People are starting to care about the freedom of wealth transfer (i.e. Bitcoin) although the waters are still a bit muddied there as currently it's primarily being invested in as a store of value or escape from inflation and fiat with transactions potentially being monitored and true freedom currencies being delisted (monero for instance).
They may not care about the freedom of content and the store of it much now but I'm sure you've noticed over the last few years how many keep getting their accounts and content banned and deleted from platforms. So why not also use a social media platform that stores it potentially forever, sure only text for now but it's not impossible to imagine that images, gifs, and videos are the next to be stored in an immutable way in the near future (@spk.network is working on this for instance).
You can have algo's here too, pick a front-end and ask them to create an algo to make it as addicting as tiktok or what have you, many just haven't bothered with it since we lack traffic. I'd love an algo that would show me a feed of the people I mostly interact with for instance compared to my usual "immutable" feed where I know it'll show everyone I personally have followed and can rest assured a random front-end or entity hasn't unfollowed an account without my knowing.
As for its complexity it's true that it can get super complex but it can also just be really easy to use (for instance snaps added by @peakd recently). People won't need to know too much to still see some additional rewards/value they wouldn't have gotten elsewhere because the other platforms can't afford to pay "everyone" the way hive can once it scales and they have a lot more costs to maintain their platforms compared to the ones here.
We can have the cake, i.e. everything other platforms offer their users and content creators and eat it too, i.e. inflation based rewards as the icing on it. You won't see Elon for instance give away Twitter shares to their content creators because they can't afford it, they'll only give a % of adrevenue which already is at an all time low and mostly just crappy advertisers paying them.
I see everything we have here as something good, yes, different from Web 2. But, being so good, what is missing for people to adopt it?
Let me give you an example: I've invited many people to Hive, tried various strategies, but the funnel is bad. Suppose I invited about 40 people, and they all found Hive impressive, but do you know how many actually created an account? 5 or 6. And how many stayed after the first post? Only one. If I, who am personally convincing them, didn’t succeed, what would be the most efficient method? Something is missing.
I agree that new tools are being created, improving many aspects and facilitating future onboardings, but there is still something missing. In my view, it’s in the two points I mentioned in the first response. Rewards are good, I'm happy with the platform's adaptation to micro-earnings, it's easier for someone to earn on a snap than they’ve earned in years on Web 2.
But that doesn’t "fill anyone's stomach", many people find it discouraging to write a 1000-word text and see a balance of cents, especially when the post doesn’t get votes, often due to being beginners without a good vote to give back (and this happens frequently). I know that people with voting power can help spread more of this distribution to those just starting, but no one can monitor all the beginners. Anyway, we have many problems to solve, but I believe we'll get there. See, I agree with you, I'm just raising some points like the devil’s advocate would to seek different perspectives
Account creation and the importance of keys is a big hindrance, we still don't really have a great and fool-proof way to create accounts for free without them being abused by some who for some reason want many accounts.
The good news there is that the rest of crypto is similar and most of them don't even have the social recovery feature in place to potentially help hacked keys get reset. So people getting in the space are getting used to that by holding eth/sol/etc in their wallets and getting here understanding what hive keychain is and does.
Longform content doesn't have to be the flagship of hive, micro blogging should be more rewarding compared to posts and engagements too, I've tried to bridge that gap with things like @commentrewarder and other initiatives but hive is flexible and I'm sure we as a community can adapt over time.
People not getting much on their first posts isn't and shouldn't be a problem. While we offer users to monetize their content instantly and cheaply, it's a bit absurd that I hear so many complain that "new users spend a lot of time on posts but don't get rewarded", why would they expect rewards being new users?
Like honestly, I know many new users are getting rewarded either way from different initiatives, but why should they expect rewards instantly? Where does this happen?
Hive already should offer people great retention because we are quite welcoming and rewarding of new people but I really get annoyed by some saying "so many go unrewarded" when I don't think that's a reality nor should it be considered a reality because reality is no where can someone instantly earn a ton of rewards just for showing up. It requires investment, dedication, commitment and many other things to more consistently earn rewards. Hive doesn't have to be too different from other platforms there even though it is.
Over time with price not being this low we will see the lower end of users have more impactful votes which means that anyone posting, socializing, etc, should get "something" out of it because so many more accounts at the lower ends of 1000-10000 HP can give out bigger rewards in terms of hbd.
On this, I agree, but I disagree in some parts. I'll give another example, a more personal one...
When I discovered Hive, I came for the possibility of making money, simple as that. Over time, I found out that it wasn't just a place with this financial possibility, although it is a strong point. I discovered all the philosophy behind it, but would I have continued if I hadn't had some financial support at the beginning? Maybe I wouldn't have had time to understand this side of it.
So it's a bit about that, maybe the financial attractiveness is a point to explore to hook people and keep them here until they better understand what Hive is about, just like it happened to me.
I don't think people should be rewarded instantly with an exorbitant amount when they arrive, yes, rewards come through continuous effort, but we need to think of something that gives people time to understand what is here for them, without them giving up, until they change their way of thinking.
I know that with a higher Hive, the distribution of rewards by users with less HP will be more impactful, but what can we do until that happens? And when Hive is low again, won’t we be less attractive, living through this instability at the mercy of the highs and lows cycles?
Well, at least we now have more engagement opportunities through micro-earnings, which is great, it gives me more arguments for my upcoming onboardings. But we can’t deny that it’s interesting to have some project to support these new users who are coming and will come. Sometimes just a warm reception when the "stomach is empty" isn't enough.