I was reading this post by @acidyo and it reminded me about a lot of my thoughts about how this platform should evolve going forward.
I know for a fact that my thoughts will be considered controversial here, but I think that one of the purposes of my blog going forward is going to be to deliver genuine criticism as to what could be better about Hive apps (or dapps, if we still call them that). Specifically what could be better about the text or written front ends, as those are the ones I have the most experience with.
First, we need a greater diversity of front-end styles, and in particular styles that feel very familiar to incoming users.
Goals of the platform should include attracting the people who can develop and maintain these, as well as attracting people who make good content.
At the moment, Hive has not only a bit of a front end problem, but also a bit of a content problem.
Right now, Hive posts are not interesting to people who aren't a part of the platform and haven't "bought in" to Hive. Posts fall into a few categories: "Hive is so great! Hive to the Moon!", "Day in the Life", and "Bad Journalism".
When people see "Hive to the moon" posts it makes our humble ecosystem look at best like an exclusive club that they are unwelcome to and at worst like a cult. There's a vibe on the platform that if you're a "true believer" you should unshackle yourself from the lowly desire to be compensated for your efforts, embracing a "Hive for Hive's sake" attitude. This turns people off.
The "Day in the Life" posts aren't so bad, many are actually pretty interesting and well done. But the issue is people aren't going to discover Hive content this way. At this point, the way people will both stumble upon this site is still through searches on various topics or word of mouth. But the best way to do either of these is to make it clear that there is content available to people that interests them.
The "Bad Journalism" posts don't have the polish of professional articles that would attract outside users. The only editing process is upvotes, so the same users more or less get upvoted. Being discovered takes time, so you may have to write articles for months before being discovered and earning a few patrons.
We need to organize better in real life, also.
Maybe there could be an initiative that rewards users who post about onboarding new users, based on the quality of the content creation credentials and/or social reach the person can provide.
We need more delegations to people with an eye for curation (not saying we don't have some, but we could use more) and we need to make sure these individuals are well compensated for wisely curating content.
Hive (even when it was Steem) has always felt like a platform that was just so close to greatness, but it's clear that I can't just wait for that moment to come. I'm not a dev (I absolutely despise large coding projects - other than perhaps for hobbyist game making), so this screaming into the dark is probably the best I can do on that front.
I'm reading over this and I want to make something clear: I think Hive does have a lot of good, decent, or useful content. I think I need to clarify that I am pushing it to be good in comparison to professional articles. But you cannot expect professional articles without, for one, professional pay. We need people writing on this platform that have unique and important perspectives.
It's hard to make a living as a writer. Until we show talented people that they can do that here, we're going to continue to have the same struggles as a midrange blogging platform. I say these things not to put Hive down, but to point out where we could genuinely use improvement.