I have been having some conversations with people lately about where Hive is headed. First of all we need some perspective.
@dragosroua wrote a post about the HIVE daily reward fund dropping in size. That is still a lot of money to give out each day.
Somehow I found this site that calculates what someone can earn through Instagram. It seems some people can make more than the Hive fund on one post! I should say that I do not use Instagram at all, so I know little about how it works.
So if you see a Hive post making $300 that is small beer to some people. A major influencer is probably not going to put in extra effort to make that and the potential audience is too small for them to be interested. Of course it could be interesting to someone who does not have enough of a following on the big platforms to qualify for any rewards. Anyone can make something on Hive if they get enough votes to cross the dust threshold (about 2c).
There has been a big spike recently in Hive accounts due to developments on @splinterlands, but only a fraction of those people will get into the social media side. A lot of the long-term Hivers will come from a blogging background and that may be the kind of content they like, but in the big wide world it is short posts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and others that gets the most attention. Even videos have shrunk on platforms like TikTok, although Vine did not last. Many people want a quick hit of something that they can absorb in just a few seconds before liking and forwarding to friends.
So should Hive have a slice of that market? We have @dbuzz. but some people seem to have issues with that. I see their posts get downvoted to nothing. It may be partly about the people involved, but some also have an issue with short-form content getting big rewards. The D.Buzz app does have a default limit on rewards (1 HBD I think), but that can be overridden. If a hundred people really like a short post then does it not have some value?
There have been other attempts at similar things on the blockchain. @appics may have been at attempt at an Instagram clone. Their super cool team (matter of opinion) were at lots of events for 'the other blockchain' a few years back. They seem to have gone off with their own coin now. There have been some other Twitter-like apps that did not last. They may have been driven away by those who do not want Hive to go that way.
I have had people saying to me that they and their friends do not read or write blogs. They want short posts, videos and maybe photos. A selfie can get a lot of love elsewhere, but when Appics brought some pretty young ladies to the blockchain who posted selfies they were accused of being fake (or even robots!). It is not the content I would seek out, but there is demand for that sort of thing.
Do we really want to exclude massive sections of our potential audience? The Hive platform is agnostic to the type of content. It is basically just hosting blocks of text that can be displayed in various ways with the option to link in different media that has to be hosted somewhere. We can post whatever we like and the community gets to decide what it is worth. I do realise that people can use various means to profit from junk posts with little effort and I have been part of projects to deal with that for years. That is part of why we have downvotes. We should check for those who try to abuse the system and deal with them.
I have seen people put up a post, possibly a video, and then do a D.Buzz one to share a link to the main post. That has potential for double earning, but you can decline rewards. You have to think about how your actions are perceived, but if you have something to say then it should be possible to put it out there and potentially earn from it.
A while back there was much discussion about people removing rewards that were given be a certain rogue actor who was driven away for rampant self-votes with his high stake. Some people got caught in the cross-fire and did not get the big rewards they saw for a while. Those rewards are always just potential until payout time. One person said they deserved them due to the investment in art materials they made for the paintings they posted, but it is still up to the community to decide. You can always sell the painting to recover the cost.
Ultimately it is the big accounts that can kill off projects they do not like, but are they a representative audience? Should they restrict the type of content we can have here based on what they like?
Hive has nearly two million accounts with maybe around 13,000 using the social side. Those numbers are tiny compared to the major platforms where a mildly successful person could have more followers than we have accounts. If we want Hive to be a real success we need to be as inclusive as possible.
I have not seen any sign that big influencers have signed up to Hive and brought over thousands of loyal followers to support them. They are unlikely to for the reasons at the start of the post, but smaller scale creative people could be interested and what they want to post may not fit the classic blogging mould. I think we need them more than they need us.
Am I deluded? What do you think?
You are not deluded. Hive's social side could use a lot of help.
I like it here. I've interacted with some really cool people about comic books and video games and making video games. There is lots of potential. Who doesn't like getting money for talking about things they love?
There are some major issues though. Some could be fixed eventually and are technical/ux. Like making barrier to entry and learning curve easier for 'normies'. Kim Kardashian probably couldn't make a Hive account or use it even if she wanted to.
