Most Hive frontends are based around the publication of blogs and articles. They rival sites in the same domain such as Medium and, to some point, LinkedIn. The quality of articles is subjective to the consumer.
We've got a lot of highly educated professionals, niche experts, and general content creators who just want to share whatever comes to mind. Everyone enjoys a different part of the text or otherwise material stored on the chain or presented through the use of the chain on the frontends. We can all agree here on that.
And we all have a high regard for this type of interaction. Posting, commenting, upvoting, downvoting, linking to posts, reblogging posts, and everything else that can be done with a post.
We have these sites, we own these sites, we own the blockchain, we own our content. We see value in all of these.
We are decentralized, normal people who live in different parts of the world. In a city in Morocco, in rural Canada, in a town in Venezuela, and so on. We're normal people who have normal lives and in our spare time devote ourselves to Hive for our own reasons. We're all different but we see the value in Hive and in whatever Hive frontend we prefer.
So here is the problem: we see value in these sites but our confidence does not transfer to the outside world that doesn't understand what Hive is. They don't see value in these frontend sites and where they do, the value they see is a percentage of the value we see.
What's the problem? The problem is we publish on these sites that we value. Our main posts about why Hive is great, about why it has all the potential in the world, is on our own sites. We are telling ourselves what we already know. Even those who disagree still see this value or they wouldn't be here.
Now, a different train of thought. The other day I had to fill out the Twitter form to get a blue checkmark for the main Hive account Hiveblocks. The form goes like this roughly: you select what type of entity you are, then you present links from credible news sources that confirm that you are someone who matters by Twitter standards, then you confirm a few minor details and submit. You wait a week for the results. Sounds easy.
After you read this, go find five good news sources about Hive.
A good news source is an article, something that talks about Hive, maybe from the perspective of a Hive stakeholder, maybe its about when Hive was created as a public version of the privatized and centralized Steem blockchain, could be about a dapp where Hive is mentioned. Something that isn't insulting to Hive or untrue as a few articles are.
Now I know everyone at this point will put their finger at marketing. But, keep in mind, marketing is press releases and promotional, paid articles. Marketing isn't at fault for stakeholders who know Hive inside out not mentioning it in an interview or not pushing through an article about it when they themselves write for crypto outlets. This mythical scapegoat of "no marketing" has no place here.
We have stakeholders and regular users of Hive who have privileged access to news agencies, get them to pick up stories and publish articles, yet don't lift their finger to help Hive. Why is that? Is the work of so many people and the general benefit they get from using Hive so worthless to them? When we see one of them link to Hive somewhere at the very bottom of their site we drop to our knees in gratitude. No point in naming names here, this post isn't to cast a blame on anyone.
It's not all someone else's fault. The fault chiefly lies with our own perception. We value our frontends so we publish on our frontends. We limit our reach. I'm guilty of this too. We don't republish on our own sites, on other non-Hive platforms, on traditional media. We limit our reach when we do that. We preach to the quire instead of to the public.
The result is there are very few articles about Hive. We are getting press releases out but a press release and an article aren't the same thing. Money can't buy this, engagement can.
So what can we do so the next time someone searches for Hive articles, they actually find something? We got to use whatever resources we have, that's everyone, and get some articles out there. Local papers, anything. Hive information needs to get off Hive and distributed through publications elsewhere. We need to look for opportunities to publish about Hive, not to just publish on Hive. We do that anyway. That's done.
Let's end this with an apple.
Thanks for this. I am a completely new user here. Possibly this is a naive question. Why do people not do promote Hive on different front ends when there is an economic incentive? For example if I post on a FB group a blog I wrote on Hive and send a link to join, do I not then get a % (it's 3%?) of future earnings from that new blogger on Hive. So (1) is my understanding written above true ? (2) is this done (3) out of curiosity- does Hive produce metrics of where new users come from?
Hive Onboarding has that feature but in general we're not a pyramid scheme, there is no real incentive to onboard for rewards. Now if you onboard someone notable and Hive gets attention, the value of HIVE will go up and your share of Hive will go up. Regarding metrics, no, we don't have those by default. That's largely because of how accounts are made. It takes an account to create a new account. We'd have to be uniformly collecting and logging new users' information.
Thank you for this explanation!
That's an excellent assessment, @guiltyparties. We need to be blogging about Hive from non-Hive blogs!
Yeah, if everyone gets one article out anywhere they want we'll be set.
