Happy to hear that you like TravelFeed! Looking forward to reading more of your posts.
I know exactly what you mean... Pinmapple is a great small app, but not a full-featured travel blogging platform like TravelFeed. And that's fine, I think that both can coexist (isn't that the point of a decentralised social network?) and work together well, especially since TravelFeed posts are pinned to the Pinmapple map automatically so we actually bring them new users. But somehow it seems they (or maybe only a certain someone in their team) feel threatened by TravelFeed.
I enjoy building, but I'm not great at connecting with the powerful Hive whales or a certain curation cartel. The TravelFeed community used to be the biggest travel community on Hive, but then a certain curation cartel announced that they would curate travel posts exclusively from the (then much smaller) Pinmapple community.
At one point we were actively onboarding Web 2 users to Hive only for them to be told by a certain someone to stop using TravelFeed if they want to earn more. I don't like giving in to bullies, but after seeing our users rewards impacted, we eventually decided to stop the TravelFeed community and now recommend posting to the Pinmapple community. It might not be the friendliest place, but it's generally a good place to get curated. But there's a lot of other communities to choose from.
It's not easy growing a dApp under these conditions and at that point we were considering moving away from Hive and becoming a traditional, centralised Web 2 platform. It took me a while to realise that the issue is not Hive itself, but rather a small number of powerful, toxic individuals. Luckily we receive support from others, most of the Hive community is great.
What a coincidence that we are both referring to the same group. :^) I get that though, I have been putting in stupid amounts of hours into the Movies & TV Shows community for years, it's always fun interacting with people and building something, but the additional side of that isn't fun, where you end up having others cross your path that are best just avoided. Especially when there are clear agendas at play that you just want nothing to do with.
I do think it's a good idea to open up to other methods of sign ups, to rely entirely on Hive is so limiting. As much as I love Hive, sometimes I do feel like it's on borrowed time, where something will hammer in that nail into the coffin. Whether it's poor exchange liquidity, or price/rewards that just turns people away. But if you can figure out a way to connect web2 and Hive together then it'll be pretty beneficial. I saw you already have Google and Facebook as options, so that's already a big advantage for growth.
I like to support the projects on here that actually do something to innovate and expand on what Hive can do. Liketu is a good addition for sure. TravelFeed from what I've seen looks like one of the best. The rest? Let's be real, it's mostly just attempts to fill pockets at the expense of the users. Selling them something utterly worthless. I can't stand the Hive Engine side of things because of that. And it is just a thirst for additional power as they just repeat the cycle.
Best thing you can do is just try to ignore it all. Focus on what you want to see happen and make it. Again, looks like you've already done a good job at that! :^)
By the way, how are you with general photography on TravelFeed? A lot of my posts may not be specifically about the travelling, but often about being in a specific space and the emotions/culture/general environment. I'm not sure if you'd be alright with that sort of stuff, and would prefer what you typically see in pinmapple instead?
Any post that's somewhat related to travel is most welcome 😃