But a huge problem is the top down control structure. I've almost quit entirely multiple times already because of some things I see whales or bots do to others. Luckily I have not been their target and I like to hope it is just rare isolated cases and most if not all deserved it. But I don't think it is that simple. Usually it is done with some misguided sense of protecting the platform or stopping bad actors from doing something. Most of the time it is petty nonsense and circle jerking millionaires pushing their ideas on lots of poor people that have different ideas.
DPoS blockchains in general have decentralization problems IMO. Having a social site where the overlords can flex their power does not help much in that regard. And that happens here on Hive. A handful of people control basically everything. This is not good for a social site that is trying to grow off the idea that it is decentralized and won't be censored like the big sites are.
But the only way that changes is if those same people change it, which isn't going to happen. I still think Hive is the best option we have for these kinds of things so... despite sounding sour above I have hope!
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BEER.The big accounts are not going away and they may say they deserve a say as they infested heavily, but they should be flexible. As Hive grows their influence could decrease.
!BEER
... or early mined or bid botted heavily ... :)
There's that too, but we have to work with what we have.
What an excellent and common sense post, Steve. How many users have we alienated through this aversion to short form media? Yet, I see many 'poor' posts garnering $100s. There is too much perceived correlation between length, quality and reward.
If people judged posts primarily on sincerity and integrity AND we dumped autovoting and curation trails, we would have a much purer allocation of rewards.
The main problem however, is that curation is so well rewarded. Some large stakeholders often don't care about what they're voting on, only that they get their 10 full upvotes a day done to maximise their returns.
Here is where we find a paradox. It's often the same people who care the most about their curation rewards who are the ones who are in disagreement with encouraging short-form content!
Another problem that is getting worse is the stigma attached to short-form content. Many people are scared to death to make short posts for fear of being muted or ignored by large stake holders. Many feel the need to write huge posts, but I see many posts 'doubled' to make them appear to have large word-counts by posting in two languages.
We need short-form. We need a full suite of social media tools and mostly, we need the support of the mighty and powerful to encourage users to use them!
I like curation being well-rewarded 😁 and I like being able to give some of my voting power through auto-voting. I honestly don't have time to read lots of posts but there are accounts on Hive that I want to support and encourage to keep going because generally I like what they write.
But I agree, sometimes short form information, humour or beautiful photograph would be great and just what the doctor ordered.
The problem (for me) with short-form, if there is one, is the tendency to fragment discussion and debate and encourage pile-ons.
Your comment is longer than some posts. It' should be quality that matters, but we know that's not always the case. More manual curation would help for sure.
!BEER
fighting blind vote...
could be a good point to find a balance between "manual curation" both for posts and for comments?
you earn "money" if you comment. if your "manual curation" exists as it does for the creator of the post.
blind votes are allowed just to "agreement" for a comment
could it be?
Not sure what you mean. You earn from curation if your vote is big enough. The system doesn't know what is manual.
"The system doesn't know what is manual."
But the system does know what is a comment.
So, the system could give rewards only to comments.
In this way you get rewards only by commenting.
If someone comments with "!!!" very easily can have downvotes.
Everyone is more likely to comment actively.
The vote (as a single "like") to a post, should not bring any reward (in this way you would fight the blind vote and communities are more active and alive, with people who talk).
That is my solution, thinking about the blind vote
I doubt you will see a major change in how rewards work. You need to tell developers and witnesses your ideas. We can earn in many ways, but some people will want to automate it. There have to be incentives to vote and curation rewards are part of that.
so again we'll talk about how little interaction exists in a community (hive blog) where everyone is minding their own business just because they're interested in profit and not social interaction.
Connecting and playing games doesn't increase the value of social.
they are just active connections that feed the system.
but of single entities that only look at their own gain.
again, there is more interaction and exchange of ideas inside facebook and twitter (less on instagram, but it is a different social, based on the pleasure of photography)
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If we keep having a global reward pool, it's gonna continue these arbitrary virtual fist fights between different expressions.
@steevc everything you wrote is fundamentally correct. And @enforcer48 gave an accurate and comprehensive answer on how to get away from this.
