I have been on Hive for a little over a week now. As a newbie I thought I would share what I like and what I do not like about the Hive platform.
First, I want to thank @revisesociology for the tip to check out Hive. I am using PeakD as my main entry into the Hive world, but as I'm discovering there are several other portals that are available.
What I Like
Earning Hive For Postings
I can see that given time and assuming you create worthwhile content, the earnings on the Hive platform can be substantial. It looks like some of the top earners are making up to $30 or more for each post. That is insanely good money for just writing about what you had for breakfast!
Earning Hive tokens just for giving others Upvotes.
Hive is more than just a forum, but a full blockchain environment.
I am just wrapping my head around what all can be done on the Hive blockchain but what I've seen so far it is very impressive.
Dapp Potential
As a hack web developer, I'm very interested in learning how I can use Hive's API to possible make my own portal with a built in way to provide incentives for community involvement. The hardest part of any new social platform is at the beginning where there is no existing content. Hive solves that by allowing developers to tap into the blockchain and extract the full existing feed. I have had a few web ideas that I can see Hive could provide plug and play implementation of.
Transactions are free
With Eth gas fees over $2 per transaction, free seems like a much better deal.
Hive gives you a way to create your very own cryptocurrency
Unless I read it wrong, you can create your very own Token on the Hive block chain for a mere $10. Their is even a market for tokens with a few of them having some real value and decent volume.
Splinterlands
I decided to give it a try and find it to be a pretty good game. Kind of a dumb downed version of Magic the Gathering, but with real crypto earnings. Early on in this crypto journey I had decided I wasn't going to be playing crypto games for money. But that was based on the ad bloated "earn crypto" to play games I had checked out. Splinterlands doesn't have ads, you just play the game.
What I Don't Like
The Onboarding of New Users Needs to be Reworked
For someone who just stumbles on to the site, just getting signed up and logged in a challenge. Sign up, download your keys, now log in and create a new password, use your private key to save that password... oh wait there is no key called a "private key" in the list of keys you just downloaded you were just supposed to know that means use your posting key or master key. I just stumbled upon Steempress and see that @Howo has created a "signup with Google." That is a great way to handle the signup process.
You Might Already Be a Member and Not Know It
Because there are multiple portals into Hive it is entirely possible that you already have a Hive account and don't even know it. That happened to me. As it turns out, I had already signed up at Esteem months ago, so when I went to signup I was surprised to see my rather unique username was already taken. It wasn't until a day ago I realized my username was taken because I had already signed up. So now I have two accounts.
New Users Have No Power
After you get in you are greeted with a note that you had just been awarded 0.001 Hive. Great! At $0.18 per Hive they generously gave me approximately 0.02 cents. Now I know, beggars shouldn't be choosers, but because many actions you take on Hive use Resource Credits, and the amount of resource credits you have is dependent on how much hive you have, 0.001 Hive isn't going to let you do very much before you hit a wall. I'm not sure it would even be enough to make one post. To give new users a reasonable chance to get started the powers that be should really consider giving all new users 20 or so delegated HP for a period of 1 month. That will give new users a chance to get their feet under them. If they don't make any progress the delegation ends and the users power goes back to the 0.001 Hive they were granted at signup.
Documentation is lacking
While with determination, a user can find FAQs and other informative posts about how Hive works. But it would be good if that welcome message included links to some of the best FAQ posts on Hive to give new users a chance to learn how this very unique platform works.
Conclusion
All in all I think Hive is an amazing platform and I'm looking forward to growing with it. It is by far the least newbie friendly site I have ever run across but I'm not completely convinced that is by accident.
I already answered you on Publish0x , anyway, I am happy you have managed to cross the emboarding hurdles of HIVE.
Well done.
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 7/14)
Thanks. Yeah, I'm starting to pick up on the fact that I can post stuff I wrote on one platform on other platforms and increase my earnings per blog post I write.
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STOPDo not miss the last post from @hivebuzz:
I don't understand what you mean by this.
There are several login methods for portals I assume you are talking about Hive Keychain?
What login system was requesting "private key"
Yeah, it was Hive keychain. When you log in there for the first time it asks for your username and "private key". Above the fields, in the text, it says that is either your master key or posting key. But it is kind of hidden because the way that window pops open on my browser.
The onboarding proccess can be annoying for sure, also the learning proccess its slow, glad that you liked the plattform, it isn't for everybody though, I think that we need to work in make easier all this, a introduction message to the new user with basic hints would be fine. Splinterlands is nice, gaming in this blockchain is starting to take off, give it a try to eXode if you like sci-fi. Is on alpha version, still on developing but has a very nice looking.
You've learned a lot in a week. After a week I think I was still a mess, but that was over 2.5 years ago, and the ecosystem was different then, still in its infancy.
Have fun!
Hey thanks for the mention!
I did delegate you 10HP btw, just to help out!
Everything you say is absolutely fair comments and I've heard the same from many other people.
It's a problem with a decentralised platform, there's no one to take leadership!