In the last 2 months, I've had a lot of time to consider what I and others here could do to make the most positive impact on Hive's growth and value. And while there are many things that need doing, and that I would love to contribute to, I really believe that having a professional communications strategy, and systematic implementation of it, is at the very top of the list. But before going into further details, I would love your help in answering a few questions regarding where we're currently at.
I've mentioned before that much of what we take for granted as benefits and innovations on the Hive chain is mostly unknown to the outside world. So my first question is, what is the best we've got right now in terms of general information and explanation of how Hive works, why it is a good investment, and why different people should get involved.
1. Existing resources
So please take a moment and assume that you've talked to someone who could be interested in Hive. It could be someone you've exchanged with on Twitter, met at an event, or someone that stumbled into our Telegram or Discord. Where would you direct them to learn more about Hive?
Please give one answer to each of the below:
- An investor or hobby trader looking to understand if HIVE is a good investment. Ideally, they would both want to better understand the blockchain fundamentals, what can be done to improve the value of the token, and what progress is being made.
- A developer interested in building with a blockchain, or integrating it with his Startup or hoppy app, or looking for work in the blockchain space.
- A creator considering a new platform to share content, reach new people, or monetize their work.
I'm asking because perhaps there are good resources here that I've missed (although I doubt it).
2. People currently doing communications, or capable of doing so
Second, are there any people who you believe are already doing great things to communicate about Hive? (I can think of some, but would love to see their efforts more organized and with more support).
3. Well written articles you've liked
What are the best written, most informative and/or appealing articles, resources, web pages out there explaining why people should come to Hive? What convinced you to come to this chain back when you first started?
4. Do you believe that there should be an "official" communications channel for Hive?
Any time the topic of marketing and communications comes up, and where it is supposed to be done "for Hive", the issue tends to arise that people don't want someone else to "represent" them. So my question here is basically a simple one, do you believe there should be an official-looking communications org. representing Hive?
Pros:
- Outsiders usually expect this from a blockchain project for it to seem professional and well funded.
- Outsiders are more likely to find an "official" announcement more trustworthy and reliable than a blog post by an anonymous author.
- Messaging can be consistent, organized, and according to a larger strategy and marketing plan.
Cons:
- We're a truly decentralized platform, so nobody can nor should speak for it. An official account would signal that Hive is centralized.
- We're a diverse group with different opinions about what Hive ought to be and how it should be presented to the world. Not everyone will agree to the same messaging and communication.
Again, I've had the opportunity lately to draft how I believe this can best be done, but would highly appreciate any inputs from all of you on the questions above. I do, of course, know that there are a lot of people individually doing great things to communicate about Hive to different extents, and the purpose here is to align that in a way that can have more impact going forward.
Fredrik
Imo, the selling points are
I like to show people this youtube video done by @khaleelkazi a long time ago, still the best guide to start understanding what hive is:
link here
Good summary! Would you mind following up with a quick sentence or two about why those bullet points are interesting?
And a big thanks for the link! Best example of a great resource I've seen so far :)
Wanted to reply to your comment, I replied to mine instead...
Check out my answer above!
Decentralized social media helps avoid censorship resistance. Big tech companies have way too much power.
Tokenized communities will allow influencers to reach heights they could never have imagined, and some of them are already huge. Imagine turning yourself into a marketcap, it's powerful.
@iliyan90 has been doing a tremendous job presenting Hive to many people outside of crypto and onboarding them to the Bulgarian community. Recently including a celebrity in Bulgaria. Maybe he could share more about it because it seems he has an approach that is definitely working and perhaps could be replicated in many other communities.
Thanks! I'll check his work out:).
Are there any English written articles or websites where you would direct a new user or person interested in Hive to go learn more?
@fredrikaa
I’m working around Bulgarian network way easier...
With one set up of people
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I think most of the problems would be gone if we had a site where stakeholders/users/devs create their own profile, set in a way where a normal person can see his/her expertise and can easily reach out.
We can call it Hive Guardians.
It doesn't even have to be built on top of Hive, it's just a frontend where the community holds the lane and helps newcomers get a better perspective of how it works.
Cool idea. I think having such visible "mentors" or "onboarders" could make sense. But it's perhaps more scalable to simply have good resources explaining how to get started on Hive, why it's worth investing time and/or money into it, what we're aiming to build with the chain, and how we are doing in terms of progress.
Where would you currently direct someone to learn more about Hive if a friend asked you about it?
We need good animation videos.
Some explain the tech, other tokenomics.
People tend to understand things better after actually seeing what it does.
Hive.io should be more interactive and informative.
I agree a lot with this . People are visual animals and learn a lot from visuals .
