Don't you wish Steemit had a chat feature? Now it does... and so much more it will make your eyes pop into hearts! 😍😍😍

in #steemit7 years ago (edited)

Steemit with built in chat feature, 'tip' button, bookmarks and more? My Steemit life just turned full-time! Introducing busy.org, Steemit's new bestfriend!

surprisededit1.jpg
I am kissing my personal life goodbye.

About 2 weeks ago I came across an article mentioning busy.org. I didn't know what it was, but I heard that it was basically Steemit on a social-media-esque, more user friendly interface. More than that, it wasn't being viewed as a rival, it was being called "complimentary to Steemit."

Well, what does that mean? I wondered so I decided to find out.

I was intrigued but I also was flooded with other things on my mind so I asked around a bit but no one seemed to know anything about it (at least no one that I asked!) A research project was born.

Today, I gave myself a little bit of time that turned into a lot of time looking into this.

I began digging and searching for information and then, decided I was just going to go for it and sign in to busy so I could see from the inside myself what it was like and let you know!

Signing in requires your user name and your active key... the reason for this is because you need to be connected into your account in order to post/comment/resteem/transfer what-have-you. Active key is required, not your password!

On sign in, I was prompted to set up my profile. Here I have an option for not only a display picture, but also a cover photo (which adds a bit more personality and I like that! )

Unfortunately, despite 3 separate tries, my account would not update with my images... I can't say if this is a problem on my end but alas here is my picture-less profile on busy. Strangely, my profile picture on Steemit did change to the one I tried to upload here even though it's not seen here. (Will continue trying and update you!)

Note: it shows voting power directly on the Busy profile which is also another useful feature that I wish Steemit had.

On the left hand side under the user name (as you can see) there are icons, you can browse, instant message, post and transfer. The added feature worth noting here, is the addition of the chat feature.

Did you just say, chat feature?!

All of the people I interact with most are shown to me on the side, with easy access to send them a message. I for one, LOVE this feature and it is a huge selling point for me.

However, the chat bar is 'stuck' and doesn't show me everyone that I interact with. It gets stuck at "F" and won't scroll down further so I have qualms with what it's showing/not showing me." !

(Sadly, as we all know, Steemit does not currently have aforementioned chat feature.)

Resteems:

Steemit is a wonderful place where resteeming a post you like can help authors get their content out to a wider audience, but it can also make it difficult to see your content. (This has been a criticism I have heard a lot since joining. )

Busy has solved that here: (at the top of the screen there is a 'reblog' section which separates your articles from what you've resteemed. )

TIPS?!

Scroll down to the end of an article and not only can you 'like' which is an upvote, but you can also **TIP THE AUTHOR! **

As you can see you can see, you can choose how much you want to give a particular author, which is quite the game changer for reward potential!"

Reading:

When it comes to reading and viewing articles, you'll see them in a pretty similar way. Nothing too different in my opinion.

Steemit:

Busy:

Browsing:

Steemit: Shows many articles at once, in a smaller format. Everything laid out left to right.

Busy: Gives a larger, more magnified view, which quite honestly proved to give me more insight into if I wanted to click on it or not.

Bookmarks:

See something you like but don't have time to read it? I have like 50 Steemit tabs open at any given time. Busy has an answer. Click on the bookmark at the top of any article to save it to your 'bookmarks.'

Searching:

Steemit: I am not the searches biggest fan. It requires a lot of movement to get to where I want to go (and some know-how.)

Busy:

Head on over to the 'world' icon and click it.

Now you have a search bar, type in whatever you're looking for. In this case I used "love" as an example. It showed me # love, so I clicked on it and it brought me to all these tagged under love. Now I can sort them at the top, based on what I want to see (new, hot, active, trending...)

Look how fun the icons are! I have to tell you, the interface feels a lot more friendly in here...

