18-Day Study of SteemIt Voter Behavior

Out of a random selection of one million SteemIt accounts, 200k “active” voters were selected to involuntarily participate in a human behavioral study. The reasons for this study, our selection process, and some of the behaviors identified are featured below:

At Hermetic Genetics, over the past 12 months SteemIt has gained the interest of the directors of several departments as a potential platform for intercontinental informational exchange. It has been expressed that the public exchange of internal information can become a viable asset.

In order to maximize the effectiveness of this study, our psychologists and anthropologists had to determine which of the random accounts were valid, and which ones were simply an extension of the same individual. This was further categorized into two proxy groups: The first being legitimate proxy voters, these are unique individuals who have voluntarily delegated their voting power to a proxy. In other words, they allow someone to use their sp to vote on their behalf. The second group is illegitimate proxy voters, these are individuals that own, possess, or control multiple accounts. This behavior was identified as an attempt to manipulate the monetary aspects of SteemIt, and was considered a ‘bug’ or glitch in the system that will most likely be addressed in the future by system operators. Illegitimate proxy’s that we identified were, for the purposes of this study, ignored.

The remaining behavioral groups consisted of unique individuals that vote on their own behalf. Many of the group divisions were cross-linked by behavioral patterns, and are represented as a dual-numerical value, the unique members of that group and a secondary value representing individuals that belong to multiple groups.

There are too many to list here, so we will only give a general description of the 3 main influential groups. The first and most prominent group (while not of particular interest to our studies) is the Spontaneous group. These voters are associated with a particular sub-set of advertisable populations known as compulsive or impulse buyers. Basically these are people who, for whatever reason, click vote without reading the post. These are further separated into those that vote for particular reasons or under specific criteria, and those that vote because they find the image or title appealing on a personal level.

The next group is the analytical group, and are of interest to our studies. These are people that read the post, and make their decision based on their interpretation of what they have read. Although rare, we believe this to be the intended function of SteemIt, and the first group of true recipients of the information transmitted.

A third influential group of voters is the Trend group. These are voters who primarily vote on posts that have a considerable number of votes in a short time or high sponsorship value. While not subject of interest to our studies, these individuals do play an important role in the location the transmitted information can be found within the network. As such, an in-depth analysis of their voting behavior was performed.

Some users vote at specific intervals or at certain times of day, while others appear to vote sporadically, consuming all of their resource power at random intervals. Others find it more effective to allow resource power to build up allowing them to make many votes in a single session spaced by periods of not voting.

The data collected in these studies will aid in advancement of our communications algorithms to improve intercontinental data transmission and dissemination of information on a global scale. Preliminary assessment of the collected data indicates that SteemIt is likely to become one of our primary resources for global communications.

The communications algorithms we use determine when, where, and on which platform information is to be broadcast. This enables to transmit data and information to as many components of our global operations as simultaneously possible.