Steemit now offers the options to promote a post by giving away some of your funds. This post details how to do it. You send funds to a special account and that will allow the post to show on the promoted page. I don't think anyone gets that money.
I think you'd use this is you think a post really needs to be seen. Maybe you will make it back on the post payout, but you can promote any post out there, I think.
This is more evolution of the Steemit platform. It's exciting to see new features.
People are already noticing some potential issues
I've now seen that there's a Promote button on each post, about the Share. You can use this to donate some Steem Dollars to boost the post. Looks like people are using this already
Also, comments show Boost Payments. I assume that's a bug as you cannot promote a comment
Yesterday, when I clicked on the "Promote" button on a post it showed this explanation
"Spend your Steem Dollars to advertise this post in the promoted content section. This doesn't pay the author directly, instead the funds are "burned". When funds are burned, they become a dividend to share holders"
Today when I click the button I see the following
""Spend your Steem Dollars to advertise this post in the promoted content section."
They got rid of the part about steem dollars being "burned" and going to shareholders. So I'm not so sure that no one gets the money. Yesterday it seems that shareholders were getting the money. It would be good if this was clarified.
I expect they are still working on this. They need to be very clear about where the dollars go