Holding On To Our Newly Onboarded Users
Hive has a user retention problem. What's worse is that we struggle to retain users even while our on-boarding in the first place is extremely low, so of the few users we manage to bring in every day, even fewer stick with Hive. Today I would like to examine our retention rates for the newest users and to use profile location data to see if there are some places where we are doing better than others.
In yesterday's post I took a look at how user retention compares on Hive for older vs. younger cohorts of users (a cohort is a group of users who joined around the same time). In that post I shared the chart below, which shows the percentage rate of brand new users each month who continue to comment into the second month.
Steem era average: 36.57%
Hive era average: 37.97%
As you can see, this metric has been very poor for the lifetime of Steem and Hive. Usually less than 40% of newly active users make another comment in their second month. This also doesn't seem to have improved in the days of Hive vs. Steem, if there has been any improvement it has been marginal.
That said, perhaps the chart above is too influenced by bots. On Hive and Steem, account automation typically focuses on votes and comments not full posts, so we can reduce their influence on the stats by restricting the graph to just accounts that make posts. The newer chart also shows some longer term moving averages.
Steem era average w/o comments: 35.74%
Hive era average w/o comments: 37.81%
By looking only at posts, retention in the early days of Steem gets slightly worse, but it's pretty much unchanged for Hive. The moving averages also show that the rate of improvement in brand new user retention is very slow.
Retention by Country
I have already shown how some national groups have better retention overall, such as Venezuelan authors consistently staying on to post again each month at rates of 75% to 80%. However even that group is dominated by older cohorts, so how do they fare with new user retention?
Well first we need to set a control. If we are looking at location data, we know that only 11% of users ever set location data in their profile. Of those 82% have set their location within a month of joining, so there should not be a huge difference between more recent data and older data in this regard. We can see below how merely setting any location data at all makes you more likely to stick around than the average new user.
For all users, the average retention rate since the beginning of Hive is about 37.88%, but that improves to 51.14% for users that set location data. Simply applying a location in your profile increases the likelihood that you will stay for a second month on Hive by 35%.
Now that we have a control with which to compare, let's see how new user retention looks for some of our largest national groups.
Since the split, brand new users with a Venezuelan location have had a retention rate of 62%. This is the best I have come across, and their better retention is clearly seen on the chart. We can estimate that including all brand new Venezuelan users, the adjusted retention rate is probably about 46%.
Let's look at the US for comparison.
While the chart is a bit all over the place, due to low numbers at some times, the average is a mere 41.72%. When we take account of the fact that merely having location data increases your retention rate, brand new US users may have as low an adjusted retention rate as 31%. This drags our overall retention down.
As an aside, perhaps this in part explains why Hive has little traction with crypto Twitter, which is fairly US-centric.
Here are some of the rest of our largest national groups, all with higher than average brand new user retention.
Cuba average: 60% or 45% adjusted.
Philippines average: 55% or 41% adjusted.
Nigeria Average: 55% or 41% adjusted.
UK average: 58% or 43% adjusted.
Conclusion
Our brand new user retention is poor across the board, however in some places it is better than others, and those are where we are likely to see some growth. As Venezuela starts to represent an ever larger portion of the Hive userbase, our new user retention may improve, but even that will be marginal. Substantial improvements will depend on identifying the reasons for our low retention rates and resolving those problems.
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It's catching them.
If I am able to catch new user and I give him my secrets of Hive class, at that point I can inspire them and plug them in and get them set up...
From integrating with communities understanding how voting works, the secrets are actually right in front of us.
Some of my friends have a bunch of the secrets that I teach already checked off!
Step one basic Hive and automating your account with hive.vote.
Step two Hive keychain and tribal dex... Beginning trading and tokens.
Step 3 decentralized finance investing, and.... Where the information of returns is!
If we can get users empowered and operational at the beginning they begin the automation of their account and starting to get paid multiple times per day... Right now I'm getting paid like 600 times a day.
