Steem's value comes from its prospects. It is a content creation network that is fit to replace current models of social networking. The first iteration of social networks is steemit. Steemit allows content creators to get paid for well-thought-out and interesting blog posts. Unfortunately, this does not fit the style of all users. Twitter did not become successful because of well-thought-out blog posts, it got huge because of witty sentences. I believe this model of social networking can be added to steem as well. This is why I am introducing the alpha of Squeek. Squeek is a blockchain-enabled Twitter alternative that allows users to follow their friends and earn money for making them laugh. As of right now, the web front end is still being developed. At this point, however, I feel that it is ready for daily use. It allows for sign in, discover, post, and vote functionality, but I believe it can be more, as it has the economic incentives of steem, and the social aspects of Twitter.
I figure every Alpha I should include a change log so here is one:
Added Search
Added Feed
Added Profile Pictures
Added Settings
Added Following
Re-implemented backend
Implemented A+ TLS support
Bought hosting
Bought squeek.io domain
Fixed Bugs
Screenshot
I hope to make this version of the software very usable. I would really appreciate it if you bookmarked it, and posted to it once a day. It's up to you to bootstrap this new community, so I hope you can do your part and help out. That being said, there is a race condition I am still solving. If Discover or Login doesn't work, just reload the page. In addition to that, the website seems to work better in Chrome than Firefox. I haven't been able to find out why yet, but I am thinking it's an issue with the library I am using, so if you're having trouble posting or anything, try it in Chrome.
Thanks for the continued support of the community, you guys have been awesome!
You can go here to access the online demo.
I am adding this section just to cover basics to get people going. In order to login go to the top left and click the icon. Log in with your steemit credentials. The whole website is in Javascript and is open source, so don't worry about username and password security. After you're logged in, feel free to edit any of the settings, there is no save button, they save automatically. Please upload a profile picture to make yourself spiffy. After that you can go over to the Discover tab to find new content. Click on someone's name to open up the controls. Follow them if you like their content. If you follow them, you should now see their name in your feed page. Feed is where you will find only the posts of people whom you follow. Story is only your content.
Thank you all for reading my article. I am passionate about building the steem ecosystem and I think it is important that the initial apps are done right, so if you have any gripes, or want to help out, I would gladly accept any pull requests you have here at my Github page.
https://github.com/NateBrune/Screem
Anything else please just talk with me in the comments or on steemit.chat. I am natebrune on there, and you can join our community at #squeek. Also, if you want to stay up to date, please consider following me right here on steemit or Squeek. Thank you one last time, I hope you enjoy.
- picokernel