Those of us that have been here since the beginning have experienced countless ups and downs.
I registered on the Steem/Hive blockchain on 2017.05.17 (more than 4 years ago), and I can say that most people experienced only the downs. Nowadays I have more than 1200 followers, but most of them are inactive nowadays. They left the platform long months/years ago.
I feel your pain, @xplosive. I still am getting a large amount of votes (which I'm thankful for) but a sizeable amount of my followers are now inactive accounts. The response to my recent book launch was so dismal here on Hive I shifted my efforts to other social media platforms to promote the launch. I really miss all of that genuine interaction.
I've realized recently that Hive has changed and I simply haven't changed with it. I just keep doing what I've done since the beginning because it worked for me in the past. I'm contemplating my future role here. I think most of the real interaction on Hive now takes place in communities so I may shift my attention towards a handful of good communities like Hive Silver Bloggers.
As I see it, other social media platforms (for example YouTube) are much better in terms of real human interaction.
Even the smallest YouTubers are receiving real human comments. The Hive blockchain is different. At least nowadays. Nowadays the average number of comments per post is 2-3, and most of those comments are bot comments. I have seen a post with 5 bot comments and 0 human comments. This platform is very disappointing from the social aspect.
I've noticed more consistent engagement on other platforms and I think the direct monetary component (vs. revenue from embedded ads) is the driver.
In my five years on the blockchain I've noticed a direct correlation between the prices of the Hive/HBD (Steem/SBD) tokens and the level of real engagement. When the prices are high a majority of people put forth a lot of effort to gain the attention of big accountholders to gain their votes. There are exceptions of course.
Those who read and engage with your content consistently and genuinely are your core readership. For most people they constitute maybe 1-3% of their followers. Even during the height of my popularity here 2016/7 I would say that number wasn't much higher than 25%.
I like the idea of being able to directly reward good content creators with votes but the situation we find ourselves in now (low engagement) is the negative side of being able to do that.
I really do feel that communities are the best path forward and possibly the only way Hive will survive. Smaller pools of people with like-minded interests who are genuinely engaging with other people in their communities. In this next year I'll be shifting towards this direction.