This makes me sigh again... I simply can't onboard 100's of 1000's of users mostly from the UK when I have to pretty much individually explain keys and Hive Keychain to anyone I bring to Hive.
My friend who I won't name here is currently driving 100's of 1000's to Gettr, I set up and am still admin on his 150k follower Telegram channel. But I can't get him to use Hive because none of the front ends are as easy as Web 2.0 yet.
However, I don't actually see Hive being the future for a user facing service. The simple fact is most of these people don't want ownership and self custody and responsibility. But behind the scenes, with the kinds of incentivisation they're building on @spknetwork, that's where I see Hive's future.
I think it's possible to transform Hive to be user friendly. This is what I went to Steemfest in Poland specifically to address and had good meetings with the dApp creators of the day. Then Hive/Steem split (and Steemit Inc. gave me no help or even a meeting) - so it fell apart. In the current climate I don't have time/resources to do that again - so it's down to individual dApp creators to solve the problems themselves. SPK is definitely one of the projects likely to solve this and to possibly then take control of much of Hive.
Dude. Just write it down once, then give them a copy.
That really doesn't scale to adding 10,000 people per day.
So what do you suggest, Brian? Another question I have is: Are these content 'creators' you're talking about, or more along the lines of a content 'consumer'? I ask because, even if we could open the flood gates, if they're all 'creators' expecting money, who's going to support them?
You've been around for awhile. Do you see how disgruntled the 'employees' become around here when they post into the void expecting rewards, and don't get any? Then people blame the platform for being flawed rather than realizing if you fill the shelves with product, that product is nothing without a market.
And in a sense what we're doing here is akin to filling a department store, knowing full well the automatic doors are stuck, but instead of fixing the doors, we just keep stocking the shelves.
Who's responsible for supporting your 10000 per day? Who'd be at fault once they start leaving due to lack of support? Current stakeholders? Would these 10000 per day also be buying in or simply showing up expecting a free lunch, then flying off the handle 10000 fists in the air all over other networks claiming, "Hive is broken!"
Your thoughts?
There's a lot of work coming that will make things better for Hive from a user point of view, but I still hold that Hive's real future is as a back end system which front ends can somewhat obfuscate for users.
The global rewards pool is definitely not a long term feature: it's done a great job at distributing the governance token so far but the future of the platform isn't blogging for cash.
But on balance I seem more stuff heading in the right direction than the wrong.
Sorry for taking so long to reply.
I can agree projects built on top of Hive and all that flexibility is future friendly.
The moment the base layer is stripped of some of its functionalities is also the same time any projects now using it as the foundation go down as well.
All projects would have to start from scratch without that foundation or shared consumer base. The social setting becomes scattered. No more consumer spillover that I'm seeing take shape today. As example those folks signing on to play Splinterlands, visiting an article on PeakD about Splinterlands, leaving that post, browsing the rest of the merchandise, stumbling into an NFT to buy, leaving a comment under a video they watched, checking out some photos, maybe discovering an interesting post and artwork like my recent one which was pretty cool and you should check it out too (I'm demonstrating networking just for fun) and so on. All that just because someone signed up to play a game. Every project feeds and becomes fed by any other project and they all contribute to success as a whole.
'Decentalization' is not synonymous with 'disarray'.
To me, having that universal base layer and social setting all connected millions of different ways is where the value is. I'd know nothing about you or your projects without it for instance.
What's there is far more than just 'blogging for cash'. It's like a mall. Not everything out there is a 'blog'. Then all these projects are the stores. Can you imagine what it would be like if people had to exchange currency each time they enter a new shop. Those not accepting a universal solution all while providing their own layer of support on top lose out.
Removing that foundation is akin to removing the planet so we can just have cities.
I too see things heading in the right direction with far more positives than negatives. The only that freaks me out is when people start talking about pulling the rug out on the social setting that connects all the dots. That makes me nervous. Puts me out of business or "deplatforms" me which was never in the brochure. And makes my investment practically useless.
Hopefully you can power through this message without taking anything personally. That's only my position on these matters. Plus I just woke up and battled brain fog throughout.
I certainly agree that the base layer social must stay. But just consider what happens as the token price rises. It's wonderful getting multi $100 payouts for posts, but it isn't sustainable. The balance needs to be monitored closely. As lucrative as it may seem getting funded by the DHF to build something, nobody is getting paid full scale rates by the DHF (other than subcontractors!)