Messaging:

I tested to see if I could message anyone else aside from those in my favourites, and in fact I can. I just need to search for them in the same way as topic (ex: love) above, instead of searching in the browse (world) icon, click the message icon, type their name and they will comes up, go to their profile and click the chat icon above their name to be able to start an instant messaging session. Isn't that super cool?

There's another interesting difference over here that really plays into the social media side of things: likes and dislikes. You can like and dislike someone's post and it will show you at the bottom. Busy's 'dislike' plays Steemit's 'flag' feature here and is designed to keep away trolls, plagiarism and poor quality content. It's there to keep the platform a loving, safe, encouraging community of creativity at it's purest form, just the same as a flag would- let's hope everyone is responsible with it.

Now, I am not in any way advocating for one platform vs the other, but I have to say that so far I am an overall fan of the interface here on busy. It's almost like 'Apple', in the fact that it's user friendly and visually appealing whereas I find that Steemit comes with a bit of a learning curve. I really like how easy and accessible it is but I am not 100% sold yet.

Posting/Editing

Something worth noting, this post is a test and as far as I have been able to see, editing is not the same as it is in Steemit. There is no preview available which is actually terrifying if you're like me and live for formatting 10 times before posting. But wait

... It happens automatically once code is administered so you can see it right away within this screen!

Here is a screen shot of my post while I am writing it... notice it is very simple, with no other window.

There's also this cool part (no code necessary): _highlight your text and you can edit from a bar of options._

Drafts:

Busy also saves your work as you type into your drafts which are found under the pencil icon (meaning you can write more than one post at a time without having to publish!)

Thoughts on Busy.com:

Busy is an interesting site with some very alluring features. From what I have seen, it has some really great improvements that I love added into the Steemit platform I know and love. This was just a demo, I was researching all day but I will be looking into it further and I will share more with you on it, as I learn. I have reached out to some people who know more about it than I to see if I can find some more information as it seems it's not so widespread at this time. I will post it when I get that information back.

Here's my simplified review of the platform:

PROS:

Chat Feature

Attractive/Easy to Use Interface

Search-ability

Voting Power Preview

Reblog Feature

Immediate Editing (no more scrolling up and down to check your post)

Drafts

Bookmarks

CONS:

Potential Profile Picture Glitch

Potential Chat Glitch

When I published this on Busy, it got completely disarrayed on Steemit. Nothing was in order, there were multiple of the same pictures, the formatting was a nightmare... It took me a long time to have to reorganize it over here in order to share

(I'm going to look into that problem because it looked great over on busy!)

I am always researching and wanting to know about new things, this was one of those fun experiments. I hope that this post will give some insight into this platform!

Until then, tell me what you think! I have been looking for some opinions on the advantages/implications of this site. If you have anything to say about it, please let's open the discussion in the comments!

I'm hoping @fabien @liondani@busy.org @ekitcho @nil1511 @po0 @yamadapc @good-karma can weigh in as I have been seeing their names pop up on this!

XO,

Sort:  

An excellent review of Busy.org. I was excited about it before it went live several months ago, and then lost interest when I realized I wanted all of those features here on Steemit, not on some other site. The result was I never signed up to Busy.org. I probably still won't, but your review makes it tempting, so I might. :)

Resteeming this to 13,000+ followers. Hope it helps a little (flip of the coin these days).

I hear you! I have found myself mostly using Steemit despite the fact that busy does offer all of those other features. I just keep a tab open and pop over there if I want to see anything else though I bet that would be really annoying on a phone! I'm going to put out an update from what I've learned since, maybe that will help teeter your decision ;)

