January 3, 2019
While I do a monthly post about my progress on HIVE, I also like to take a look at the annual progress. It's cool to see how far things have improved (hopefully) over a longer period of time. Rather than dive into and add up my own numbers from 12 months worth of posts, my first annual report relied on Steemitboard to look at my totals. What's cool about doing that is, you can also see how you rank against every other account on HIVE in quite an array of categories.
It turns out, though, my one and only annual report was way back at the beginning of 2019, which means I missed the one I could have written at the beginning of 2020.
However, since HIVEBuzz, the HIVE version of Steemitboard, was officially announced recently, I figured I'd take a glance at where I was now, and maybe in the process, make some others aware of the existence of HIVEBuzz.
Charts And Numbers
Oh, joy, right? Like my monthly reports, I really don't expect anyone else to look at them, so if such progress reports are not to your liking, please, no need to read through. If you like to see how someone else is getting through this blockchain journey, too, then stick around.
Click on images for larger view
Reputation Rank—69.461—#1,298
Each of us has a number that displays on our posts and in the header of our blog pages that denotes our Reputation Ranking.
I don't think I need to get into whether or not the Rep Rank is a true indication of anyone's actual authority, popularity or writing abilities—it is what it is. And it's mostly what you want to make it.
On a personal note, it's one of those things I use to motivate me, since I know what I've done and not done to earn that ranking.
2018 Reputation Rank—62.844—#3,590
It looks like I've moved up quite a bit over the last nearly 16 months. The fact that the incline gets harder with each rank up gives me a sense of accomplishment that I'm on the cusp of another milestone—70.
It won't happen this month, but who knows. Maybe the May monthly report I post the beginning of June will bear good news in that department.
Number Of Posts—648—#3,974
In the beginning, I was churning out more posts. For all of 2018, the number totaled 346, but then dropped last year to 232. The overall count includes the 70 posts already published this year.
2018 Posts—346—#7,039
Another significant jump. Whether I am or not, I consider myself in about the middle of the road as far as post proliferation goes. I don't quite average five posts a week, but I like being in that ballpark. It's given me the chance, especially while working long days during the week, to get one post out and have some time to do some reading, upvoting and commenting.
So for me, moving up that much even though my production has been down since my start, is a testament to perseverance and some level of consistency.
That will be true with all of these numbers, some, though, more than others.
Number of Comments—13,707—#456
This is one of the categories that I'm the most proud of, even though I've slacked off for well over a year compared to the weekly and monthly highs I used to reach. For me, there wasn't a way to keep up that pace, but I feel engagement is important, not only for the health of the platform, but for my progress personally. Comments can be a way to audition your writing, reading and yes, your critical thinking skills, on other people's posts.
Okay. It's also the way to have fun discussing whatever with others.
2018 Comments—8,477—#586
Not nearly as high a jump in the comment ranks compared to the first two categories, but since it's already a relatively high rank, it's just going to get harder to climb any further faster. You can see that my commenting is way down over the last 16 months—only 5,230 in that timeframe, an average of just under 327 a month compared to the earlier clip of 706—plus.
I'm not sure what to do about this over the intervening months, as I do expect to go back to work at some point, and for me, commenting takes quite a bit of time. Finding a post to read, reading it, then actually having something to say may mean I curate quite a bit more than I engage. Along with posting, as you will know from your own experience, it can be time consuming.
Still, I hope to continue to climb that comment mountain. And, I'll note, not for the sake of commenting, but because I think I can add more value to a post, and more engagement to HIVE overall. Everyone knows what commenting to comment looks like—spam.
Number of Replies—17,143—#121
Since this is the category where I rank the highest, I like it a lot, too. But it's also one I don't have nearly as much control over as others. I can post, and I can comment, but I can't make others reply. So, this requires a little bit of give and take.
2018 Replies—11,104—#116
This is the first one where I actually slid down the rankings a little. While I did explain there's a give and take, I know this is on me. Some more posts, a few dozen or so comments, and I could have at least maintained my previous rank.
Number of Upvotes—20,289—#4,175
Back down the rankings I go. I don't autovote, so the numbers definitely reflect that, along with whatever time restrictions there might be in addition to the time it takes to manually curate.
2018 Upvotes—12,027—#4,182
Now, I find this rather interesting. While I only mustered 8,262 votes over the last year and a third, I actually went up a few ticks in rank. That despite manually curating and less time for about nine months.
Why?
I'm not sure. The other categories so far haven't really stood out this way, so it's hard to tell. All of these numbers are moving targets as they relate to those of others, but I guess the simplest explanation is I'm not the only one slowing down as far as upvotes go. Whether that's all of it, or even right, I'll leave to you to speculate.
