I haven't had much of a chance to watch anything from HiveFest, but what has been interesting to note is the lack of hype around it. There are likely a few reasons for this, including the bearish markets that has stopped people from going, but I think the larger reason is that Hive is doing what it was meant to do - decentralizing.
For many years we were all lumped in together and as such, there was a greater sense of community, as there was a lot of overlap in activities, more visibility on what others on the blockchain were doing. However, once communities started to form, as well as usecase interfaces like Splinterlands and Leo, there has been a fracturing of ties, which has led to some levels of disengagement, especially among the older, more staked users. It is not that they are disinterested, but they are less visible in what they do.
This is a shame.
I think that many still haven't understood that long-term success of Hive does actually depend on people building communities, where the staked influencers are nodes, rally points that people can gather around. They are the voices that can inspire other members to be more involved and engaged themselves, but when they are silent, people drift.
This isn't Instagram or TikTok where false influencers are algorithmically supported to maximize monetization, but it is a place where people have an opportunity to interact directly with individuals within the community, and build a sense of togetherness. Once those bonds break and people take the individualistic path, it all becomes about money and profit.
Have a look at Splinterlands as an example, where just yesterday they announced more layoffs from the team in order to cut costs. Restructuring isn't a bad thing per se, but if you look at the ark of Splinterlands over the years, they moved away from community content and interaction, to a for profit only model, so people flicked on their bot switches, set, and forgot. Rather than a vibrant community that love the game, it is a lot of people screaming at each other in Discord groups because they aren't making enough profit, or the value of their investment has gone down.
I might be exaggerating. I might not.
A lot of people used to call me a Steem Hive Shill, but that wasn't the case at all. I don't make silly predictions like "100 dollar Hive" or tapping into a "50 trillion dollar industry" or some such rubbish. For me, it has always been about building the community itself, which is why i railed against the bidbots so hard, because they were destroying it - Similar to the bots and battle-helpers in Splinterlands. But as long as a few were profiting, who cares, right?
The problem with set and forget activities is that it doesn't matter which community is utilized. It all becomes about ROI and then it turns into EOS, where there are only automated gambling apps. Even the creator couldn't stand it for long and left.
Hive can support a massive range of applications and is becoming increasingly easy to build upon. However, it people aren't even willing to engage with what is here now, to utilize the current environment, it is unlikely that "killer app" will find its home here, because the developers won't see the potential.
We have some of the highest paid accounts on the blockchain, getting a handful of comments on the majority of their posts. How does that inspire people? We have people talking about Hive at conferences and things around the world, but visit the accounts of those people and where is their community face? What happens when they encourage someone to look at Hive, but the person shilling barely uses it?
Maybe it is the high fever talking.
Yet, I can't seem to shake the belief that a community's success depends on communication within the community with each other. It is through the conversation that connections are made, people learn from each other and ideas are formed that can be turned into a reality, that gets the support when needed. If Splinterlands didn't start as "Steemmonsters" and leverage the community it had access to at the time, it likely wouldn't have got far off the ground. Yet, may of those early adopters, seem to have forgotten their roots, how it started and, how they were able to make so much profit from it. They are now entitled, no longer wanting to engage and have fun as a community, it is all about the ROI.
But as said, this was always the shift for Hive, because once it fragments into communities that no longer interact with each other, it becomes a decentralized economic model, where there are interdependencies at the infrastructure level, but the surface layers needn't see each other at all. An app can be "Powered by Hive" without people realizing it is on Hive at all.
And, it is because of this that the stakeholders are so vital, because it is they who underpin the ecosystem, by protecting it, and being the distributing force for the majority of the tokens to come out of the inflation pool. How that inflation is used is also an important factor for adoption and protecting the system, yet many people have also turned it into a money tap, to extract while it lasts, rather than using stake to build the platform, support growth, development, community.
It is impossible to say what happens to Hive in the future, because it could go to zero if people don't get involved, or maybe go the other way, with one plug at the right time bringing millions of people into the ecosystem. Whichever way it goes, it will come down to whether people are part of the community, or just biding their time until the next shiny thing comes along.