I'm gonna have to agree with @kencode But I'll take it a couple of more steps further. The automating on Hive is it's biggest down fall. When you give that power to someone else, especially if you do not know their intentions, and you inadvertently join a down vote trail that does nothing but destroy new users. Add in the fact that if you auto upvoting peoples content without actually consuming the content you are basically telling that user that you dont care about their content. As an audio/video content creator myself. I have gotten lots of posts with huge payouts with 0-5 views/listens on it. Hundreds of upvotes but no actual views. I often think to myself "Why do I do these?"
The only thing you should automate on Hive is the claiming of rewards.
If someone dont have time to consume the content on Hive and must use automation to up/down vote posts then they dont have time for social media. Auto votes are a load of crap that gives users a false sense of the reality of thier audience. The user then starts tailoring their content to what they think the bots want. And then starts just pounding out crap content that nobody is really consuming. New users come in and start doing the same.
If you want to improve the quality of content, increase new user retention and onboard even more users. Get rid of auto voters and the self appointed gate keepers that wield destructive power with down vote trails.
I too see some users leaving. Why?
It seems to me that their biggest complaint was the downvotes removing their income. I've seen reeeeeally good posts with valuable information earn $10, but then see that entire $10 get removed at the last moment. It seems like some whales fight each other. The question is:
ie: Someone posts diagrams and instructions on how to extract free-electricity from the air around us. That post gets upvoted, and reblogged by individuals (the way it should be) because individual people have received value from that post. But wait, it got upvoted by userX and well, userY hates that guy so he downvotes that post at the last moment to remove the income. The Creator suffers and humanity suffers as well since that post will disappear from the Trending page.
Imagine all of the people that give their power to userX OR userY. They inadvertently involved themselves in, and contributed their power to war. Human freedoms and knowledge get buried once again.
I love Hive for the value that it can bring to others. When value gets destroyed by two parties that are at war with each other, we all lose.
Well I'd say the 'free electricity' posts are most likely BS, but people can vote on whatever they want. Likewise with DVs, but projects like HW who get community funding need to justify their actions. Otherwise they can be seen as bullies. It should be possible to look on their (crappy) site and see why an account got downvotes. A link to their comment justifying the DVs would be a start.
Hive does suffer from feuds and whale disputes can catch minnows in the crossfire. The freedom we have here makes that possible, but we don't want to set arbitrary limits on what people can do with their stake. We need to find ways to make this thing work.
I have seen too many good people driven away from Hive and they will tell others to avoid it. We cannot afford that.
I will DV when necessary, but it is all manual so I can check each case. I get some retaliation, but Hive needs defending.
This is what I do as well. If I delegate any HP to someone, it's only just long enough so that the other user can get their introduceyourself post up, setup their blog page with images and descrip, etc. If it needs to be renewed, then I take the responsibility to renew it myself.
I would never give my HP to someone permanently.
That's like voting for a politician and over time he just gets more and more votes gaining insane power, making it virtually impossible to break up his monopoly. I know people can be lazy and irresponsible, therefore we now know:
Life moves in cycles and INDIVIDUAL votes are what garners better content on the platform. Actual value, as determined by individual people. Democracies (mob rule) have never worked out in history, ever. They always lead to socialism, then communism, then despotism (terms vary).
Q: What does the INDIVIDUAL think about that free-electricity post? NOT the mob. Mobs lead to chaos and that's what Hive has right now.
If anyone reading this delegates their power to someone who participates in these dv wars, I encourage you to take your power back. Put that HP back into your own wallet and earn 2.92% interest on it at the same time.
Perhaps the answer would be to tie a comment to every up or down vote. Make it not possible to vote on content without a comment as to why. This would automatically kill the auto voters.
Me personally I would much rather get one comment with 0 votes. At least its an attempt. At least that would let me know someone actually consumed the content rather than they farmed the currency aspect of it.
