Repository

https://github.com/steemit/steem

The aim of this analysis is to get an idea about the upvoting behavior of different Steem applications for the last six months. I chose the applications that I think are the most popular among Steem users like @steemhunt, @actifit, @partiko, @busy, @esteemapp, @fundition, @steempress-io, @dtube, and @dsound. Along with the number of upvotes each application gave to its users, you will find some interesting information about their upvoting behavior like the number of upvotes given on posts and comments, average and standard deviations of upvotes, monthwise, daywise and hourwise performance and the distribution of upvotes for each application

Data Collection

All the data was extracted from Steem SQL Database (Paid subscription service held and managed by @arcange). The data was taken from 1-01-2019 to 06-30-2019 and all the calculations were made on Power BI using DAX. SQL query that was used to extract the data can be found at the end of this post.

Total Number of Upvotes on Posts & Comments

https://i.postimg.cc/NGrJ5qDJ/1-Total-number-of-upvotes.png

@steemhunt has the highest percentage when we compare the number of upvotes given with other Steem applications, however, the unique number of authors who were given upvotes by @steemhunt were only 519. @dtube and @dsound tend to be at the bottom when it comes to the number of upvotes given compared with other Steem applications. On the right side of the image, you can see the number of unique users who were given upvotes by each application. Another interesting thing would be to calculate the number of unique user ratio who were given upvotes by each application.

https://i.postimg.cc/CxjzcN0H/new.png

@partiko is on top when it comes to unique user ratio (Giving an upvote to a unique user). Though @steemhunt is on top with the number of upvotes given, however, at the same time, it has the lowest unique user ratio. @dtube and @dsound gave the lowest number of upvotes, but @dtube's unique user ratio is far better than @dsound.

Let's separate the number of upvotes given on comments and posts.

https://i.postimg.cc/7Lf1d0Qs/4-Upvotes-on-Comments.png

Interesting!

You can see that @steemhunt and @fundition were the only applications that gave a fair amount of upvotes on comments with a percentage of 78% and 9.32% respectively. Did a little research and found that @steemhunt rewards those users as well who comment on @steemhunt posts which is a great idea to increase the engagement rate.

So my next question is, what's the engagement rate for each application? (Comments on posts)

https://i.postimg.cc/T2m0Tj2B/2-Total-comments.png

@busy and @dtube have the highest engagement rates with 11.37 and 7.52 comments per post respectively. Surprisingly, @steemhunt's engagement rate is at the bottom with 1.52 comments per post.

Average and Standard Deviations

@dsound and @dtube have the highest averages, though the number of upvotes they gave was quite low, their average upvote weight is quite outstanding. On the other hand, @dsound has the highest standard deviation that means that their upvote weight had a greater variation compared to others. @steemhunt has the lowest average upvote weight and @busy has the lowest standard deviation.

Did you notice @partiko? Their average upvote weight is 2.48 but the standard deviation is 11.74 which is quite high.

Monthly Upvote Analysis

Here, you can see the upvotes given by each application from January to June.

https://i.postimg.cc/hjqq3wF4/5-Monthwise-1.png https://i.postimg.cc/wTBYPLrN/6-Monthwise-2.png https://i.postimg.cc/fbN24hbP/7-Monthwise-3.png

Daily Upvote Analysis

What day of the week each application gave the most upvotes?

https://i.postimg.cc/yxmhyDmY/8-Daywise-1.png https://i.postimg.cc/x1TGLTcn/9-Daywise-2.png https://i.postimg.cc/L53fZrSJ/10-Daywise-3.png

Hourly Upvote Analysis

And at what hour most upvotes were given by these applications?

https://i.postimg.cc/5Ntj3Hq7/11-Hourwise-1.png https://i.postimg.cc/Y9ptCVdn/12-Hourwise-2.png https://i.postimg.cc/K8DGhxNk/13-Hourwise-3.png

Dod you notice something weird? @steemhunt almost gave every upvote between 3:00 PM to 500 PM.

Distribution of Upvotes

https://i.postimg.cc/c4Qg6qhZ/14-Distribution1.png https://i.postimg.cc/MGGvsnSK/15-Distribution-2.png https://i.postimg.cc/DZJmTR09/16-Distribution-3.png

You can see that the upvote weight for most of the application lies between 0 - 10, however, @dtube and @dsound did different from all other applications and we can see a few tall bars for other ranges as well. The weight of most of the upvotes that @busy gave was between 0 - 2.9.

Relationship Between Comments & Upvotes

https://i.postimg.cc/G3K6R9w1/17-Scatterplot.png

I wanted to see if there is any correlation between the upvote weight and comments but there was none. The coefficient of correlation is 0.0384 between the upvote weight and comments.

Conclusion

Steem applications play a vital role in attracting the outside world towards this platform, so their upvoting behavior is crucial for the success of this platform. From the above analysis, we can see that a lot of applications are giving a fair amount of upvotes to its users with a low upvote weight which I think is a perfect way to attract new users, however, the unique user ratio should be improved in order to spread the number of upvotes to more users.

SQL Query

SELECT
TxVotes.ID,
TxVotes.voter,
TxVotes.author,
CAST(TxVotes."weight" AS INT)/100 AS upvote_weight,
TxVotes."timestamp",
CASE
WHEN Comments.depth = 0 THEN 'Post'
ELSE 'Comment'
END AS post_type,
Comments.depth,
Comments.url,
Comments.children AS comments
FROM TxVotes
JOIN Comments
ON TxVotes.permlink = Comments.permlink AND Txvotes.author = Comments.author 
WHERE TxVotes.voter IN ('dtube', 'dsound', 'esteemapp', 'busy.pay', 'steempress-io', 'steemhunt', 'fundition', 'actifit','partiko')
AND TXVotes."timestamp" Between '2019-01-01' AND '2019-06-30'