Hi Everyone!
About a week ago a new Steemit User introduced "herself" to the platform with her brilliant introduction post Hi I'm Gina, I'm Here To Help.
Today we are going to take a break from finding Five New Steemians (unless the urge strikes me to go out hunting tonight) and introduce you to one new Steemian, which happens to be one of my FAVORITE tools on the platform. Say Hello to @ginabot! She is brought to us by an amazing developer @neander-squirrel.
What is Ginabot?
I'm glad you asked! Ginabot is your personal assistant on Steem. Well... not Steem really, she lives on Discord, but she is hooked in to the Steem blockchain and is filled with all of the knowledge contained in the platform. If you have a secret on Steem, Gina knows it!
So what does she do exactly? Exactly what you ask her to do. She can tell you when you get mentions, upvotes, downvotes, follows, posts are made by particular creators, posts are made in a particular tag, or, if you are a witness, when you get witness votes.
So let's take a trip through what this looks like.
We'll start with the end result first, as this is the "money shot", and we will get into the details further down. This image, taken from Discord, is my Direct Message window with Gina. You can see a couple of different functionalities here.
The first (and last) comments from Gina in this screen are new posts from users I have told Gina to follow. I follow a lot of people on Steem, but some of them I want to make sure I read more than others. So When particular people put out a new post, within about 15 seconds, I get a DM from Gina telling me someone I track has posted and giving me a quick look at what it is. This is really convenient when you don't want to forget to tell @bethalea to deal you in to a Blackjack hand!
The Second line there tells me I have a new follower. @matheusggr decided to follow me today. Gina gives me a quick overview of the age of the user account, Steem Power, Reputation, Follows and Followers. Pretty handy to figure out if a whale is lurking on your feed!
The Third message is letting me know that I got mentioned. Again, we get the user, the post they are responding to (linked for your convenience) and a shot of the first part of the comment. This is particularly useful if you get mentioned in a post of someone you don't follow, so you can go and see what they are saying about you!
So How Does this All Get Done?
Let's take a peak under the hood and see how everything gets set up. At the bottom of this post is an Invitation link to the Discord Server "Minnow Power", this is where Gina lives. Click on the link and it will take you to the registration channel of the Minnow-Power server. Type "$reg "username" (Like $reg mikepm74. Leave out the @ symbol) to get started. Gina will tell you how to do the rest. You do need to send a $0.01 transaction to Gina with a particular memo to confirm you have control of the account you are asking for information about. She will send it back once the transaction is complete and you are verified.
Once you have been confirmed by Gina you can type $set and Gina will pop into your DM window and live there forever!
She will send you a link to the set up page. All of the following images come from my personal settings page. So let's take a look at how I have things set up.
First thing you have is Preferred Platform. This lets you decide what kind on links Gina sends you. I always just go to steemit.com, so I have left this in default, but you can choose steemitstage, busy.org, or chainbb. Then select your time zone so that Gina lets you know when things happen in your time, rather than system time.
Then we get to Basic options. First up, do we want to know about comments? You can choose to be notified when you make comments, when others make comments on your posts (including comments), or when someone deletes a comment they had made on one of your posts. I like to know when I get comments, but I am the only one posting from my account, so I don't need to be notified every time I make a comment.
Transfers lets you know when money is coming and going in your wallet. Again, the choice is Self (if multiple people control the account so you can track what is being done in the wallet) or others, so you get notified when other people send transactions to your account.
Scrolling down a bit we get to the "Extra" section. Several options here for you to choose from, including getting notified when a particular account is mentioned. For me, I like to know when I am mentioned, and when newsteem is mentioned since I hypothetically still write for the newsteem. (I'm working on that article right now IT, Promise! I really have no idea what I am supposed to be working on at the moment). you can also get notified when people resteem you posts (or when you resteem something), as well as when people follow you.
Next up are going to be a couple of screens that can get pretty lengthy. The image above is just the start of the list of people for whom I want Gina to tell me when they post a new submission to the platform. I want to be the first to know when @steemitblog posts something, or @ned and @nedshair do a tremendous SMT video. You can follow as many names as you like, and get notified seconds after they hit the Post button.
Conversely, There are some users I don't want to hear from AT ALL. On the Blacklist you can make a list of accounts you don't want Gina to tell you about, regardless of how many times they mention you as a top curator for the day, or how many popular posts there are in a specific tag. You can rest assured that Gina will keep those people from bothering your lovely conversation with her, EVER.
You also have the ability to Blacklist an entire tag if you want to. If you don't want to see anything from the Introduceyourself tag, you can put it here and never hear a peep. You don't like nsfw? Throw that tag in there and never be bothered with scantily clad women again.
In this space you can also put in a word watch. If there is a particular word or phase that you and your friends use as a magic indicator that a post should be upvoted to the moon, put it here. Just don't put in a word that is so common that it will return every post on the Platform. Gina will refuse. There is a small list of words she won't respond to in the image above.
Maxi really just belongs in the Extras section, but here we have it separated for now. Tags, like the Tag blacklist above it, but reversed. these are the posts you do want to see. Is there a particular contest you want to keep track of? Put in cryptoart here and you will see all of the @slothicorn art entries that are being created. If there is a fictionprompt contest you want to keep track of, you can list that tag here, and Gina will obediently tell you whenever there is a new entry. Just don't put one of the popular tags here, or your conversation with Gina could become very one sided.
The bottom of the page is for Witnesses. This will allow you to easily track if you get new votes, or if someone takes their vote away for you as witness. I'm not a witness, but I know several cool features were talked about for how this section would turn up on your notifications from Gina. @themarkymark was pretty involved with getting this function set up, so maybe he would share what this looks like in the comments.
Finally, the all important Save button. Don't you leave without hitting Save, otherwise everything you have set up will be for naught!
As promised, here is the link to the Discord Server to get started - https://discord.gg/K8sfcJS. There are several people there to help you if you need assistance. @neander-squirrel is very receptive to questions along with the "welcomers" who keep things in order around there.
Please take a moment to check out Gina and see how she can help you with your Steem existence. I was lucky enough to get an early access to her functions, and she has been a tremendous aid to keeping me informed of my Steem life! She can be the same for you! If you enjoy the tool, and feel so inclined, donations can be sent either to @ginabot, or @neader-squirrel. Please don't send donations to me, I had nothing to do with the development other than being a thorn of requests in squirrel's side!
As always, Thanks for reading! Have a Great Day! and STEEM ON!