That's exactly what I've asked for on numerous occasions. Personally I can't see any downsides to it. Everyone bangs on and on about engagement and commenting. Forcing people to comment if they want the pleasure of voting must surely open the way for conversation? Obviously, I'm thinking more of the DV; imagine if folk had to say why? I'm sure a lot of the weenies would stop copycat DV'ing. HW doesn't give a specific reason; it's a general notification, a bit like the hated Twitter 'violation' bans; you have to go and work hard to find out why the Hive Police singled an account out, and that's if you know how! I've just checked again, and HW STILL does not have an FAQ or Abuse guide https://hivewatchers.com/ and yet feels it has the mandate to punish. At least your country's police force has the common courtesy to give you an explanation when that penalty notices drops on your doormat.
Now before anyone says: "You're just bitter, Pete, because of what happened the other day." you really don't know me at all. I believe in Transparency, Accountability, User Experience and, yes, Protection from Abuse. I take it that it is only me that finds it totally insane that many Hive communities have Code of Conducts, and yet Hive itself doe not have one, and even if it did, there's nobody to enforce it unless of course you somehow found a way to earn HBD for no effort. Oh, then they can enforce it, alright!
Seems to me communities on Hive are successful, and yet Hive itself is not successful. Why? Because communities have people you can go to, people who are out in the open, and people who can be held accountable for their actions. People say, "Nobody controls Hive. The users do." That's an absolute lie! First, we have the Devs; they are actually the ones in control because they control the code. Do you honestly think the vast majority of Hive users understand coding or what a piece of code says or does? Of course, they don't, so when they vote, they agree to it because they believe it's the right thing to do and believe they can trust the devs. There is a second tier of control, and these are the wealthy accounts. Please don't delude yourselves that "They're all really nice people." they're not; the law of averages says they're not. And I know of two witnesses that are utter shits imo.
Rant Over
Brought to you by Distressed of Chigwell If you have been affected by the comments in this response So you bloody well should be! The management takes no responsibility for the views held by the author. No koalas or Fox panadas were injured in the creation of this content.
That's a good idea, a bit of a bolt-on imo tho and it might get gamed by ai bots too.
You'd have to persuade the witnesses to vote for this. I don't see it changing any time soon or the fact that many people automate their votes. For some it's about earning rather than engaging. The platform doesn't really care. We can still have these conversations though.
I also delegate to some small accounts to get them going. The early days can be frustrating and we need to help them out.
Correct.
As stated: "Upvote/downvote HP delegations must DECAY to 0 HP by 8 days".
Once we take our Hive Power (HP) back, we dissolve the power of the powerful. 💪
First, take a look at who you're voting for:
Then, take a look at who you are still delegating your Hive Power to:
Are you giving your Power to bad people? Or good people?
Someone is playing chess with checkers rules. Just wow. You don't have to educate yourself. You can just force your opinions on others. You can then force them to play the game by your limited understanding. Or not.
Good luck. This is beyond ignorant.
Would it not be more ignorant to do absolutely nothing and expect things to get better?
Hahahahahahahahaha! Good luck with that.
When a politician can get a bunch of people to auto-delegate their voting power to him, he becomes incredibly powerful and incredibly difficult to remove. Therefore, I disagree with Step one. Keep your power, don't give it away.
Cool. You completely miss the point. If you don't want to know... I don't have to teach.
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people( @demotruk ) sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.
As a social media platform, automation feature of upvote/downvote on hive is its own enemy. This literally means look you don't have to read/engage with the content and just automate and earn rewards.
The purpose of Hive is to be a social media platform where users can engage and then upvote/downvote based on their own decision. Features like deligation, vote automation should be removed, otherwise people will just use it as a tool to earn more hive!
Also the staking rewards of 2.5% on hive power and 20% on savings should be removed. It is just inflating its supply and decreasing its value. The only way to increase hive in circulation should be via natural growth of its community, content and quality posts.
Hive platform should not be used as a money making tool, instead it should be treated as a social media platform.
Hive should also introduce new features such as trending content.
I also personally think that the overall layout of peakd needs a refresh.
The Hive.Pizza team manually curated this post.
Please vote for pizza.witness!
I guess the Hive members are now trying to hold classes on how to earn on Hive for newbies. It will guide them like it helped me to find my way on Hive