Dear Hivers,
In 2017, it was a different game with new players making new promises. These blockchain players plotted a better future. Fair to say back then the attention economy was receiving serious attention.
But things have changed now!
In fact, in the last three years, if you look at any of these platform, you will discover a bitter truth.
For example, pick any:
- Synereo
- Lunyr
- Invest Feed
- Peerity
- Akasha
And so on…
You will discover these “attention economy” platforms are almost dead. There’s little to no activity. Almost like an abandoned school in the middle of nowhere.
So what is happening here? How can these platforms fail to earn any attention?
In fact, I have been observing social media platforms outside of blockchain. They are really good at capturing the audience, isn't it?
Take Facebook. Instagram. Twitter.
All of them started with attention and then moved onto something else. They moved onto activity. To put it simply: In order to gain attention, they have a mechanism. This mechanism is an activity.
For example: On Facebook, you have the like button (an activity).
Instagram, you have the “tap” option. Twitter, there’s a like and RT option. All of them, of course, are designed to pull us into their platform.
The same principles are visible on Hive too. Here, voting is an activity.
It Is More Than Attention Now!
We are no longer in the attention economy industry. Everything has turned more into attention-for-action economy. There is no pure attention model where the end-user doesn’t have to take any action.
If you think about it, this is truly a new challenge for publishers.
Imagine a scenario where the reader doesn't do activity and doesn't take any action. How will you reward the publisher?
And if the reader does take an action, it also invites a new trouble. They can come and abuse the platform for their selfish gains. These abusers are the ones selling likes on Facebook, followers on Instagram, and Twitter accounts in bulk.
Activities can be abused.
Where are we going with this? Think about Hive for a moment. There is no way to measure the quality of the article. We only measure it through the number of votes received.
Again, what if a bunch of folks form a group — and self-vote each other? It could be a mini-group of friends. And we have seen this happening before — it will continue to happen even now.
In no time, capitalism enters — and we begin to witness members inside their group support each other, leaving the rest OUT.
This is an ongoing problem yet to be solved. One company I believe that is fighting this abuse is Medium.
Now, of course, Medium is a competitor — and it doesn’t rewards the readers. It does, however, reward publishers.
Initially, like votes, Medium had claps. Depending on who is clapping — you will get rewarded anywhere between 1 cent to a dollar per clap.
This was, of course, quickly abused.
Looking Beyond Votes
That is where Medium decided to change its mechanism. The activity (clap) did not make any sense. And so they started paying publishers based on time.
If a reader spends a lot of time on the article, the publisher gets paid a lot more.
Based on this post:
On a day when the average daily reading time for all members is 5 minutes, the earning rate would be $0.1 divided by 5 minutes or $0.02/minute.
Again, this may not be a perfect model but this is where the attention economy is headed.
We are moving from visible activity to an invisible activity. From action to inaction. And it would be lovely to see more projects coming up with such innovative ideas.
Perhaps on Hive we can implement something like this — and it will be a game-changer. Articles that deliver quality will start earning rewards based on the time spent by the reader.
It is just an idea — one that can be the foundation of our future.
Over to you: What are your thoughts? What do you think of the future? Is attention abused? Do you see something new? I would love to hear from you.
Cheers,
Sid
Interesting concept and we can see more and more people actually reading the post and thus the post value can be decided based on that.
True. Medium did it. Has exponential growth now. They also hide the algorithm, like Coca Cola's ingredient. Someone has to implement! :)
Yes finding the algorithm would be one thing and them implementing os other
Invite you to add actnearn hashtag.
Nice write up but it can be abused too. Friends can decide to stay on a post for long. However, this a dope idea...that can be modified. Engagement is actually driving hive in the right direction
Exactly my point. Friends can "stay" for a long time. The mechanism is the foundation and should be tweaked. Jus an idea though! :)
Like i said, it is actually a very good one
This is a pretty interesting idea, and I've learned a bit on how that works since I've been starting to re-post from Hive to Medium. It's certainly a neat way to combat abuse, by verifying that you're actually reading something which you claim to enjoy. More robust than just having a button to vote for it.
If there's something new that I'd love to see on Hive, it's the removal of the 7-day earnings window. I'm not technically minded enough to understand the mechanics of the Hive Blockchain, and why it needed a 7-day period in the first place (from Steem anyways ). I think that would be a game-changer that'll allow content creators to extract more value from whatever they post, and something that can be monetised for a lifetime, rather than a week.
Cheers for sharing :-)
Definitely....apart from extracting more value from the content, people will work more on their content because it can earn for a month, 4 months later, an year later.
I think that's why medium contributors put so much quality in their content...
A good quality content can earn you some money even after an year.
True. Need a huge pool. Definitely a gap worth closing. Some player will eventually do it.
yepp.
Cheers! I couldn't have said it better myself. This way, we can have more variety, since we have a lot of great short-form content already like photos, videos, and brief updates of blogposts. We've yet to have a lot of quality long-form content like in-depth reviews, opinions and such else.
Following Medium's footsteps, if we could allow all types of content creators, regardless of what they create or contribute to earn for longer, that's one step closer to putting HIVE on the mainstream :-)
Yepp, short content get instant rewards, long content gets long term rewards.
I 100% agree with the 7-day window period. We continue to discuss this as, ideally, at least 1 month period would be wonderful.
If 3 months, even better. Lifelong? Well, it will bring every blogger here for passive income!
Agreed! When I first joined Steemit ages ago, I've read some complaints by former Steemians on Medium, saying that they couldn't stay, or contribute consistently on the platform because they couldn't monetise their content. Even though the beauty of HIVE is the community itself, for a lot of those serious content creators, they'll need some way to earn rewards from their hardwork.
Otherwise, it might not seem worth it for them. Even stretching that earnings window out to one-month would have some huge benefits, let alone multiple months, years, or so long as you have an account here on HIVE!
@tipu curate 2
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