I just wish the people with stake, would influence the network with their voices too.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Posted Using LeoFinance Alpha
Some of us are doing what we can, when we can. I have family responsibilities that barely leave me enough time to post, let alone comment.
Earlier this year I set a goal to make 500 thoughtful comments in 10 days on LeoFinance and Hive. I completed it. But what surprised me was that while I made a few contacts, there were precious few responses to those 500 comments as there would have been in say, 2018.
I'd been using Canva Pro to create custom graphics for my posts. After the one year free trial, it was time to decide whether to pay the full price for year two. Often (when I had the time), I'd spend up to several hours both writing the post and creating and optimizing the custom graphic for my Hive post, only to see almost zero response. So I decided not to renew and just use Pixabay now since their images were included in Canva anyway.
What really bothers me is the copying. You'll spend hours writing a post, only to see someone come along, slightly re-write it, and publish under their own name. Your original post generates $0.60 (and no comments) while their copy generates $30.00 (and 20 comments about how well-written it was).
I started muting people that were coming to my blog looking for content to copy. I got tired of them using my work and getting support for it that I wasn't getting myself. I'll never forget the foreign woman who came to my post, left a comment, yet when I went back to her profile to do the same, I saw that she'd completly copied the closing line I'd developed and had been using for years and this "Learner" was getting compliments for it.
When I stopped posting for several weeks after that, the "Learners" noticed having no new content to steal. They started showing up when I returned asking why I wasn't posting every day anymore. My attitude is; Hows about you start writing your OWN content for a change?
However, I'm still here and havn't given up. If you look at my recent posts, my message is to keep plugging away on Hive, and so far that's exactly what I'm doing.
For a long time I was also frustrated about not getting any comments. Only recently I started getting more comments. Perhaps the same will happen to you as well. Good luck.
Thanks so much. I just watched your Witcher video and may someday actually get around to playing it myself. :) Until then, there's always something new to post about on Hive.
Not surprising at all. If you are commenting on people who are only posting to get their drip of HIVE, many don't comment back. Even some of the very well supported don't comment as much now either. It has become a cultural thing.
Drop me links to these kinds of things and they will be sorted out. A lot of the copying are rewrites using AI writers, often of AI written content. People are ridiculous. When completely grammatically correct and vocabulary-rich content is coming out of non-native speakers - it should set up warning bells. Very few have the actual skills.
I have had variations of my work copied by one or two very well supported accounts for years. Since I don't post Hive content as often now, they are just on a repetitive cycle, adding nothing new - still getting support though.
Work when others won't.
True and good advice from you. My concern about reporting was dealing with potential retribution from people with a lot more stake than me, so I just tried to post about subjects that they might not be interested in.
I'm surprised to learn that you were copied as well. This AI thing is nuts, and now I'm even seeing AI-generated comments from people who were posting in broken English just last year.
$100 Hive by christmas. Fo real :OD
just between my normal and my hive birthdays. Nice.
There you go. Lambos all round! 😀
But Christmas is months away!
Christmas in Tanzania I meant, isnt that like October the 11th?! :OD
Damn! I might be able to get a couple powerdowns in!
Hit the Fyrstikken 100% powerdown in one week super button! :OD
HIVE is a long-term investment and there is no doubt about it. I also empasize it in my posts. I believe that we have to power up/stake to a certain HP if we want to exist on this blockchain and want it to grow up. For this reason, we need patient users who would not consider HIVE only monetization and would not draw tokens out of the ecosystem and then use it for personal purposes in a short time.
"patience" is something that is in short supply in the world and even shorter supply in crypto.
Fracturing will always happen when things get big enough and more people that are more interest aligned happen.
Maybe some of the old crew are just tired. Like I think I ended up being a moderator of the communities I'm in for no other reason than I
have no lifecan check a lot.all that's happening a lot less now x_x
And from having run online communities and participated in many more, it's freaking exhausting trying to keep things going.