I won't apologize for spending nearly five years, on and off, creating mainly arts and entertainment and presenting that work here. In my early days, on Steemit, I showed up knowing nothing and nobody. But I also had a following of thousands on Stumbleupon, which is now defunct.
So I'd write ridiculous shit, just like I do today. A story about being a nutcase who thinks a washed up drugged out Elmo is his dad, for instance. Or a simple image of my signature that looked like I wrote it in snow with piss, and I called it Piss Art. Made something like eleven cents but I didn't give a shit. We had a view counter and that thing was nearing 1000 views, because I'd always add my links to Stumbleupon, then thousands of consumers would 'stumble' into my work. Each hit was a new reader for me and free marketing for the platform. But Stumbleupon shut down after I spent years building a following.
What point am I trying to make? Something like this:
Would get shared on Facebook, and that kind of stuff combined with having it distributed on social media is what contributed to Youtube's success.
A content platform and social media work together. One is the paper (Hive), the other is the paperboy (Twitter, Facebook). My friends weren't introduced to Youtube because I shared information about Youtube on Facebook. Stumbleupon is how I found out about Youtube, and it was an instance of actual content, not some bright eyed genius talking about how great his platform is.
Link sharing content consumers. In general, this place has been lacking in the consumer department since day one. Everyone is a content creator. The stage is full, jammed, with more on the way. The seats in the stadium are empty.
What's more productive? Me sharing my link on twitter or 100 consumers sharing my link on twitter? What's more appealing to a consumer? An advertisement about Hive with a few people cheering for it in the comment section, or some entertainment?
And those articles about serious stuff that has nothing to do with Hive, provided it's shared by consumers, can also serve the same purpose.
Make it clear to those on the outside consumers can actually be rewarded for their consumption habits here, spread REGULAR content that's actually going to entertain someone out like wild fire and you got a whole new ballgame. Get these people in the door. That's all.
Amen!!!!!!!
Works best when it's organic. Not forced.
Yeah, I get it. Just frustrating others don’t seem to.
Some potential content consumers already here, at times, won't even look at an instance of actual content if it's rewarded (more than their content). "Well, they got enough, no need to look." Since so many aren't consumers, they're content creators, they create an unhealthy competition within their minds. They want their content shared, not their neighbor's. That's why the platform needs just regular consumers who don't feel they're in competition with the things they might like. Consumers will want their favorites to succeed and often do everything in their power to help achieve that. Someone who just published their post, sees how it's not getting attention (mainly due to lack of consumers), sees low rewards next to their work, visits the trending page, and gets mad. Then they write a post talking about how those who found success did it using nefarious tactics and dirty deeds or kissing ass, which is a lie. "Why would someone earn so much just for joking around. That's stupid." Yet they'll gladly pay at the door, enter an arena, and enjoy a comedian or performance of some kind. So if people aren't even going to look at the other content, chances are they won't be sharing it either.
You're right on that everyone being a content creator but not too many content consumers. Maybe its our content discovery, or probably definitely its our content discovery that's to blame here. Now how do we get normal, entertaining content out there, aside from whatever ends up jacked up to the front page of Trending?
1. One way would be for the UI to heavily encourage SHARING good content here (the paper) on external 'centralized' Social Media (the paperboy). People see good content on here, but my friends literally couldn't find an easy way to share it. (Eventually I told them to click the 3 dots and find the sharing options, but still, weak sauce.)
2. Another thing would be to have Rich 'Share' Cards and 'Opengraph Tags' so that when I share a link from PeakD or Hive.Blog or whatever... it looks PRETTY, like everything else I share on social. The thumbnail should appear, the headline should look nice, with a nice description, etc.
When I share this post on Whatsapp, you know what it looks like?
I've written some outstanding pieces that could literally be sold as an entire book, and it's freely available here on Hive. Content like my 16,000+ word Ultimate Guide To Free Speech and Censorship should technically be incredible draws to Hive, and should be shared everywhere, but it's mainly only @cynshineonline who gets it out to 'consumers' in the centralized world.
3. Another thing is content authors can actually speak up and add Calls-To-Action at the end of their post, encouraging shares on social media. Most of them put banners about themselves or nothing at all as their CTA, but any marketer or copywriter worth their salt will tell you not having a CTA is leaving huge money on the table (or huge shares from consumers).
