Dear Hivers,
It warms my heart to share this:
Almost 30 days ago, Hive was born. And today it is our birthday.
I am surprised we don’t have enough posts around this — as this moment calls for a tiny celebration and discussion over the community’s victory against centralization.
I first tasted this victory when I was on Steemit almost three years ago. I wrote full-time for 3 months. And I wrote things I would never ever write.
Like this:
I received lots of love, messages, and started gaining tremendous attention. But deep down, for the first time in my life, I also saw a new opportunity.
Things back then and now seems so much different though.
There I was late. And here I am early.
In fact, I have been secretly watching this transition. A lot was achieved in the first month, as you know. You may also know that this astonishing feat of 30 days saw several problems.
You see, in the first few days, the site was throwing tonnes of errors — with wallet issues — igniting questions in the minds of both the investors and publishers.
This is where things changed.
Everyone within the community worked relentlessly to fix the issues while the Hive Devs were continuously dropping new features — eventually multiplying our good experience here.
(And maximising the potential of the project).
In just 30 days, we are here – burying old issues while introducing new dreams. Hive has certainly bagged a great vision to empower decentralization. My hope and wish is that it moves mountains - and blows up into the best blockchain project out there.
Right now, this wonderful feeling also leads us to the next set of engaging problems. In this post, I would like to share it all with you:
I will start with the good — which is a generous comment on the benefits of this platform, and then move onto the bad — and finally the ugly that we need to address.
As a full-time blogger, I entered Hive on the first week — and then promised to write regularly for the next 30 days. I have enjoyed the process since then.
So what's good?
In comparison to blogging:
1. Hive offers better engagement
Example:
19 out of 20 posts has more than ONE comment.
What does it tell you?
We have people — and we are growing each and every day with new accounts:
2. Hive has an instant community
As the engagement level is ravingly high compared to blogging… anyone can get started almost immediately.
The audience already exists – unlike blogging where building an audience requires more than what meets the eye. (Think SEO to marketing to social media)
Here's an example from a recent post:
3. Hive offers content freedom
Quick story: WhatsApp (the messaging company) once contacted my hosting company to delete my content – and the entire website. And the hosting company suspended my account without my permission.
Because, you see, I was pushing content against their TOS.
On Hive?
That will never happen.
There's so much of freedom!
No one is looking over your shoulders. No suspension. No censorship.
(That is why I started my own series here)
4. Hive offers faster rewards
Typically, ad networks take about 30 days to make the payment. That’s a lot of waiting.
With Hive? It is 7 days.
Plus, the upside is huge because the token value fluctuates – if it goes south, we simply wait. That is why to show my support and long-term involvement, I am also powering up my recent posts:
5. Hive improves your writing
Having written over 3000+ articles, the only formula I know:
Write. Consistently.
Fortunately, Hive takes away all the unknown responsibilities — managing server to designing your blog — so that you can simply write.
Plus, more I write? Better I get.
Challenges, like the one I did before, are also compounding my experience as a writer. I get better with each post.
As part of the community, I feel responsible to share the "bad" stuff.
I have read a lot of unpleasant stories – stories around voting, manipulation, and capitalism. Though I am not exactly an expert, the bad you see below is purely from a publisher's perspective:
1. Content is not organized
Tags are not doing a fantastic job.
Even the homepage dropdown menu is limited — and discovering quality content is incredible tough.
For some reason, once a new content is pushed – the old content gets pushed down with absolutely zero attention.
Plus, the search doesn't work:
2. Communities make it tough
Not sure why we do we need so many communities. Again, posting on one hides the content from the rest. Or impacts visibility.
(Until we cross-post – which also seems like, ugh, spamming).
One more issue:
When I post on a certain community, the content never appears on the "blog" section. I have to "add" the post on the blog.
3. Content Plagiarism
As a no-censorship everyone-can-join platform, we have to live with this fact:
Plagiarism will exist.