And moreso when you're doing things that require a lot of attention, and you then start having to work out whether you're devoting time to making stuff or doing the community thing, coz if you do more of the latter then you might not have the time to do the former, and vice versa.
not that I'm staked or anything but I still feel bad that I can't be all over the comments as much as I want to be because I can't 3d, write and do that at the same time
The problem isn't unique to here anyway (ignoring the crowd that comes hyperfocused soley on the money and studiously completely ignores everything else), I watched the same thing happening on dA over the years; generally the popular artists generate all the comments but they don't always respond to them, but even that volume seems to have been dropping over time.
I'm not sure about very recently as while the tab is open I've been so completely uninterested in dA for the last few months that I haven't checked it
Yep -and it is a good thing on the surface layers. I am hoping that in the future, there will be the investor layer, which is pretty much what HiveFest is for. Weirdly perhaps.
For sure, especially fi there isn't the sense it is appreciated.
Take followers for granted and they will shift their attention too. None of us are Taylor Swift or Beyonce - we don't get that many comments! :D
Even when it is appreciated XD
I feel like one always has to venture into things with a somewhat selfish outlook of well I need it done anyway or if doing it purely for someone else, then with absolutely no expectation of gratitude or return and with firm boundaries of how much is to be done as anything else is falling off the sudden and sometimes unexpected cliff into burnout
Some of them probably are taking their popularity for granted, you probably wrote something at some point about quickly getting used to increasingly favourable conditions (I remember reading something along those lines once and it seems like something you would write about XD). I think a lot of them/us (speaking from my own experience) are really struggling to balance several things that are incredibly time consuming (art eats an obscene amount of time, and so does family stuff, pets if you have any, and then you also have to "waste" time working (generally only considered a waste if you don't enjoy your job and can't/won't find one less hateful) and maintaining your environment.
Yeh people that popular would need social media teams answering their commennts for them and while thoughtful I guess just isn't the same XD
I have occasionally wondered how I would cope with that volume of comments and have basically decided that I wouldn't be able to.
ps - how would you cope if you got to that level of popularity and got thousands of comments per post? :D
The truth is that most people who stumble down on Hive are looking to make a easy buck via the internet. I mean that's how I discovered steem back then, by go ogling "ways to earn money online"
So most people unfortunately come for the money "at first" unless you're brought onto hive via a friend or some other way(hopefully in most cases) then they evolve.
But most people don't want to evolve, they want to put in low effort and expect high rewards instead of consistency...
The case around Splinterlands well that is touchy, I saw it too but then again is it possible that most of those bot accounts are people who were never really part of the community? Total strangers that don't even know about Hive?
Well i wouldnt blame them as thats their point and view of life from their angle. Viewing it from yours will be quite different, the truth is mo one is right or wrong when it comes to money
There is no problem coming in wanting to earn, but they won't earn much or last long unless they become part of a community here - something they can add value to.
But, most end up doing this.
Yes, possibly. However, the most staked users from the early days, came in through Hive (Steem) first. Many of them have championed bot accounts too - and also aren't posting into the community. They want their investments to go up, but they don't seem to want to be part of helping to do that. One of the values of Hive and perhaps the drawback too, is that we can affect outcomes - the responsibility is on us.
The thing with most people is they don't think that they have anything of value to add.... But just there mere presence is more than enough.
It's sad that people are so closed minded....
This article got me thinking about Leo Finance vs. PeakD. I really don't know much about how all these different front-ends interact with the hive blockchain, but I've always defaulted to using PeakD for my Hive content/comments because of its tie into Splinterlands. I'm not sure if you just grew comfortable posting on Leo vs. PeakD when you got started, or if Leo really has better controls for posting long-form content.