4. Yet another idea is to create 'shareable', 'viral' content. It's a bit tricky for me to explain this, but if you study Tim Staples Break Through The Noise, or Matt Bellasai's (of Buzzfeed's) Skillshare Course, you can learn what makes truly shareable content. When something is literally designed with one purpose, to be shared, then it has a much easier time splashing outside a single platform. It's not guaranteed though, so it often requires 100 pieces of 'truly shareable' pieces of content to get the viral hit one may be looking for.
5. Yesterday I proposed a Hive Wallpaper Contest that would attract artists and get people sharing 'beautiful art' off-platform, if it was designed and run and executed well. So contests are another way that works, as long as people don't have to go through Hive's crazy-onboarding /crypto-keys process to participate. That's a huge barrier-to-participation for most consumers.
Anyway, I hope this comment was valuable and offers some insight. I've agreed with @nonameslefttouse on this issue for a while, and he is extremely vocal about it every chance he gets. But can only do so much typing on the matter, so I figured I'd chime in. Much love, and wishing Hive tons of growth and momentum.
When onboarding, the mistake made since the early days was telling people they could earn by posting. There's no mention anywhere obvious how awesome it is, when compared to other places online, the simple act of consuming also pays. The people show up expecting big paydays posting content, and look at those consumer rewards thinking that's piss, in comparison.
This 'content discovery' I see thrown around a lot, in practice, is what led to all these awkward echo chambers online. As a consumer on this platform for years, I never had a problem finding interesting things I like. What makes it difficult at times is sifting through amateur after amateur posting nonsense thinking they're going to get rich, not realizing they're actually a consumer, they suck at creating content, and would earn one hell of a lot more if they just chilled out and enjoyed content.
Have you personally ever seen any of my posts or comments mentioning the word 'consumer' or how our content is a product, or anything related? I've talked about these things a million different ways already...
We end up going back to the problem of it being easy to convey the fact that content can be easily created and monetized but difficult to show quality content to consume. If we link Trending it's typically full of things no one outside of Hive would ever care about. Linking New is only marginally better if that. Linking a Community shows a narrow range. We could draw in those who just want to sit, read and comment if we could coherently show them what's actually worth reading and commenting on.
When I'm free I do read your posts because I know that it'll never waste my time to read them. But I know to seek them out. There's a few others I pull up and look at. Hard to pass this on.
I suggested within the first week of Hive the fact internal content and actual content doesn't mix, so should be separated. All the development stuff and platform politics, important updates, it could all be tagged professionally, then disqualified from trending, but go directly to a new tab, and new trending, that is easily accessible. Mentioned it here in the 'Hive isn't perfect' section. And I think the first time I mentioned it was here in the comments under Justine's post. I've mentioned it elsewhere. And probably even before Hive.
I am such a huge fan of some organization, all while ensuring there's still a mix. I think my solution offers the best of both worlds, while not taking anything away from anyone. It actually offers more visibility to both the internal Hive content and the general mix of actual content.
I also wrote a post today talking about what I mentioned here with the sharing.
Yes, this is also a good idea that I would've mentioned in my options above had I seen it initially, lol. :)
Indeed we should try to write articles in news papers which publish public articles as well to spread awareness about Hive. I personally shall try to write about Hive here in Dawn newspaper of the prominent here in Pakistan, once I got to know enough about Hive. For now it has been a week I am here on Hive so, learning things for now. 👍
Let me know if you're successful. That would be great.
Yes, once I knew enough to write about Hive I shall try.
Truth.
The problem is what we are. Stagnated. The blogging side of things or whatever else we, us who are here now do. Does not matter in the long term. Long term, to look at things with any mind set of reality. The blogging side of things will be the distribution of newly created tokens. nothing more. The actions of blogging, games or whatever a front end decides to do will be nothing compared to other actions taken for daily use. HBD should have more actions per day than anything else.
Developing the chain is not just developing code. Maybe that is what is wrong we have only coders. Like you mention above coders are not marketers.
What is the best form of marketing? The best form is when the information comes from a trusted source. When someone you know tells you this is good, you are more inclined to believe it. The twitter feeds that get clicked are clicked by those who trust the source or like the source. Throwing an initial finance to any entity to do marketing for us is a waste of time and effort, The benefits of such an effort would be short lived right now.
We only develop code here. That is the only avenue of advancement taking place in a developing world. Unfortunately, the rest of the world comprises of more than just code. If we are not tapping into that we are steps behind other chains.
