My last post on the chain was in 2023, 3 years ago. Much has changed with me personally since then. I went back to school and am on the verge of graduating (if all goes well this semester). The obstacles seem enormous, but they always do until the deed is done.
I remember starting on Hive (then Steem) many years ago, back in 2018 (it's been nearly a decade!). Hive still hasn't gone to the moon, but I suppose I should be excited that it still appears to be a vibrant platform that is crawling forward in development (and I use "crawling" not in a disrespectful sense - given what the platform is trying to accomplish there's an argument that the only way to move forward is by fighting for every inch.
My Rep is still at 65 which is annoying. There was a time when I put everything into this platform, genuinely. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be quite enough, and I struggled to maintain a strong audience.
I'll tell you now: the secret to doing well comes down to consistency. If you post every day, and post relatively decently every day, your time will come. I don't think I ever broke a $100 post, but I did at one point manage to garner a few patrons who would take my posts to $35 and such, and I'm very grateful to them for that. It gave me a glimpse of the future.
I suspect that, worldwide, platforms such as hive are slowly but surely gaining traction. This platform is probably feeding families in places where the money is weaker.
It may be that first world countries, which seem busy destroying themselves, are the last to realize what is happening.
Maybe we'll start my foray back into Hive like this: simple posts - no picture or anything like that. Steams of thought.
I had an idea: that someone should make a 'medium like' front-end for Hive. Having trending posts is nice, but it might be cool if there was a curated experience with a site design more like Medium. I think an important part of the platform is going to be getting readers, and that means making the site and articles easy to both find and navigate, and having specific, attractive front ends resembling sites such as Gawker (if you remember that) and Motherboard.
I think Peakd is a very good first step towards this (especially on the author side), but we must go further.