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.
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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.
Yes, I agree - absolutely - general content consumers are key, they draw creators in and the whole situation is fueled by the two groups interacting.
Features need to be added to UIs to support content discovery for 'consumers' too. I thin part of the barrier here is that developers want to rely on POB via the trending algorithm build in to Hive and don't think about adding features that promote content in other ways. It doesn't take much to provide suggested content based on tags - it's a basic feature I've coded myself before - yet we don't see it much.
But there are features. They're just not being used. Like on peakd for instance. I clicked on #introduceyourself, then at the top there's a star. click on that, it gets added to a list over on the left. Now I'm one click away from browsing those posts, as example. If I want recent, I click recent. The communities are also a nice feature and make browsing something like art at OnChainArt or AlienArt a one stop shop. What throws a wrench in the works though is how folks tag. It's almost ALL tribe tags now. Tags and inserting content into a specific tribe need to be two different operations. Another pet peeve of mine with tribes is since people stack tags, the tribes aren't really offering anything unique. Without exclusives, I, as a consumer, see no need to visit the actual site, like VYB for instance, since I can simply add that tag like I said with the intro posts and browse that way, all in PeakD. The stuff for consumers is there though, on PeakD at least. I just wonder if people are curious enough to push all those buttons and experiment. 'Chain News' is a nice feature and it would be nice to see more folks browsing that and adding to it. A one stop shop for all things new on chain is beneficial to all involved. And I still browse basic trending, and trending by clicking on tags for instance to narrow it down. I'm actually quite impressed with how far things have come but more and more I think people just aren't using it, since they keep bringing up the same issues from years ago, that aren't really issues anymore.
Despite how annoying the big platforms such as Facebook and Youtube can be, they are big because they spend masses of time and money on researching the best interface designs to keep people engaged. Both of them use algorithms to serve the right content at the right moment to keep people active on the network. I'm not a fan of AI but the least that can be done is to serve up suggested content based on a combination of tags and user behaviours so that people quickly find content that interests them without needing to do anything at all. This even works for people who aren't members yet to some extent.
Proof of brain is an interesting idea but it actually weakens general user experience if it isn't easily filterable and understandable (and replaceable with non proof of brain ordering of posts and post discovery).
I think people will shift to use Layer 2 sites in a more powerful way once the community shifts it's stake into some of them in a more substantial way. Currently there is no clear benefit to supporting any of them in a dedicated way - except maybe for VYB's no downvoting feature. They need to differentiate themselves more effectively via a well designed marketing strategy and provide incentives for users to support them in place of others.
This is where we clash. I'm not a fan of 'suggested content' in that sense. But I'll spare you the details. I'm sure you've figured out by now once I get started I don't shut up.
Those layer two options are all following Hive's lead, by avoiding attracting a paying consumer base. All onboarding attempts basically say, "Come post content here." So in business that's money out the door, no money in. I've written about this issue several times going back years. I'm truly baffled as to why this isn't catching on. Never in history could a consumer support something, and technically not spend money. The old model is 'throw money in the trash'. It's so simple as well, and fascinating. You can work out the math yourself. 20000 paying subscribers is piss in this industry yet if they all had a vote worth a dime one could run an online magazine and pay about 4 contributors fairly, entry level salary style. Then if anyone came along to downvote a buzzing organic operation like that, they'd be known as 'the stupidest f'n investor on the planet'. Because consumer demand does fancy things to a crypto. And the perk is the consumer isn't even spending money, it's still in their possession. Studies have proven if the consumer is offered perks, they're more likely to spend. Corporations have known that for years but now this time rather than making someone at the top rich, it's all shared amongst the people.
Anyway. I see you doubled down on muting me here, which is just ridiculous. Why even be like that, dude? Don't answer. Just think about it.