It seems to me that this is a historical heritage from the time of Steemit. During the formation of the platform, every user from every corner only heard "create unique content and you will be rewarded". Truly unique content often implies deep and specific topics. Which are not interesting to the mass user.
As a result, we got a fairly authentic social platform, with a certain type of content, for a limited number of users. Although, oddly enough, posts about food and cooking feel very good here. Obviously any social groups love food :)
It is possible to avoid a content conflict only by dividing the reward pool- through communities.
I don't think unique content has to be long, but some types do need longer posts, e.g. food, travel and in-depth articles. Hive could span everything from Twitter to Medium in my opinion.
Exactly. I say ditch the reward pool and place the onus for reward on the individual community who can also define what is acceptable within that community and allow them to define their own system of governance.
Aye!
People can create their own tokens that are less easily DV'd away and some already have. The freedom of Hive allows all sorts of things and smart people will find a way.
!BEER
Given the small sizes of most communities people are loath to lose anyone. We still need to see how Hive can scale.
I dont think the community, or the whales are yet capable of understanding that with a global reward pool that covers absolutely all types of content, 1 type of content will always be perceived as superior and the other wont be able to compete.
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I see the twitter-like posts benefit on Hive blockchain, but merely to be rewarded in the first through a second layer token. Besides that it can also capture Hive rewards, but not as the primary rewarding mechanisms. And also maybe we could have different posting properties to filter out in Hive posts from tweets, thus separating the content while keeping it on the same blockchain.
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We need ways to mix up the types of content whilst allowing people to see what they want to see. That may mean smarter filters. Using other tokens may be part of resolving the rewards issue.
!BEER
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Hey @stevec - great post and insights. As you know I'm new to Hive but certainly the way it was introduced to me was that I could create the content I've been posting elsewhere here and (eventually) get rewarded for it. (of course having come in I'm grasping that it's so much more than that...)
As a content creator (and consumer for that matter) I much prefer Instagram to the other social networks - I think the format of being (originally anyway) foremost about great images is good, and encourages creativity and quality. Although it's obviously expanded a lot beyond that I still think the quality on it is higher than elsewhere. I'm more likely to engage on it and ultimately I think it's a lot more mainstream than blog posts or tweet length content.
So - a vote for me for short form content on hive, because in my view you can definitely have quality in short form. Could be Instagram like.. or maybe something new/not done before - wouldn't that be radical?!
As I said, I don't use Instagram, so I don't really know what it's like. I am pretty old-school when it comes to social media, but I have played around with a few over the year. Many did not last (Tsu, Multiply, Orkut, Google+...). One thing I liked about Hive was that it could not be killed as long as it has enough witnesses to run it.
I've not seen a real explanation of why Hive should not be for short-form. I don't think it can really about value as we know it earns elsewhere.
I thought this post might stir up some debate.
!BEER
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Just have to have a famous father, make a sex tape, marry Kanye and have a family willing to shill everything for publicity - and you can make money on Instagram too! :D
It's still at the whims of the public. I have never watched any of her shows or other stuff. She is an extreme example, but shows what is possible. Meanwhile I can do what I do and earn something on Hive :)
!BEER
Yes extreme - most of those who earn really well are. Ronaldo is another who in 2019 earned 3x as much as he did from the field for a handful of posts.
The average "influencer" on Instagram is very similar to an Amway agent "working for themselves"
It seems 'influencer' is a career goal for a lot of people these days, but they have to share the available rewards, as we do on Hive. The extreme examples can set unrealistic expectations. I know a lot of people in that industry get stressed out by the pressure to always be putting out 'content'. I try not to get that way with Hive, but then I'm not able to give up the day job.
The "workless wealth crowd"
Instagram is a massive network marketing company that sells no products itself, but enables others. The accounts there are coathangers wearing coathangers, wearing more coathangers....
oh and the "public whims" are also engineered by algorithms remember. they push these people into not only the site, but all over the media too - with every instagram post becoming global news. What chance does a real person really have?
Yes, it's partly artificial, but the public need to buy into the brands. It's a big pyramid with not much room at the top. Who would have seen all this coming when the internet was young? Billions have a computer in their pocket and crave entertainment. I know my tastes are far from typical and I'm not the target audience for most of this stuff. Happily my kids do not seem too obsessed with it either.
