I found myself scrolling through Facebook tonight. I know, I know. What was I thinking. It happens from time to time.
Anyway, I get this post from a buddy that I knew from around 2007-2008. He's the cousin of one of my old band members that I helped produce a little album for around that time.
He makes a lot of posts about language development. Impressively, he's learning 8 languages - English, Mandarin, Filipino, Spanish, Greek, Hindi, Malayalam and French - and making videos of his language development as well as writing posts in these languages with translations between them. He also plays a number of musical instruments, produces, and records a number of songs with only him playing, and then makes videos for these songs as well. On top of all that, he regularly talks about diet and healthy eating.
It's all quite creative and surely takes a bit of work to produce it all.
What I notice on Facebook, though, is he gets nearly zero engagement all the time. There is only ever a handful of 'likes' on his posts, if any, and hardly ever any comments. I can see why, though. A lot of the time he's speaking in another language than most of the people he'd reach, or he's got a video and an entire 5 minute song that is, although creative, very much an amateur produced piece of work trying to compete with higher end videos that Facebook gets and are promoted to everyone's feeds with a budget to advertise. People don't have the attention span over there to take in long posts unless it's an article they'll click to go off Facebook and consume.
From time to time I see him post (or rather rant) that he doesn't get any engagement on his hard work from the community and is feeling really let down. I don't blame him. He clearly puts some hard work into these projects and gets no recognition for it.
I've mentioned to him a few times that he should come over to Hive and give it a shot, but he keeps telling me no. He's, for some reason, committed to getting engagement on Facebook. I'm not sure the purpose of what that entails, but that's generally what he keeps telling me.
Tonight I really tried to explain to him how there's actually a community (or communities) of people over here on Hive that are much more engaged in commenting, liking, and collaborating on content creation. A lot of what he posts on Facebook would do really well here. I wrote a few paragraphs in a reply on his post, but it's really a hard thing to do on Facebook and it's not designed for that at all.
As I was typing out examples of people coming together on Hive, I realized I'd never be able to fully explain everything that is happening over here to a regular person that doesn't know anything about it.
There is just too much.
I started with some basic examples that would be relatable to some of the things he does.
I was involved in, and we formed a 'Steemit Band' once and produced a song with a number of members from around the world. It was quite fun and interesting that a bunch of strangers could all just come together around a random post and create a really cool song. Unfortunately, that song was only posted to DSound and the link won't work any more. I'm going to look for the recording though, and may post it again if I can find it.
Steem Silver Rounds: I'd love to see someone put together a Hive round, but the Steemit Rounds were such a cool idea and completely community driven with contest for the designs and all that along the way, and even paying in Steem. Think there'd be any support for a Facebook Silver Round? I'm sure they'd sell, if Facebook created some, but I doubt a random person could initiate that and be successful.
I told him about the Steem/Hive Fests that have successfully occurred. Ever hear of a Facebook Fest? Think any regular Facebook users would go or would it be just all corporate?
It was at this point that I realized there was absolutely no way I could give him all the examples of how the community of Hive gets involved and engages with one another. Art contests, writing contests, open mic's, and other types of random contests are great and very engaging.
What about moving an entire blockchain community to a new one to avoid a takeover. Is that even explainable to a regular person? I mean twitter was taken over, did that community that disagreed end up moving to a twitter alternative? Think they will soon? If it happened to Facebook, you think people would create a new Facebook and excel past the original? I doubt it.
Curation communities that seek and promote good content. Do you see any of that on Facebook? Not a chance. And the opposite end of it, plagiarism communities looking for plagiarism and other forms of unoriginal work. I suppose Facebook has Fact Checkers, but they're clearly for propaganda control over quality control.
The whole communities section of Hive where like minded people are coming together under common interests to engage and promote one another. Facebook has groups as well, I suppose, but you don't get the same vibe from it.
It just goes on and on.
That's without getting into other things like Hive Keychain, Actifit, Splinterlands and other games, different websites like PeakD, LeoFinance, or Ecency, other tokens, and on and on. All created by different community members and groups.
Explaining all that, I think, has the potential to overwhelm somebody now, so I tried to keep it light. I'm not sure he'll try and create an account, but I think he'd do pretty well over here.
What are your thought on getting people over from Facebook?
Have you tried any tactics that have worked really well?
I found a random comment on Facebook about Steemit, came over to take a look and I was convinced instantly. I've also got a few people over here from Facebook but I've failed more times than I've been successful.
If he doesn't end up making an account, I was thinking of making one for him and when he makes a Facebook post, take the content and post it to Hive. After a little while, and hopefully after some votes and engagement, I'd show him the account and give him the keys. Think that would work? Is that crossing a line?
I'm not entirely sure.
I'll think on it.
No, this place is too alien for most and the learning curve is ridiculous. I have found only a small percentage of us can manage it.., the rest are too comfortable in their Facebook comfort zone.
It's unfortunate, but you're probably right. It's just mind boggling to me that someone can learn 8 languages but be completely overwhelmed by a social media site, though. It's crazy he won't even try it, and I've noticed today he seems to have doubled down on the amount he's posting to Facebook. I suspect it has a bit to do with social conditioning as well.
"Crypto, bad. Friendly social media giant tracking and fact checking what not to think, good," says the social media giant.