What I do know though, is that Leo is definitely grabbing my attention with its Threads platform to clone X (twitter). I have been trying to post more short-form "tweet" content on the Threads platform, but interaction is still few and far between. I also get a lot more comments on my material without an upvote on Threads, which doesn't happen nearly as often when I comment on long-form content like this (that I interact with via PeakD). Either way, I'm engaged and I'm in it for the long haul.
Like you, I see the value in a decentralized social platform that is basically run by the users. I'm not much of a programmer, but I'm eager to continue to expand my knowledge of the Hive Blockchain so I can further take advantage of the myriad opportunities here:
I'm slacking on starting my actifit account.
I need to get back to 3x per day threads on Leo.
I REALLY need to get back to 3x per week articles on PeakD/Hive.
All realistic goals, so if not now, when?!
I mostly used Peakd, but I also use Leo, and hive.blog also. It just depends on what I am doing or how I feel at the time :)
Threads is good and I think I should use it more than I do. I get "trapped" in Hive comments though. Threads is more geared to the Leo community than the entire chain though.
These are definitely realistic goals and I reckon you might have some decent Leo content if you put your mind to it :)
Thanks for the kind words of support. At least I can see the earnings coming in when I work on Hive. I can't say the same thing about the long-form content I put into my EDM media company, but I guess the payoff is all the Guest List and Festival Bands I've been able to take advantage of to bring my dance music coverage to the masses.
Getting people to actually read and interact with the EDM content is another beast entirely since most of the kids these days just want to see videos in TikTok / IG content instead. I never thought it would be such a challenge to get people to read 5 paragraphs at a time, but here we are!
What's happening at Splinterlands is sad but inevitable given the way things have gone. I think more community outreach and having a 'rabid' fanbase is going to be essential if it wants to be like the TCGs that have endured like Magic The Gathering
and Pokemon.
The only "rabid" conversation is people complaining in Discord :D
This is an interesting comparison. I agree with a lot of it, because I can see the similarities. If you look at Splinterlands, there is a game that was created to also use SPL assets, it is called Splinterforge. It is a separate game, but you can still use the SPL cards to play. They are eventually adding more features to their game, and possibly other assets, but I think it is currently a good example of how different games/communities can still interact with each other.
Putting it back into hive, it would be nice if communities can coordinate with each other and work together. Similar to how SPL needs more new players, communities also need more members to thrive. One community doesn't need to be on its own, they can do things together. The /beer and /weekendexperiences can organize an event, or Leo and Ecency can plan something out.
I have never looked into Splinterforge, but I like the idea. This is what can happen in the future too, where people who "own their assets" will be able to utilize them outside of the direct ecosystem. Might be interesting. Perhaps Land expansion could have been a separate company for example.
The problem with Splinterlands needing more new players, is that they are cutting out the community interaction aspect. If people are focusing only on ROI, they are essentially cutting out the possibility to attract new players because price to compete is too high. What is the point of buying cards when you can't compete with the bots? Where is the fun for a new player, and there isn't even a community built to really discuss these things.
It's quite interesting to see in 3rd perspective how the people connect together shell out their own money and create something like hive and then arrange meetups and also continue to bring promising features and the products. This is the spirit of the decentralized blockchain. There are some twitter influencers joining the hive and I am sure this would even boost the hive chain.
It is very interesting and it is a decent model for the future. The challenge is, convincing people to change their behavior from what they have been conditioned to do.
Nobody knows where Hive's price will go but I do know that Hive is still developing during the bear market. It will definitely take off when everything starts to look up in the bullrun. Splinterlands ended up letting people go but I think it's good for the long run as we want the project to survive.
I think Splinterlands expanded their team too fast for what they were bringing in. You need to have some guaranteed revenue long term for each employee. I am more conservative than the Americans though.
It is kind of sad to see that most of the whale accounts haven't posted in several years. It never fails when I see an account I haven't heard of before that has a huge stake and when I go to their profile there is nothing.
I second that I've looked at a few accounts and been blown away by their stake and lack of activity. It's all automated and out side of following a vote trail is not contributing in a meaningful way. In fact, it's there are a lot of accounts with a fair amount of engagement that are not being rewarded as there is a higher level of centralized money on the chain that seems to follow a very similar curation trial.
