I frequently take a look at roughly how many active users we have by using two metrics. I check how many posts (top level) in the last 7 days and how many votes. While this isn't an exact science, it gives me a rough idea, more so than the 1,155,685 registered accounts.
Typically when I do these queries, I see around 16,000 - 20,000 unique authors in the last 7 days and around 45,000 - 60,000 unique voters. Since HF20 I have noticed less spam but I also noticed my feed is far less active (meaning real authors are not posting as much as well). So I would assume these numbers would have dropped considerably.
But did they?
No, they didn't! They went up, in fact, they are the highest I have ever seen in a while.
| Unique Top Level Posts | Unique Voters |
|---|---|
| 23,493 | 69,069 |
These are pretty significant jumps from what I consider the "norm" which is around 16-20K and 45-60K.
While these numbers are far lower than the 1.1M registered accounts, they are still probably 100% higher than the real active user counts. I would say at least 50% of these numbers are bot activity or duplicate accounts. Which puts our real active users around 8,000-12,000.
Why the increase?
I was curious how many accounts were created since HF20 and if that was a cause of the increased activity. Activity which I don't even notice as to me I see far less. So I queried how many accounts were created in the last 7 days. This is not a complete list, just the top 10.
| Creator | Count |
|---|---|
| steem | 8398 |
| blocktrades | 226 |
| steemmonsters | 108 |
| sniffnscurry | 48 |
| anonsteem | 42 |
| steemchoose | 32 |
| pharesim | 12 |
| steemcreate | 7 |
| matt-a | 7 |
| utopian-io | 4 |
These numbers are not abnormal and inline with typical pre-HF20 and in fact, they might even be considered low.
Conclusion
I still don't have a good explanation for the increase in activity. I was assuming I would find a dramatic decrease in activity but it was on the higher side of average. My feed does not reflect this conclusion though, which makes me very curious about the real source of this activity.
How did I get this data?
I used SteemSQL to pull this data using the following queries.
Total Accounts
SELECT Count(*)
FROM accounts
Recent Votes
SELECT Count(DISTINCT voter)
FROM txvotes
WHERE timestamp > Getdate() - 7
Recent Posts
SELECT Count(DISTINCT author)
FROM comments
WHERE depth = 0
AND created > Getdate() - 7
Recent Account Creations
SELECT DISTINCT creator,
Count(*)
FROM txaccountcreates
WHERE timestamp > Getdate() - 7
GROUP BY creator
ORDER BY Count(*) DESC
.
Thank you for your review, @crokkon!
So far this week you've reviewed 2 contributions. Keep up the good work!
I have also noted a decreased feed, but my initial thought was that it was due to less resteems. Perhaps some confusion with how many trillion RCs it takes to resteem? I do not know.
Interesting data and numbers. Thank you for bringing them to the public (and my feed :) )
I am uncertain where the future of Steemit lies. Is it in long form blogging, microblogging, Facebook and Reddit style posts to get a discussion going, or just using apps like Actifit and Dlike? I use other accounts for apps like that because I still want my main account to be a blog. But when short post apps get the same amount of upvotes as my long form blog posts I start to wonder why I should spend so much time each day writing a long post. I still do write them but I'm finding myself less inclined to do so daily.
This is interesting, I too have noticed a decrease in activity on my feed, and the numbers don't reflect that. I wonder what it is.
I believe there is actually a big decrease in real activity (activity by real authentic users) due to RC issues and frustration. But I can't explain why the numbers are higher than normal, as this would likely be spammers but they typically have no SP and thus no RC. I am going to do more research but because it isn't a small set of accounts to analyze, it is difficult to pinpoint.
I wonder if we just happen to follow people that for one reason or another, are not active anymore, and that the activity which the numbers show is happening somewhere else. I'm looking forwards to seeing what you find out.
Possibly, I tend to follow very few and that's part of my problem as I try to follow users that posts stuff I will read not as much following people I like.
I am going to do some digging, but not sure I'll figure this one out. The activity is definitely happening elsewhere if it was a group of users I could easily find it. But since it is unique users, that's really hard to visualize patterns for.
follow too many and you get lost in posts and resteems; follow too few and there isnt anybody to engage with. the way curation rewards and "post longevity" are set up with aren't really conducive to long term discussion or keeping up with any post thats over an hour old
Maybe those "unique" users had to drag a few of their socks out of a drawer to make up for the real people who left or are restricted now.