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https://hive.io then pretty much peakd.com, splinterlands and other dapps.
the devportal and gitlab: https://gitlab.syncad.com/
Depends on the creator and what he does but probably peakd or 3speak
Hard to tell, I'm not following communication efforts very much, but probably @theycallmedan @guiltyparties or @crimsonclad
The idea of writing a blog was interesting to me and I figured if I can make a buck while I'm at it why not. I also appreciated reading articles here and there (from you notably haha)
I think it's kind of unavoidable that some communication will be centralized and I think the good outweight the bad. Worst case it's a blockchain and an alternative voice can alse make itself heard.
Decentralized doesn't have to mean chaotic. We can come up with our own ways of choosing representation. The mouth. In a real beehive queen doesn't have any great power over other bees, she simply does her job. The mouth speaks what the brain thinks. In this case, we are the brain.
Hive needs faces and hive needs mouths.
This can be done in a decentralized manner. Here is my idea.
Separate voting for the mouths and ambassadors in the countries with the biggest communities on Hive.
Private opinions of the mouths don't really matter here, presentation, ability to speak and commitment are the keys. So once mouth(s?) would be elected any user of Hive could create a question about a certain topic regarding Hive and all other users could vote on the vision.
Topics with opinions of people with a higher stake would be more important.
It wouldn't be decisive in any way, it's more about the vision we want to promote outside. In case of strong disagreement (50/50) we debate the topic until we will get a common vision. To have the real voice of the hive, not a sum of chaotic buzz.
And here is a nice source of the knowledge:
https://leopedia.io/onboard/
What more we need one landing page, an in-built tutorial, clear and easy registration. Most of the problems people have are with these topics, it took me a 2months of work to get accustomed to S***m in 2017, and I was excited and determined. It didn't change a lot since then on any of the major front-ends.
It needs to be idiot-level friendly!
This is why it's more efficient and effective to have apps that happen to use the blockchain advertise themselves (and Hive in the process), rather than have people market Hive itself. Apps can more easily do all of that which you describe, as they have a message they want to send, a pitch they want to make, and directly incentivized to onboard new users and retain them.
I see. That makes sense for me to some extend. Then tech stays techy and everything happens on level 2. That solves the issue of marketing towards users.
There is still marketing towards developers on the table. Certainly, some faces could help gather here more DApps.
And onboarding can be made easy, Leofinance proves it. But it rarely is. When I speak to people coming to Hive creating the account is almost always an issue.
On the final point, absolutely I think there should be a DAO funded central point of information and communication - one point of reference and contact.
There's no reason why this can't have a fairly large 'staff' and degree of circulation and also there's nothing to stop other people doing their own marketing if this existed anyway.
If people don't feel it represents them, they can just put it on their profile.
I say this because I've been looking at the numerous shitcoins that are above Hive in the market rankings and something like NRG or MaidSafe for example look much better because they have those funky one point of reference websites displaying all the things people can't do on their chains - Hive needs something to match, a more professional all singing all dancing way-in.
You're on to it! (Spoiler alert😎).
But where would you direct someone to learn more about Hive right now?
Yes, please tell me where you would direct me to learn about Hive, or even Exxp. I am trolling through the webz trying to figure out how to go from zero to hero...or maybe just accomplice... acolyte? To figure out JUST my wallet address, I had to track down Johan from HiveSigner and harass him with an email. Google has nothing!!
The best things to add value right now in my opinion are two things:
In all seriousness though, one thing may that help is if we come up with a better version of the DAO/DHF, one that had more checks and balances. There is a decent amount of money that's been going out with not a lot coming of it...
IMO the community is all checks and balances we need. If it doesn't work support from the community is simply withdrawn, funds are taken away, and the reputation of a malicious actor goes to zero.
In theory it sounds great, but it hasn't really worked that way in reality.
I's love to know about any cases from the past. I'm more involved just for the last few months. Could you provide mi with some links to posts?
Totally agree, and that's what I intend to do one way or the other.
Also agree with your critique of the current DHF. IMO it works backwards from the way it should. The community should through votes prioritize problems/goals that ought to be solved/achieved, and then people/teams who believe they have what it takes to get the job done should then come with solutions.
Also I think there is a case to be made for a more project oriented approach. But I'll need to do a more detailed post on that later.
Yep exactly. Right now money is just doled out with little to no accountability. Given the amount of money in there now that thing needs a major overhaul to prevent it from being abused and diluting everyone else.
great post! I think some centralization is necessary as far as organization is concerned. We won't get a lot done if there aren't some groups working together. So by that lose definition of centralization, I would definitely support some group being repsonsible for communication of Hive. But how would something like that work? I guess we need a proposal for this and a set of goals that would be attached to the funding and how this should be achieved. There are also many marketing ideas currently, and it seems that the community can't agree on how we should go forward.
Long time no read 👍
Along similar lines, I would like the UI of Hive to have more flexibility, ease, and beauty.
Oh and also, when creating a post, the side-by-side (which I like) reverts to top-to-bottom where "side to side" means left side typing while right side is preview and "top to bottom" is same concept but with preview on bottom, which is less efficient with space since most of us have more horizontal resolution than vertical.