A lot of what they vote is shit based on past connections . Perhaps if they got out and actually read a bit more, they would adjust their voting and find people a bit more worthy.
With this being a blockchain it’s easy to see that there is a clear bias of these votes for fairly dense amount of accounts. It’s great if you’re in the in crowd and I don’t want to sound like I’m mad about votes. It’s your stake do what you want with it but the optics of the rich getting richer while quality content goes under rewarded is not a great look.
Yeah it is sad. If some of them even dropped a few comments on various posts, it makes a difference.
For sure, it would make a huge difference. At least show they care a little.
Hmm
Truly, we never can tell what will happen to Hive tomorrow and it is our work to build up the platform together to make it grow
And this is why we should make sure that new accounts thst have no influence whatsoever try to get votes from whales
Yes, this is not by force but it will motivate people to keep using the platform
Not really. This has been tried many times in the past and happens still. It motivates people to use Hive as a tap to pay their bills. That is not sustainable.
Few years ago I really wanted to attend HiveFest. I even made this piece as an entry for some possible contest:
At that point I believed that attending HiveFest would change my life. But now when I no longer have any intention of going to HiveFest all the hype has died out for me.
One of my favorite game developers Bioware are also firing a lot of key people. At this point they are a shell of their former selves. I hope that this will not happen to Splinterlands.
Unfortunately, a lot of the gaming companies aren't necessarily good at managing their business model. When times are good they spend, when times are bad, they fire. They need a more healthy process, but if they are based in the US, it is cheap to fire people.
It is hard to analyze and predict what is going to happen as the tech itself is quite new and constantly evolving. Hivefest is a great event, but should be organized having users in mind as making it easy for ppl to attend should be one of the priorities IMO.
I believe a key value will be to have the smart-contract capabilities set up, it will bring a whole new wave of possibilities to create new apps and business models just as Ethereum and other EVM chains have done.
We have a clear edge as this blockchain has the social component in layer zero and this puts the conditions to give any valuable new App a lower adoption barrier to grow and scale. I can't wait to see how the VSC project evolves and how fast it can implement this technology into Hive.
It is a hard thing to do, especially in a bear market. The cost for me to get to Mexico was far too high, plus the time off work etc. But, it is the same for when the Americas come to Europe.
The tech is a difficult one. I still think that a lot of people believe it is going to have one form, like an internet protocol, but I see a lot of cross-chain interoperability and that will happen through those Smart contracts.
Hive needs to be known out there. Too few people know what Hive is. The bearish period is really so uninspiring, but we must be ready for the next bullrun, when everyone will have their eyes wide open on cryptocurrencies.
@tipu curate
Too few know, even fewer are willing to invest into it.
Hello friend @tarazkp. I missed you today, it's been 22 hours since your last post. Best wishes that you are in good health and of course have not had a relapse. Forgive me if I tend to be corny, but there are those of us who think of those virtual friends, far away. If I don't see you posting today, your @hivebuzz stats will drop, as you will lose your weekly, monthly and annual badge -I lost it when I couldn't access my account a couple of weeks ago, as you well know…-.
HIVEBUZZ.ME
The way "a day" works is on blockchain time, that way it is the same for everyone.
Current time:
So far, I have managed to post daily (except for when the blockchain was locked after a hardfork) since mid 2017 :)
i am sure at some point I will miss a day, but it won't be this day!
With the growth of how hive keeps developing each single day, i dont think itz going to be downgraded in the coming future,... Because of the powerful stake holders hive got
when the business plan is stable. Why spoil it? it would be more interesting if a crisis came. What would that mean? after all, the creators are not a charity.
What do you mean?
Your are right on point with this post. I just took a look around at some of the bigger voices at hivefest, and very little on chain engagement as you said. I do realize I need to step up engagement as well myself. Working on it.
¿When? ¿Where? ¿How soon?