Hive is a different kind of animal and when we try to approach it in terms of legacy social media any concept seems to fail. One of my main insight from years of thinking about this tech and community is that, new tech needs new patterns of thinking. We can see that in terms of marketing, organization, we just learn to tame this powerful beast. Also, I believe we shouldn't simplify Hive, it can be as complex as needed, the key is breaking down this complexity and creating tools to teach it. It's quite complex anyway. Inevitably. And since we have new unbound way of organization I let myself to think freely and wildly here. Take from it whatever you like and let's discuss it.
While listening recent Hive Town Hall there was idea thrown loosely about reaching new users when they get to 100HP or so. You know, just to communicate there is more going on than simple posting, rewards or games. That made me think. How are we suppose reach this people? The thing is, memo messages attached to transfers are invisible, these are absolutely counterintuitive in terms of communication we all got used to. At the same time we can't have traditional system-messages, because, well, there is no real system here. Let's digress for a brief moment though.
Retention is a continous challange. Recently I had another idea to improve it, that I shared with three major frontends. By far I had the best communication with PeakD team. You see, we have this un-official thing with introduction posts, there are 4 different tags (which is ok) and if you are not guided by somebody it's impossible to find out about it. No system to prompt you but human guide. This creates bottle neck for adoption, we just loose great oportunity with every user who doesn't really know what to do here. I remember my beginnings, it was a big challange to start with Hive, I found it on my own. I remember reading many posts, just to find info about intro posts.
Frontend profile tabs are heavily based on Web 2.0 model, except of mysterious reputation, there is nothing new which would catch attention of users. The main purpose of such tiny feature would be prompting new users who fill up their profiles to write that intro-post. Being able to share it and being seen is just secondary but interesting and valuable too. And now, having somebody written this post it's much easier for others to find newcomers and guide them further.
But let's come back to the idea of on-chain message system. From the perspective of people coming from Web 2.0 we lack this little envelope icon. It could be another great tool to improve retention by spreading information and guiding new Hivers. Moreover, it could serve project managers to communicate new proposals or changes in their projects. I realized messages on Hive were talked over and over, but hey, it can be done in many different ways and I agree, traditional one is pretty useless here.
One relatively easy way to do it would be from frontend level with ability to interpret memos as messages and display these in a special folder. This would increase usability of memos and create one way to communicate. The thing here is that it would be harder to automate it or use mass messages. Another thing is it doesn't scale in terms of necesity of spending this little ammount of Hive to spend message.
Let's spend RCs instead. And here comes another option, much harder, requiring Hard Fork and a lot of work. I'm not even sure about feasibility, but let's start with functionality and benefits. Obviously, not every communication needs to be on-chain, most of it don't need to be saved forever and such system is not envisioned as 1-on-1 private chat thing. I'd see it as mass-message system.
Who could access it? Anybody with stake big enough to spend massive RC costs for sending message. In that case, there would be a place like a Hive info wall. News would be seen by everybody and accesable with icon that pings users similarly as notification button. It'd be meant to use sparsely and communicate the most important things by project owners, proposal creators or community managers. To avoid bad actors or ads it could be accessible only for people above some reputation level (return proposal style mechanics comes here to my mind too).
Messages there would be customizable in terms of lasting and some of these could be pinned, since some informations are universal and timeless, like tutorials for newcomers. Infos could be visible above some HP/reputation treshold limit. Calendar with events or meetings could be seen there too. There are great Hive tutorials created which are hard to find if we have no guide on our Hive journey. These things don't work optimally with neither memos nor posts. Discord and X are not sustainable in Web 3.0. This is an elephant in the room nobody seems to take seriously.
And there is question of technical feasibility. How could that be done is beyond in a decentralized way my abilities. New transaction type? Some special type of post included every day to chain automatically? Maybe there is some way to combine ideas I spit out? If somebody tech competent reads it, please help me out with it.
I believe such system would increase retention, engagement in proposal voting and usability of chain in general. Also the incentive for powering-up would be greater. I don't really know a perfect sollution here, these are just my free-thinking ideas. Although, I hear people asking me "what can I do on that Hive thing, bro?". I see communication based on memos as not sufficient. And I see people not staying on Hive.
I listened to the Town Hall recording too yesterday. Many great ideas, but as you noticed, the retention is the issue. I was guided to write my intro post, but if I wasn’t, I would have no idea that this is the etiquette that needs to be followed, let alone which tag to use, how those tags work or which community.
I think once new user joins Hive there should be something like a step by step tutorial there that you need to tick off before you’re able to post. Like when you first start playing a new game and the first few quests are to teach you how the basics of the game works. I have no idea of how this would work from a technical side of things, but if a few big brains sit together I’m sure they can make it work.