Though accounts like @jaguar.force are doing a great job, we still don't have a mechanism to find content that is rewritten. I see a lot of content rewritten.
People who have been here for years know one simple fact: Nothing in life is crystal clear – not everything is black and white... or good and bad.
And they know the battle will continue. This "ugly" part is that ongoing battle worth paying attention to:
1. Lack of real authors...
We are onboarding new users — not necessarily publishers. For Hive.blog to grow, we need writers and authors and bloggers.
They will bring content that ignites debates, adds value, and takes Hive on the social media. For some time now, I have been thinking of ways to get popular people on this platform.
Otherwise it will feel like a closed circle with us cheering each other inside an empty bar on a Friday night.
2. Bad content gets worse
Look, I get it:
I am no one to judge good or bad content.
But some of the content is terrible. I am not talking about grammar or spelling mistakes. We can live with that.
I am talking about useless content. Content that adds no value. And serves no purpose. I don't want to call out any names. No pointing fingers here.
But to make it clear? I can show you an old example:
- The content doesn’t match the video.
- Reading a script (and doing a bad job at it)
- Multiple posts like these (from multiple accounts)
The bottom-line?
When the content adds no value, it doesn’t get shared — and the community doesn’t grow, eventually leading to a point of stagnation.
3. Overrun by get-rich-quick folks
Recently, this was a hot topic here.
You see, deeply rooted desire for many here is rewards. And they are willing to throw away ethics.
As @Tarazkp points out:
The problem is: this selfishness can limit our growth. As we think about it:
Pick any of the attention economy platform:
- Lunyr
- Invest Feed
- Peerity
- Synereo
- Akasha
And so on…
They all failed to gain attention because they didn’t focus on what was truly important. It is not merely content. It is really about collective growth.
You see, our collective growth is more important than individual success.
And so if the platform is dominated by bad content filled with dangerous minds — who are burying ethics for selfish reason — then our growth as a decentralised platform is severely challenged. These are, of course, the next set of problems we need to deal with.
We are in this together — and this celebration calls for upgrading ourselves with a collective mindset to grow.
Because wouldn't it be fantastic for us to reclaim the throne – to convert Hive into a full-fledged platform meeting insanely high amount of engagement and monetization needs in the next one year?
I hope you can feel what I am feeling. And I hope we can ALL be part of this journey to celebrate our first month – and the future... with a smile!
Cheers,
Sid
100% Hive-exclusive. If you liked the article? Feel free to upvote and rehive.
Everything needs time to grow. After sometime we get some fine results.
I'm enjoying the hive platform more and feeling like a lot of old, dead wood fell off.
Now it's time to onboard and build value with great content & connection. 😊
The looooooooong bear market has helped that wood fall off, but it will be back. phoenix wood if you will.
Yes, I guess you're right. As soon as the bull stirs... it's a problem I'm happy to help with - the price of going to the moon. LOL
Absolutely. I am glad to see you churn our quality content and continue to connect (thanks). :)
Let's do our bit - and invite others in this journey.
Indeed. Every day... x
Hope you're well and hanging in ok over yonder there....
True.
Only on your comment does it show "comment mode with" - what's that? :)
I use engage.hivechain.app for my engagement - soooo handy to comment and upvote and check mentions. It's a freebie. ❤️
Some really valid points you mention. I especially like the one about "Collective Growth". This is so true and makes a lot of sense. Only thing I might differ a little bit with you is the part about having Authors and Bloggers on the platform. I think the more relaxed social interaction, the better. Not necessarily folks who are accomplished Authors. Just people shooting the sh@t. this way we nave more Mass Adoption
Yes. Absolutely. The more I explore this platform, the more I find joy in knowing it is a "social" place. A mix of all is going to be great for increased userbase.
Nice post on the state of hive. Some other good points could include the movement of developers and development on to Hive and the safety that simple changes have added to help insure the decentralization of the blockchain.
