.8 - my favorite Steem desktop client that was developed by @good-karma's @esteemapp team. Check out their account for more information.

Original content.