Finding any info on Hive is rather tricky for me. There are many tutorials around, but you kinda need to know who to ask and when you first join you know nobody, so you stumble around blindly hoping you’re not breaking any unwritten rules.
Some messaging system would indeed be very useful, although I find the transaction memo’s rather easy to find using Ecency as my main front end.
Many great tips here! I hope the developers of the frontends you contacted will take them into consideration 💙
!PIZZA
Thanks for the answer. I just googled when I didn't know something, sometimes I found posts and sometimes I didn't. By absolute chance I found a post with links to other tutorials, there was a lot of these things on the old chain, and I'm not sure how easy or hard it is now.
I absolutely agree with this step by step tutorial idea, and this would be possible to implement on the level of frontends, somehow it didn't happen yet. It should be absolute priority IMO, each day means dozens of people not staying here.
At this point one needs to be REALLY motivated to stay on Hive. It should be obvious. Basics.
Cheers!
Great ideas here Przemek! Having the intro post pinned to the profile would be cool. When I come across someone I don´t know yet here, I usually scroll down all the way to the bottom of their blog to the intro post to learn more them. And the option to send DM would be cool too. But because we don´t have it yet and I would like to contact you privately regarding our Krakow meet up, can you please hit me up on Discord? :D
phortun#6162
Thanks :)
I mean anyobdy is free to pin whatever they want, but we won't loose on decentralization when prompted by frontend to add a link to the profile tab :)
So you already know you are coming, great! I just sent you invitation to friends on Discord. I' m not sure if I am able to text you just like that, Discord is still a mystery for me :D
A lot of important ideas posted here, and very pertinent to the moment. I've asked myself a thousand times why Hive simply doesn't have an efficient global tutorial system (and the answer is exactly because it doesn't have a main governing government), but above that: why doesn't it make it easier for those who are interested in helping to do so in an optimized way? A few years ago I was wondering about this in the Brazilian community and I remember that we were dedicated to making introductory posts and tutorials, and since there was no way to pin the post to the beginning of the profile, the strategy was always to update a new index post, where all (and more and more) links to tutorials made by the community would be inserted, so that newer people would know how to find themselves there. That's something I haven't done since, maybe because I've been discouraged or because I ended up leaving the group (it was back in the Steemit days). Anyway, I loved the images and your ideas. Let's think more about it!
It seems that suggested solution is always to create another Hive frontend with envisioned features. Not easy task taking into account lack of any sort of funding at the beginning.
I'd see that as heavily gamified (tutorials, achievements but even HP disguised as some sort of game resources), modular place that would provide most of information available on various sites built around Hive (Hivestats, hive-now, auto-vote etc).
Thank you for your voice.
Sometimes people are pinning their intro post on their blog. This already helps me to get a first view on who they are and what their interests are. But I agree a 'intro button' would definitely be a good idea!
Messaging on Hive, I heard it plenty of times and experienced it as many times in cases I thought: now it would have been handy. Although, I guess it's not that easy to develop. I am not a tech-savvy person though.
Great article with awesome ideas!
Thanks for your feedback!
Hive Info Wall sounds good. I also remembered that it took so much time for me to set my account up and figure out hot to use it. Plus, English isn't my first language, so it made me even harder to get the right legit info haha!
!PIZZA
"Hive, only for extremely motivated" 😁
Yeah! So true! But, I want to see HIVE grow more and more~~~~~ because it's a nice platform to see cool people here on HIVE!
!BEER
View or trade
BEER.Hey @deepresearch, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @mizuosemla for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.Hello, I came here to express my thanks for voting my introduction blog. The intro link beside the profile will surely expose newbies to the communities. It should be effective as it seems :)
Sure thing, I really liked your intro post :)
Thanks for your comment on this issue. How did you know about this idea of creating introduction post? From the perspective of newbie, how your personal Hive experience could be improved?
Well, I made friends from the other blogging platforms who came here first before me so I was well-guided by them.
I'm still getting the hang of everything here little by little. So far, I'm enjoying my stay, there's so much to learn but I'll take it one at a time. Everything is provided a newbie could ask for so I guess all is well :)
Some interesting thoughts there. Messaging and email are two areas prime for some sort of defi solution and it would be good to see them on hive.
$PIZZA slices delivered:
fantagira tipped deepresearch
@mizuosemla(1/10) tipped @deepresearch
...I forgot about TipU
@tipu curate 2
Sorry, please curate posts not older than 1 day.
Sorry, please curate posts not older than 1 day.
Congratulations @deepresearch! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 38000 upvotes.
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 our last posts:
!ALIVE
@deepresearch! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @ mizuosemla. (1/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want, plus you can win Hive Power (2x 50 HP) and Alive Power (2x 500 AP) delegations (4 weeks), and Ecency Points (4x 50 EP), in our chat every day.
