I want my content to be vast and broad. I want good quality well thought out content for sure but I come to social media to see silly, ridiculous, exciting, educational, funny, etc. and that’s what I feel like I’m missing here.
I think the communities upgrade is going to go a long way to remedy that, as the ease of finding content of interest specific to the user just got significantly easier, but even though there are a lot of communities listed I still don’t really seem to get a lot in my feed that catches my attention outside of the specific stuff I come here for (i.e. Splinterlands, Hive-Engine, etc.), and I honestly think that’s just because there’s not enough creators. Many communities have so few members any shitpost can end up on its front page because it’s the only one that day.
So I think maybe if we consider building a few really solid communities that are “moderated” well enough to draw consistent traffic with truly engaging discussion, find crossover in the discussions within them and then build the communities that lend to those discussions we can start getting some roots down. I think the post is almost secondary to the discussion in the comments, which again, require more users to interact.
Another thing is our grand opening. We’ve never had one. Steem ninja’d into existence and Hive exploded onto the scene amidst controversy. Everyone sees we’re having a great time but what’s particularly inviting? The whole place has always seemed like a private club, from a sneaky secret society to a roving party of various types of nerds that nerds think are nerds, or, if you want a spicier analogy, a swingers club. Yeah, people already into it are there all the time but no one just wanders in off the street.
So, getting back to communities, maybe focusing on 5-10 general interest communities to start and pump the hell out of them. Reward content and sharing. When they get enough traffic to support themselves delegate/fund the next in line.
I see a lot of communities using this tactic but I don’t see many that have rewards big enough to encourage putting any serious effort into posting there.
And finally, and I’ve been beating this drum for years now, this seems to be one of the most mobile-indifferent places in cyberspace. I understand a lot of devs are just trying to keep up but everything on hive now, and Steem before, feels/felt like it was geared toward someone sitting in front of a desktop or working on a laptop and anything done on mobile is usually an inferior experience. At least it feels that’s often the case with me. And if there’s a way to set up alerts I haven’t found it, I have to keep coming back to check notifications instead of knowing when I get replies or new content from specific people or communities.
There’s a blue-f**k ton of cool stuff here and the potential is limitless but there’s still a lot that’s off-putting to me and I love this place. We have a lot of work to do to appeal to the masses.