What a odd choice of words, "unique", you do know that if something is unique it means it's set apart from the others, or there's not that many around, maybe that was the goal all along, forcing the "unique" posters and the "unique" voters to unite while pushing the ordinary out.
If that's the goal, though, it makes for a very small audience for that content.
After 2 years, give or take....
wow.
thats not much....
Getutcdatewould be better :)yeah, I'm just lazy : )
Love the data, good to see the update. I know I got to post more. It's been good reading and commenting on other posts again. I just got consumed by other things. Have a great day
Maybe people is coming to their senses and now know what real blogging is about. I've seen less spam and more quality comments and posts overall which is great; Gives more value to the site. Seems like the purge is working.
I have also seen less spam and more quality, but I also have seen less of both.
Only 8 - 12 k real active users is very less. Do you think, there were more real active users earlier ? or this has increased over time ?
I wasn't keeping track until about 6 months ago, and it is fairly stable in that range.
@themarkymark do you know why steemit (Stinc) does next to nothing to get more people here?
I mean, it's not that hard to help people build a community around themselves as Steem with 60kk Steem.
And I think Steem price is too high for 12k users without growing exponentially.....
I can't speak for them. I think their focus is on the blockchain itself, even Steemit.com shows the neglect of their focus.
Sure. But i think something like a Invite programm would be really nice. And thanks for answer :)
Very interesting. I still can not understand why they need all these accounts?
Most of them are spammers, I'm not going to lie. There are also legitimate uses, for example, I created @dramaalert yesterday that is a niche that I want to keep separate from my regular account.
What concerned me the most , was the blocktivity TX statistics dropping extremely low, 1mil+ to 300,000 . I'm not sure how many TX's trails and bots account for , but i'm sure it's a lot. Great post marky. User on boarding is critical, collecting this data, is more than helpful to me.
As a witness, I have very good visibility into how many transactions we do. I can just glance over to my other monitor and look and see.
We typically are 10-30 transactions per block, in the past, we used to have 50-120. There has been a significant drop in transactions, I'd love to say that's all spammers but I don't believe that is the case.
I'm with you.... the data feels like the opposite to the experience. There must be an explanation! I had a feeling that we were about one third down on posting and commenting!
The rise may possibly due to the amount of engagement on HF20 and all the Steem related posts everyday.
There arean awful lot of polarised opinions and 'clans' forming.
The other thing is to pop over to @dlike and the tag #dlike . They are throwing comments out there to earn tokens and Steem in the weekly competition. The winner and second place between them must have churned out over a thousand unique comments!
I only scan top level comments (aka posts) so number of comments are not relevant.
The results provided are incorrect because all the datetime values in the blockchain and in steemSQL are UTC based and you used
GETDATE()in your queries instead ofGETTUCDATE().Not a very big deal but, depending on your timezone, you might get a shift of several hours.
yeah but with a 7 day period doesn’t change much
I have less activity in my feed but that has also coincided with the Steem price being less than $1 USD and when I post and end up on the "new" page on steemit.com, it doesn't look entirely awful. I do see a ton of actifit posts all over the place. Perhaps #actifit is worth investigating
I think it would be pretty obvious that at least somebody turned on a larger portion of their bot army. If you can only comment or vote on a fewer number of things somebodies business had to change to include a larger number of posters and voters.
I bet you could cross reference those additional users and follow their transaction history to a very small number of accounts.
Hi @themarkymark!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 8.069 which ranks you at #29 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 1 places in the last three days (old rank 28).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 278 contributions, your post is ranked at #57.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
that would approximately tally with my approx 45K single account holders (which may be closer to 50K now as I haven't looked at it in a while)
Nice post
I say it's 43.5K accounts in 30 days, nowhere near single account holders (aka humans), I'd say that's around 10-20K tops.
the 45K I talk about is not active, but individual accounts set up all time, including those that have already dropped off and even never interacted. I don't disagree with your active number figures at all.
Interesting analysis. The key is how to increase that going forward and make it a community that retains new users rather then churns them though a washing machine.
Hey, @themarkymark!
Thanks for contributing on Utopian.
We’re already looking forward to your next contribution!
Get higher incentives and support Utopian.io!
Simply set @utopian.pay as a 5% (or higher) payout beneficiary on your contribution post (via SteemPlus or Steeditor).
Want to chat? Join us on Discord https://discord.gg/h52nFrV.
Vote for Utopian Witness!