Number Upvoted—49,080—#1,817
This one I feel the most fortunate and blessed about. Like replies, I can put the posts and comments out there, but what happens after that is up to everyone else. Content discovery and timing of my posts, subject matter, etc., all factor in, and since I haven't done a great job of raising a following—I tend to be all over the place with my content—these numbers can be strictly attributed to the curation trails that have found me, and returned on a fairly regular basis.
2018 Upvoted—15,061—#4,172
Again, I have less say about this than the rest of you all, so there's a lot of credit to be shared here. Despite my post and comment output being down over the last period of time, the amount of upvotes I've received has risen more than 200%.
That, to me, is incredible. Thank you, each and everyone who has been involved, from the actual curation, to those on the trails, and the small but mighty band of regular upvoters. You have been there, so far, through the thick, but mostly thin, and I am grateful.
HIVE Power—17,537.838—#849
I'm content with this number, even though it well could be higher. The only thing about that is, without HIVE and a 1:1 copying of my holdings on STEEM to it, I wouldn't be this high. When the fork that created HIVE took place, I was around 12,500 SP. Over the intervening weeks, I've been trying to exchange STEEM for HIVE, like you probably have, and finding myself caught in the middle of price fluctuations.
For most of that time, the value was in favor of STEEM, which actually worked out better for my HIVE holdings. Now, with the recent pump in the price of HIVE, even though it's falling back, HIVE is still high enough to constitute a near 60% loss in HIVE to STEEM were I to bring them over now.
I'm not sure what to do about that, yet, but I did hold onto liquid STEEM for over a week as the prices equated to 100:70, STEEM to HIVE, so I will likely be doing that again. I am less certain now than I was then if that is the right move or not.
2018 STEEM Power—6,057—#1,967
Up over a thousand places, requiring an 11,480 increase in STEEM and now HIVE Power. That 2018 amount, as I noted then, was mostly due to my investments into STEEM—4,516.50 worth of STEEM to be exact. My investments since have slowed by around half that, so much more can be attributed to earned SP/HP, along with the stake exchanging.
I'm going to jump over some categories now and get to the reblogs and reblogged columns.
Number of Reblogs—639—#2,178
Reblogs (aka resteems), is one of the most underutilized functions we have on the blockchain. It could be so much more.
Even so, I haven't done it a whole lot myself. While being sensitive to what followers I actually do have (early on, it was mostly bots), I've also tried to be discerning about what I pass along. However, for a long period of time between the first of 2018 until now, I didn't do nearly as much. Lately, though, that has been picking up, simply because there's more pertaining to HIVE that I feel people should know. I have no idea if they're reading what I reblog, or if they've already seen it.
2018 Reblogs—541—#2,191
Here's another turn of events. While my reblogging plummeted severely (just 98 reblogs over 16 months!), I still moved up. It would be interesting to know who was around me in the reblogging column to see how they've done since, but alas, I didn't use all the different screenshots like I am now.
Number Reblogged—558—#2,580
Last one.
Content discovery is paramount to any progress on HIVE. In order for people to potentially curate and comment on a post or comment, they need to first see it. Reblogging a post falls into that category, as well, and since we all seem to be stingier and selective about what we do send onto others, not only do people need to see it, and read it, they actually have to like it enough to bother their own feed with it.
With that in mind, I'm pretty pleased to see how the numbers have increased since January, 2018.
2018 Reblogged—286—#4,264
When I look at the numbers, what jumps out at me is, reblogs decreased, from 286 in a year, to 272 from January, 2019 through today, but my rank went up nearly 1,700 places. That must mean, of all the rankings, there's plenty of upward mobility versus the number of reblogs needed to do it.
Again, aside from actually posting, any increases are largely up to those who read my posts. Thank you for helping to spread them around.
Conclusion
Congratulations, me! Mostly, for sticking it out this long. There really aren't that many around from when I came in still regularly plugging away, which is sad for the camaraderie lost, and because I feel that the opportunities to continue to increase in all of those categories could be on the wane if the value of HIVE continues to go up.
While I think that's good overall (ultimately, higher values are good), it's not so good as far as competition for eyes and upvotes go. Those of us who have stuck it out through the bear market have been reaping the rewards of lesser competition and more HIVE/HP on posts. I hope people have realized that. The lower the price, the more HIVE/HP, regardless of the amounts people allocate through upvoting.
And with less value, fewer people stick with it, leaving just the diehards who have found reasons beyond the rewards to stick around. We've been looking at this experiment over the long term. I don't know what the future brings, but if all the preparation we're doing bears all its fruit, the hordes will be at the door soon enough.
Again, thanks for all the support over the last two years-plus. And thanks to all those behind HIVEBuzz for the new site and for providing these stats.
There are also badges and other numbers to see on your own personal HIVEBuzz page, which you can get to by following this link and then putting in your username in the search window.
Keep on keeping on.
Onward and upward.
All images source—HIVEBuzz