The DHF DOES very much help people build projects they want to build but very few are there just for the money.
Nevertheless base layer incentivisation of the core social product isn't going to disappear any time soon.
that is not scalable when no money is generated from the process.
I was just being funny, but there is a lot of documentation available. It's funny. We were just talking about tutorials and I saw another one produced today by @steevc. Eventually at some point all the effort folks put in attempting to help, I'd hope, would be put to good use.
Not everyone thinks that same and unfortunately a very high percentage of people have relatively low IQ, limited reading age, goldfish memory and lack of personal will. While it's reasonable to say that maybe we don't need them on the network - they form the 'mass' of 'mass adoption'. As a result of this, the big networks spend a lot of time and money designing systems that accommodate them. They then form a magnet that holds networks of people together on the big networks - including the people who you might want on here more. There is a requirement to make onboarding as easy as possible in order to minimise friction and resistance to the process, which is high regardless of anything we do here.
I agree it could and should be easier. In the meantime, as folks work towards achieving those goals, nothing wrong with using what we have.
My oldest daughter, we were texting, talking about this platform. She figured it out all on her own and had an account along with keychain setup before I could even begin explaining. It's been going on six years since the last time I set up an account. This is the only account I have so I don't even know what signing up is like these days. I assumed it was rather straightforward though. I also remember watching a video Jarvie produced for peakd where he recruited a 'test human' of sorts and had her record her experience and talk through it. If I remember correctly sign up wasn't overly confusing. A few more clicks than folks are used to but aside from that, she got in. Splinterlands crowd seemed to be able flock over like nothing. Did they do anything special? I was able to move to a new device and sign in simply by exporting and importing one simple file on Keychain, so that was super easy. I think markymark wrote the tutorial on that one.
My memory is a bit hazy but I do remember at one point the folks at LEO were working on a solution to simplify things. Those talks may have been circulating before CUB was born though. Quite awhile back anyway. It's hard to keep tabs on all the happenings.
Those who are capable could also get together, write up a proposal and get to work developing something. I mean, the money is just sitting there waiting to be used and plenty of bright minds around. The demand is there. Plenty of stakeholders around who'd support it. I probably would.
Shrugs...
The actual process of creating an account and getting signed in is not overly complicated on a laptop/desktop, yes. The challenges really start when it comes to understanding how the economics work and how to find collaborators or the right spaces for your own niche/needs. Creating the account is only a small part of what is involved in fully onboarding. And then we have retention - what is going to keep someone on the network once they are here?
Ideally, retention and onboarding are resolved through the same process of support and education - but there's no direct money in doing that currently and so people are more motivated to do other things. We need changes to the UIs and other tools to make this work in a more automated way.
Yes, people can write a proposal and deliver solutions. However, I tried doing that back in 2018 and rallied developers at Steemfest in Poland. Unfortunately, while they recognised the need, they mostly just ended up in ego battles, trying to beat each other and achieving little in the end. Developing a standalone onboarding solution has been attempted and failed because the people involved seemed to lack insight into what it really involves. I started doing that but gave up after Poland and after Steemit Inc. proved themselves Inept. I considered carrying on via Hive but waited to see how the politics and project panned out before investing more of my time into it. So far I am being forced to invest time in resolving downvoting rather than onboarding - which is no fault of most people here - but is the fault of one or two.
Imbalanced egos destroy projects fast and they get off on it sometimes too.
Not everyone is a content creator, but everyone is a content consumer. I can't stress it enough. The role of consumer is easy, one cannot fail, and once they're in the door, they're exposed to all other things Hive has to offer, gradually. With more consumers, creators don't sit around twiddling their thumbs wondering where everyone is. Look at the amount of engagement on all my recent work from last year. Look at a Youtube video comment section. These places are jammed, with consumers. Notice how the Splinterlands posts get massive views, and those game consumers gradually work their way over to the social side of things, and now those posts see signs of life. 'We' cannot keep setting people up to fail by bringing them in as content creators. People need to know they can shit post as well, not expecting massive rewards. But even those don't work well without consumers. I can't stress it enough man. One thing I absolutely love doing is talking with the folks who visit me, and rewarding them. Nowhere else on the internet can a consumer be treated more fairly.