This needs to be discussed on other levels than just the same over and over again. If we cannot come together on one common project for chain support. We will never have a common goal and Hive will continue to divide itself and lose strength.
To combat the struggles that are coming to any chain or crypto-token. Defences are needed. Those defences also need to be funded. Removing from the rewards pool for this will again reduce the population using the chain. We need to fund the development of external support for the chain. A second generation of support.
Hive works as a chain and gains greater demand for use when we can out-source costs to a Hive support fund. This fund is regenerative too, and can increase over time to exceed what is available from the daily reward. We have no charges here on Hive actions to use for development. We have no returns. A complimentary companion to Hive is needed.
So we need more trusted sources spreading the word, but question is how do we get them doing that. Do we need to get on our hands and knees and bribe everyone. Do we need to pay them because all they see is that Hive is easy money and has no other value for them except as easy money.
No. Just create the end user and look at HBD as a currency and not an asset like HIVE.
Hive has done the same thing since it's origins. Code and nothing else. Just code does not seem to work.
Can you explain this more? Not sure I'm catching on but it may just be because its 2am.
There is much to explain (maybe).
1st off why would anyone make use of the Hive chain besides us bloggers who are here already?
It offers nothing that is not available anywhere else. Don't come back with the free transactions as that is bollox, There are hidden charges to using Hive tokens, exchange rates. Until the token (HBD) can be used daily, without fear of loss in value. Hive offers nothing special.
HBD is the key to Hive going main stream and out competing bitcoin.
This cannot be done by a corporation like Starbucks making use of HBD. The withdrawal of support from that one company would kill the chain. Starbucks would not be an end user. It would always be turning HBD/HIVE back to fiat. Weakening the value of HIVE and possibly HBD.
The end user is the entity that does not need to convert the HBD/HIVE to fiat to survive. The only way this can be done is by creating a Hive Blockchain Support. This would be the end user.
Although initially, this would mean the conversion of HBD to FIAT. Long term it brings about the end user were FIAT is being converted to HBD/HIVE.
This all comes down to persuasion. Trusted sources are often hungry for content. They're hungry for the next big things. They're hungry for stories and scoops.
But they're also spammed with pitches and people claiming to be worth talking about.
So how do influencers and consumers decide what to share everyday with their audiences?
By whoever is the most persuasive.
Persuasion is a skill. It's study-able, practice-able, and learn-able, just like UX design is. Or debate. Or creative writing, or math. And it's an essential, game-changing skill.
But it's one 99% of humanity ignores, dismisses, or can't even see.
We can 'get people' do nearly whatever we want, if we increase our persuasion skills enough. In fact, I've written an incredible primer on persuasion, but since it takes study, work, effort, and practice, like any skill, people would much rather have a magic pill, and when they don't get it they throw up their hands and complain that 'the masses' won't behave the way they desire.
I hope this comment sheds some light on things and provides some insight. I really do want to help Hive grow. Much love, wishing you all a great day. 🙏
OK, this is exactly what I've been thinking these days. How can we show the value of Hive to the world? I think that, first, we should stop telling people that this is a platform to make money. You may, hopefully, earn enough to make it profitable as a full-time job in a country like Venezuela, but I can't imagine a Canadian actually earning a life just blogging on Hive.
And this is very sad, because an HBD has a lot more of human value behind than a BTC. Hive has a better concept than any other platform with the same purpose.
We have a lot of talented people in here because they believe in this little digital ancap nation for creative minds. I do believe in Hive, but maybe we don't know how to show people the real value of it. This has never been about money, this is about people.
I'm a Canadian and I get this exact question a lot. It'll never be possible for me to make enough on Hive to live purely off Hive if I intended to do that. Not off blogging anyways. It's only possible with trading and even with that you can't just trade HIVE all day long. So that's right, the utility isn't monetary or quantitative. It's qualitative.
Lol, stand up comedians living under bridges and you make jokes for free?
Smdh.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quire
I think you were looking for choir.
Thanks for persisting in antiabuse.
At some point the broader community will, hopefully, catch on to the imperative.
We could be at 40usd hive, if we acted as one.
Imo.
I wrote that in the middle of the night and published whenever later. It's alright.
Congratulations @guiltyparties! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Your next target is to reach 6000 comments.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out the last post from @hivebuzz:
Congratulations @guiltyparties! You received a personal badge!
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
Check out the last post from @hivebuzz: