What do you consider time-well-spent on social media? - The most important question for user growth

in #condenser3 years ago

Social media addiction has become more or less an epidemic of itself the past 10-15 years. You'll read articles here and there about how teenage girls are more depressed due to instagram, how someone felt their life changed for the better after deleting their social media accounts, or how the average time spent on social media is reaching absurd numbers.

As a platform seeking to challenge the market share of most traditional social media platforms, understanding this issue is therefore crucial. How can we avoid recreating the same issues found on the platforms that people seem to mostly hate themselves for spending too much time on? How can we instead focus on solving the problems and providing the values that people turned to social media platforms for in the first place?

What do you consider time well spent?

Speaking for myself, I enjoy being able to stay somewhat up to date with big life events of people in my network. Including people I don't even talk to anymore. It's fun, interesting, and sometimes even inspiring to see people get new jobs, move to new countries, get married or have kids. While I may regret all the time spent looking at dull pictures of people's food or party-selfies, it can feel nice to see where people are heading in life. It often allows for reflection on what picture I used to have of a person, and if it turns out to be true or not.

Secondly, I enjoy taking part in constructive discussions, including with strangers, on topics that I find interesting. It could range from politics to science or fitness programs, meal plans, and personal finance advice. As long as I don't take it too seriously, and have the option to easily opt-out of discussions with trolls or lunatics.

But perhaps most important: I value being able to connect with new people with whom I share an interest or passion, people with who I may have the potential to collaborate on something, or just people who are nice and with whom an unexpected friendship can emerge.

I could say a lot about the past 4 years on this chain. But one thing is certain, it is the only "social media" I've ever used where I've made new lasting friendships.

20171105_145658.jpg


20171102_101903 2.jpg

20171108_181520 3.png


20180209_1126411.jpg

Our blockchain has provided me with new connections, friendships and unique experiences that no other social platform has even come close to Here with @firepower, @timsaid, @gringalicious, @lukestokes, @teodora, @sflovik, @robinron and @howo.

Sure. Not every new Hive user will go as far down the rabbit hole that they go to future Hive-fests, community meetups, or find someone to build a dApp with. However, understanding what people consider time-well-spent on a social platform, and doing everything to help maximize that, will result in better retention and higher network effect as people are more likely to recommend it to others.

I would therefore love to see more of our projects spend more time answering this question, and asking themselves how they can make changes to their products with this as a priority. I really do think that Hive would need no other pitch to new users than this:

Join Hive, the social platform owned by the users. Where the community decides what's best for itself and not what's best for one single company's profits.

But to do this, we need to help our dApp and frontend developers create proucts that we want to spend more time on. So therefore I ask, what do you consider time well spent on a social platform? And how could that be better served by the popular interfaces that we've got?

Sort:  

Best use cases for social media / social networks...

  1. For People You Know = communicating, keeping in touch, sharing

  2. For People You Don't Know = discovering people with intersecting idea sets and interacting for mutual advancement.

Great feedback!

For 1. Do you think this should be on a blockchain? Or would you rather have it on a closed platform where only the people you know can see what you share? When do you think it should be on a blockchain and when not?

  1. Totally agree! But imo we don't help people discover content on this basis... How have you successfully found people with interesting ideas and interests in the past?

Re being public / private - I would default to public, but some sort of private posting or messaging add on would be useful.

There is a lot of local information that can be shared publicly and usefully by friends and neighbours etc - is the road to town flooded, when will the local doctors surgery be doing vaccinations etc. As well as marketplace type functions... All could usefully be put on a blockchain.

I have atypical in how I found people on-chain with similar interests as I had the advantage of doing the shows on MSP and running things like the Homesteaders Lists. Discord and Slack were the other way I found people with similar interests.

For me, it would have to be learning new things, including breaking news stories on Twitter and sharing knowledge.

What are the bst platforms you've used to learn new things or get breaking news? What do they do well to provide you with this benefit?

I like the immediacy of Twitter, where many news stories break first. You live in Norway, which is paradise to me and regularly voted the best place to live in, in the world. Here in the United States, we need to stay on top of many dangerous events such as school shootings, etc. and access to quick, accurate news is a must.

I spent five months living in southern Germany in 2017 and it took awhile for me to stand down. No gunshots late at night! the peace and quiet was amazing!

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

I just like getting feedback on my post ideas, the more the better. Sometimes my followers help me by telling me good time to buy or sell! If i notice they are right more often than not, I tend to listen!

Great comment! I love that part too :)