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BEER.I kind of felt the same way about DLike when it was around. I was on the fence about whether it was a decent platform or not and whether it deserved rewards. I think there has to be a place for shortform content here. Especially once the Leo project finally drops. People need to start thinking outside the box and not be so critical about what meets their notions of something worthy of an upvote.
I liked Dlike - it was a great way to share information that might have been of interest to followers without having to write (or think about) a long post.
Is LEO still looking at some kind of short form feature?
Yes, I believe they are. Who knows when it will happen though. They have a ton of irons in the fire.
Yes, we need to be broad-minded if we want to reach a wider audience. Let the wider community decide what has value. Deal with abuse as it happens.
The problem is, abuse is a fine line and very subjective. It's going to be a dance to stay on the right side of that line or determine what is.
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Well there's some stuff that is definitely abuse, e.g. plagiarism. The edge cases are trickier.
For sure!
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I think this is really interesting and I know we have discussed this quite a bit! I am a bit in the dark as I still have not been here this long. However to me and people joining the blogging is a small part of Hive. With options like 3 speak and Vimm and Dbuzz people who use those forms of social media can be part of Hive doing the things they already do. It is the same with all the great games, I have seen many people come to discords coming to Hive via SPL. However onboarding these people further is important if and I say if people want Hive to grow and develop into something bigger and more mainstream. If they are helped, educated they maybe will stick around but also become dedicated and responsible Hive users. Luckily as a general rule I have found people on Hive very kind and very helpful, we love the Hive and !PIZZA.
Our conversations were part of what inspired this post. Hive needs to evolve to suit different demands, but does not have to be just one thing.
!BEER
I agree that is the beauty of it really!
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Did you know Pizzabot in Discord has a bunch of useful commands? (4/20)
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BEER.I have been meme-ing on "quality posts" for a while now but you put things into perspective quite well. We need side chains and other solutions for short form content and Hive will be there more for the resource credits
You are not deluded :)
You are reasonable as always.
Hive as a platform is not attractive enough for the masses.
Is that a curse or a bliss? You be the judge.
@tipu curate
Some want it to be an exclusive club, but that will limit what we can make. I think it was intended to empower the masses and I want to see if that can happen. More users will bring more spam and abuse, but we will have to develop the tools to deal with it. I am actually surprised the spam is not worse.
!BEER
You are right. It was imagined to be a safe haven for everybody. Eden on EOS is Dan's third try :)
Masses bring the noise. They bring life and action too. I guess Hive needs another earthquake ...
Ps: it looks like TipU is not working at the moment. Sorry.
I got the vote. Many thanks!
!BEER
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Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 63/83) Liquid rewards.
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BEER.I think it is time for people to stop playing the governmental game of divide and conquer. I feel there is room on Hive Block Chain for a lot of different and various content. Why we have to keep dividing people and dividing content down and down till there is nothing left is stupid.
If a person wants to share a selfie, and people don't like it then don't vote on it. If people want to write a really really bad poem and you do not like it then tell them why help them improve, and don't vote on it.
As we are divided into one camp or another we are destined to fail due to infighting.
People with power will use it, but Hive is a form of anarchy really. We may need some controls of behaviour that can actually damage the platform, but otherwise anything should be allowed.
!BEER
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BEER.I think that sites similar to Instagram or TikTok will finally start to gain popularity on hive. A few things must happen. Simply, more people must join the hive, because big prizes for nice selfies or funny anecdotes or videos will not come from "big" votes from a handful of people who have a lot of hive power. But the rewards for such posts will come from a very large number of people with little upvote value. Also, the community of Hive will have to accept that this kind of content can have value to many people.
I really want to see many more people on Hive to see how it scales. That will change the nature of it. There will be abuse that may be hard to deal with, but lots more people will be able to earn and I thought it was about empowerment of the masses.
!BEER
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This can change in few years down the line. Like Bitcoin, Hive's strongest asset is a community and we can make things happen when we collectively working together while strengthening the decentralization of the chain.
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Just for you to be aware, there's still missing blocks going on on your "witness".