Hive Owner Update: How is @HiveTrending doing?

Hive Owner Update: How is @HiveTrending doing?

In this post I wanted to share a few updates on what I’ve been working on and thinking about. Like a witness update, except I’m not a witness.

Code is Cool

About 4 weeks ago I spent the better part of a weekend building a neat little app called “Hive is Beautiful!”. It’s a simple app that visualizes all the Hive blocks in real-time. Aside from some API node issues it’s running (all the code runs in your browser). I keep it open in a browser tab and stare at it from time to time. The code is open source and available on GitHub, and you can view the app at: https://hiveuprss.github.io/hiveisbeautiful.

Here’s a screenshot to give you an idea what it looks like in action:
928D23BC6D8C476B809568794726BAB6.jpeg

Also, I still maintain a service called HiveRSS (http://HiveRSS.com), which generates RSS feeds for hive content feeds like individual blogs or specific tags. This week, I did some minor updates and testing for HiveRSS for the upcoming HF24 Hivemind changes. Good to go!

Hive Promotion

About 2 weeks ago I temporarily disabled my Twitter account (@HiveTrending), to take a pause. Despite being active on Twitter daily since the SteemHostileTakeover shitstorm, this was a quick and easy decision. According to Twitter analytics my tweet velocity is down 75%. Oops!

Deactivation was an easy decision for a few reasons.

  1. Tons of Hivers are stepping up and promoting Hive on Twitter, so they got it covered.
  2. Twitter has recently been showing me super-targeted ads, which scares the shit out of me.
  3. I’ve had some big picture questions stewing in my mind.

The big picture questions were:

  • I’m spending a lot of my time and attention on Twitter, is this the best way to spend my time?
  • Am I using these tools effectively or getting used by them?
  • What do I want to achieve here and why?
  • Are my activities making an impact towards my goals?
  • What are the goals, anyway?

I’ll get to answering these questions in a little bit.

HiveToday - 6 Weeks In

6 weeks ago I launched a curated, weekly Hive news blog called @HiveToday. I wanted to do this for a long time and kept waiting for someone else to come along and create it. HiveToday is great, and getting better each week.

While taking a step back from Twitter, I did not put HiveToday on pause but had similar questions:

  • Why am I doing this?
  • What are the goals?
  • Where do I see HiveToday going?

So, it was the perfect time to step back and find some answers.

Answers

After some deep thought, I arrived at a pretty simple “why”. The root reason I’m doing all of this, spending hours and hours building, engaging, writing, and promoting is: education.

I was very lucky 2 years ago when I stumbled upon a Medium post talking about Steem. I’ve realized a vast majority of netizens are not so lucky, and they’re utterly unaware of decentralized alternatives and what they can offer.

That’s what promoting the Hive ecosystem is about, for me. Bringing awareness to the possibilities. In this way, marketing and education go hand in hand. Grab someone’s attention and explain what they’re missing.

The goal of HiveToday is pretty much along the same lines. Even people who use Hive casually on a weekly basis are unaware of everything else happening in the ecosystem. There are a thousand other things competing for their attention. And it takes time to figure out how Hive things work (dApps and crypto are often complicated. Surprise!)

HiveToday is a platform for disseminating updates that highlight all the great work you brilliant devs and community builders are delivering. It’s an education system for Hive community members, but it can also go beyond to show the outside world the home we are building.

Wrapping Up

To sum it all up, my renewed clarity of focus is on education, teaching people about Hive and the ecosystem; dapps, games, projects, etc. To find curious people like me and open the door for the Hive community to change their life.

HiveToday will be expanding to other platforms like Medium to reach the target audience I’m after. And to get feedback I’ll be using analytics tools to measure the impact, i.e. gather data to answer questions like:

  • How much traffic does HiveToday drive to PeakD?
  • How many people find their way over and sign up for a Hive account?

What do you think?

Sort:  

Hive is great; it will need a lot of promotion - or education of people, though. Carry on!!

I hear you. It’s a never ending challenge to draw attention.