Thanks for the resteem, I always appreciate your support Joan 💜

Great info for new steemians in a well put together post! I'd just like to add steemit.com has chat feature. You have to click on the 3 lines upper right corner next to your profile picture to find the steemit chat. Also the bugs you found probably exist for everyone. Steemit.com is just one way to access the steem blockchain. It's still in beta and many improvements are being worked out. Steem also is open source, which means anyone can make, whatever cool thing they can think of to operate on top of the steem blockchain just as steemit.com does. Busy.org is one of those cool ideas. Instead of waiting for steemit.com to improve the creator of busy.org clearly saw the potential of the Steem blockchain and decided to improve the interface themselves, hence the creation of busy.org. Other websites to help people interact with and see the steem block chain are, https://steemd.com/ https://www.steemnow.com/ https://steemdb.com/ http://steem.cool/mentions/ I'm pretty sure i'm forgetting about 1 or 2 sites i know about. Plus I'm sure there are others I do not know about, plus several in the works! The potential is endless, which is why the steem blockchain is significantly more advanced than the bitcoin blockchain!!!

Awesome thank you for sharing this with me! I do know about steemit chat, but it takes you out of your window, into a new one... busy keeps it on the same window which is a bit more convenient (plus I really like their messaging area).
I have heard of a couple of these other sites but a lot of them are new to my attention, I am excited to check them out- thank you for including them!
I think it's amazing that steem's blockchain is open source, it leaves room for all of this amazing innovation! I believe it's going to take over and leave other social media platforms in the dust. I'm really excited to see it's progression :)
Thanks for the informative feedback, this is exactly the kind of conversation I was hoping to illicit :)
Hope you have a great day!
XO,
💜

Yup Steemit.chat is helpful @allprowi I found it unusual that many are using other places to connect when there is one here on the site already.

Thanks for your posts @heart-to-heart I was actually looking to find an easier way of getting images into Steemit and found your posts will follow for future.

Wow, thanks for the info! I hadn't heard of it until now. I so love that you can bookmark things! I've been wanting that capability for a while now. So much good Steem content, but limited time snippets to read.

I agree, it was one of my favourite features too... right now I have at least 15 tabs open at any given time to go back to and read content that caught my key :P
Let me know what you think of it if you give it a go! =D
XO,
H2H
💜

WOW! Definitely sounds like Busy has a lot of potential...as well as some bugs to work out. Thanks for the article. I have upvoted and saved this article back for future reference. Sounds like Busy may very well be a game changing complementary platform for Steemit. Will definitely look into this in greater detail over the weekend. Beautiful!

That is how I feel too! I mean, I would like to know more about it as well but from what I have seen... it adds a lot of very attractive features for us to play with! I love the bookmark and draft options... things like those change the whole way this system works, I am excited to hear your thoughts on it!
Have a great weekend!
XO,
@heart-to-heart

Upvoted and Resteemed by the xx_Votes_Plus curation trail! Want more earnings? Follow @dropahead in Streemian https://streemian.com/profile/curationtrail/trailing/396 and/or delegate some STEEM POWER to @dropahead! Keep up the good work!

Awesome! Thanks so much for the support @dropahead :)
XO,
💜H2H 💜

This is awesome man i joined this platform thanks man fro sharing such a wonderful website web beautiful interface :)

Hey no problem! Happy to share something so awesome with you all! Let me know how you like it! =D

Nice article. I will have to check busy out. I have heard of it before but I thought it just changed the layout structure of Steemit.

That's kind of what I thought too, and I guess it could be argued that this is what it does, but also adds in tons of new features. Let me know how you like it!
:)
XO,
@heart-to-heart

that's what steemit lacked

I agree, this platform really takes into account the things steemit doesn't have and works on it to make it more accessible and adds in some great features!
Hope you enjoy it! Let me know how it goes for you!
XO,
💜
H2H

I wish I could follow a tag or have a favourite tag button on steemit :(

Me too! Busy has favorites in their chat bar, so you can favorite people and you can save articles as bookmarks, both really cool features in my opinion!

Oh my goodness, so much great info here! I'm still pretty new. Thank you so much for this in-depth breakdown. I'ma have to read it against n and again!

Hey your welcome, I love doing this kind of thing so I can share it with you all :) It's a really fun platform, let me know how you like it =D
XO
💜
H2H