Starting with Steem. There is a lot of projects built on steem besides the steemit platform. Many of you already know about most of this. Being new and curious, I've been digging around to get a better understanding and these are my discoveries. It's not an exhaustive list at all. I'm sure I'm missing things. Please comment and update me if like.
Gaze into the blockchain
Steemtools.com is the place to find helpful services, apps, and addons. If you are a steemit user you will find something useful at steemtools.com. Remember everything we do is recorded on the blockchain. The perfect setup for open data mining.
Entry points for content creators.
Steemit.com is great for keeping a blog that's super easy to monetize. Monetization is build into the platform. What if you prefer an interface closer to instagram? What if you're a youtuber with a fanbase to support you? What about music or even those fine internet meme makers?
d.tube
steepshot.io/
dsound.audio/
dmania.lol
I'm not a programmer but I am a user of open source software.
utopian.io/
Smart Media Tokens
The big one. It's taken up some of my time since I heard about this. Trying to find out more. What could we see down the road here? There are plenty of examples laid out on their website. I'm about 10% into the whitepaper to get a better idea. Other people are excited about this and it's contagious.
A Smart Media Token (SMT) is a native digital asset on the Steem blockchain that can be quickly launched by anyone to help monetize online content and create incentives to encourage desired user behavior.
They're like Ethereum's ERC-20 tokens, but with certain built-in ‘Proof-of-Brain’ properties and a token distribution reward system designed specifically for digital content businesses.
Quote from steem.io/
I know I didn't add a lot of new information for the steem initiated. This is a good starting point for newbies to jump off.