Around two weeks ago @asgarth contacted me to see if I'd be interested in giving some feedback on the Steempeak integration of Communities. I of course said yes, as I've been impatiently awaiting what they were going to do with them and today I'm excited to be able to share with you all some of the screens from the new version of Steempeak coming soon.

As you can see in the cover image, their communities page still matches in overall style with the rest of Steempeak, but has enough visual differentiation to know that you're on a Communities page. Just as you're used to with Steempeak, you will have multiple viewing options for you Community as well.

Accessing your Communities will be fast and easy because there is an ever present button on the top header to get to your Communities quickly.

Also the various new Feed options are integrated as well with you being able to access a Feed for people you're following as well as the Feed for Communities you're following.

There's also going to be great options for discovering Communities with a "Search" feature on the Communities explore page.

All in all, I think it's shaping up beautifully. I just want to say, it's been really awesome collaborating with the Steempeak peeps, @asgarth and @jarvie are obviously very passionate and diligent about their product and they are working meticulously behind the scenes to make Steempeak the best experience possible.

NOW, as a last little treat, I want to also share something that is NOT an official addition to the site, but rather an idea floating around that was one of my suggestions.

Discord Integration

So one of the features I suggested in the long long ago for tribes was to use one of the free Discord widgets out there to make their Discord Servers accessible on their frontends. I think this could be equally powerful with Communities as it allows the powerful tool that is Discord to be leveraged by Community owners in whatever way they see fit. If you want to use it for idle chit chat, a permanent place for helpful links, etc, whatever, you all know what Discord can be used for, but this allows your Discord to be discoverable on the site.

At this point as I said, it's just an idea. @asgarth is a beast and hooked it up within minutes, but there's definitely technical issues to work through to see if it makes sense on that end.

Beyond that though, I'd be super excited about this feature. As you all probably know by now, my entire philosophy when it comes to the design of Steem apps is user experience FIRST. I think making your app something that people want to use and solving problems for them is the way to attract and keep users. On Steem everyone is already using Discord anyway, why not keep them in app while they use it?

What do you all think about this?

Also what do you think about the new Steempeak? Are you excited yet??? Let me know in the comments!