Additional issues include some of the downvote wars and picking on accounts for minor infractions or other reasons that sometimes happen. (Hopefully this won't be as much of a problem going forward as is was historically with Steem.)
Thanks for highlighting these points. I am exploring the dev part as we speak. And yes, the bad things - the downvote wars and silent fights - are always a concern.
Not sure who is stepping up to fix them.
Great post. I think there isn't really a way of controlling for bad actors other than not upvoting their content and downvoting the worst of it. We rely somewhat on those with more HP to lead the charge, but we can all play some part in promoting better content on here. Yet someone who buys their way to the top could theoretically rip off the rewards pool anyway. I think it is best to focus on what the platform can be for each of us, but also be willing to use our downvotes when appropriate.
Absolutely true. I mean, if we break our head around this, we can certainly find a better mechanism that leads to a better result. There is always room for innovation.
Happy birthday to Hive and to each of us being on this great platform. It is now up to us to make it greater!
Yes. So glad to see you here. :)
Let's make Hive great!
I am everywhere... at least I try ;)
Like the fair reflection on this post but I have noticed more engagement here on Hive compared to the 2 years I was on Steem, which is great.
The ugly point you make is far less on Hive now that it was on steem I believe but it's only 1 month in and still so much core development going on to get the underlying fundamentals of smooth "OS" is going to take time. That kind of behaviour seems to be a dying breed as there are teams dedicated to stamping out spam and plagiarism.
If this kind of thing continues in 6 months time then something is seriously wrong but I think it's part of shaking out old habits as Hive moves in a different direction.
Content discovery will improve but think we all need tui give ideas on how to improve it and it will come. Again, patience is needed as the fundamental blockchain technology is made smooth and efficient. Now it's probably the best time to gather ideas and present them so we can all discuss with the devs about how to implement the changes we'd like to see.
Such a valuable comment. Thank you!
And yes:
Too early, I know. Six months are great. In fact, the recent AMA has installed confidence in me - and I really think the platform is moving in the right direction.
As you said:
Yeah I'm with you there, it's starting from scratch but with a new lick of paint IMO and there's a dedicated team of developers. The dust is settling a bit more with regards to the hard fork and I think the two chains will be completely different in 3-6 months time.
I'm just powering down what I bought in case of worst case scenario on Steem, so getting 22k back. After that, will check back on my goals 😃
I need to work on my consistency. I feel my writing improving slowly I just don't force myself to do it enough. I need to work on self-motivation. This is a very inspiring post that doesn't hide the ugly.
Thank you!
Please write as much as possible.
If I can do anything, let me know!
Very beautifully written bro.
Though we have just started, we will grow a lot.
Pointed out all the key issues also....
Hope we will see some kind of solution in the future.
Absolutely. Too early can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.
So far, enjoying the challenge - and the process.
Thanks for being around!
Great article as usual.
I think you misspelled his username.
Thank you so much!
Yes, should have been a dot. Fixed it. :)
Excellent ponts made. We really need content creators that are capable of igniting debates, just like you. Infact, I would be more than happy if some of the epic writers on Quora like Balaji Viswanathan come here to write articles.
Haha. I will take that as a compliment.
And yes, lots of writers on Quora can come here. Will be so wonderful!
Happy Bday Sid!
I'd say communities is a nice feature but should not be overused. You are right, maybe there are too many communities, yet I think it is great to have some decent community-topic structure. Especially if they thrive and really grow into their own little islands on the Hive chain.
Thank you, Roelandp.
It appears: content is curated only when you post in their community – which is also an issue, as it forces publishers to rely on a certain community.
Definitely need this:
That's why I don't use the communities. If I'm posting artwork, I want lots of people to see it, and maybe support my work... not post it so I can benefit from maybe one or two audience members with large votes. If it's not good enough to be supported outside of the community, then obviously it's not good enough to be supported inside.
People with less followers have to depend on communities.
Such a valuable thought.
My only hope is that we have enough non-community curators. I wish to experiment on this front.