RE: There is no Attention Economy on Hive
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I think most of us that actually care about the platform have been bitching about the lack of engagement and attention for years. Of course, the whales will go and cherry pick a post to show engagement from those that kiss their ass for upvotes. There are very few actual active people on the chain. Most 'active' accounts are just old auto-voting accounts at this point. I still play around a few communities and post things that I actually like to post like drones, 3D printing, and homestead posts, but my days of trying to 'be somebody' on the chain or even in the crypto space are long gone.
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I think the lack of engagement comes down to there just not being enough people actually here. Communities are a great feature of Hive but there just aren't enough people to form very substantial communities about specific topics with few exceptions. Hive has always had this sort of chicken in the egg problem. How does it attract more users without more high quality content and how does it get more high quality content without more users? I'm not sure what the answer is but maybe we could at least start with better search functionality. I can't even find my own posts very easily...
This is truly the main problem.
We can't have as much traffic as Twitter without allowing the noobs and shit posters in.
I'll continue posting and sharing, yet I just wonder how long things on here might last.
I've been feeling it for about two years. I'm surprised we've lasted this long, but it's evident communities have been drying up. I'd say about three communities are actually doing decent, the rest have seen lower and lower activity numbers and even less curation attention. My followed list is dead. People I used to engage with daily just upped and left. So many names that were once making decent money on here just decided to stop one day.
The followed list drying out is something I'm experiencing now.
Really bugs me..
Yep! I'm frequently going through it, cleaning it out and then struggling to find new people to engage with. Then not long ago I had someone have the audacity to question why so few people would comments on my posts. Most of the people I used to really have discussions with left! Few fill the gap which grows larger each week.
I looked at the list of people that followed me yesterday actually, and the majority disappeared between 2018 and 2021!
😂😂😭
It's quite frustrating...
This is certainly an issue. Like with my FPV drone crew, they are all stuck on Instagram because it offers the features best for them. I tried to bring a few to Hive, but as soon as they got a look, they were like, neh...
I think we really do need something where people can have posts suggested to them to check out. Not necessarily an algo which decides what gets seen and what doesn't, but something that maybe pulls from certain tags you select interest in. A little thing on the homepage that shows you people you aren't following that are posting similar things to you. Even if they're posts from a week ago.
Another problem is that 7 day window. Everything that does get seen is only seen within the first 24 hours, after that the post is just thrown into the void. Nobody is going to curate, nobody is going to comment.
At the same time, when there are these niche topics with a thin audience, it's not enough for them to support each other because the big curators just stick to the big communities. And what curation guilds consider high quality definitely won't match with other topics. They're looking for a great epic adventure into the mountains. Not a drawing post that took someone four months to perfect.
I hear ya there!
I know you know the feeling!
This is so insanely accurate. I can't stand seeing it. Especially that first part regarding engagement.
Yeah this doesn't happen unless you post the right stuff, we see so much shit on here because it actually gets curated. The same "How to start blogging on Hive!" posts. Being more niche with your interests on here just means you're posting to a select few. Which is fine, that's how it is. But the worst thing returns to what you said before: the people that get all the good treatment will consider you the problem when you mention how discouraging it can be that there's no engagement because in their eyes they're a gold standard of how a person on Hive should be. In reality their posts are shit, nobodies really reading, and they're just gaining interest because everyone wants some of that trickle-down upvote.
I tried to educate people on blockchain operations, trading, mining, etc, but yeah, nobody actually reads the blogs or watches the videos. I have built various businesses and front ends on this platform just to get swept aside. So I just use Hive these days as a generic social media platform that mines me some crypto that I then turn into LTC, BTC, or XMR, lol.
I had some big plans in the past too, I also got some things moving, tried to build and get people interested. Another problem there is that trying to build for a handful of people also results in a lot of money wasted. I can see how bigger projects like Splinterlands or even the front-ends can be struggling and relying on Proposals. But not everyone can get that support. I put it all aside when I realised I was burning out, exhausting myself and putting my own personal life aside to just spend money building for nobody.
I regret curating for OCD. I spent years of my life in a room just ensuring people got their posts seen and rewarded on a chain where I got thrown into the fire over nonsensical drama, and in the end I ended up with nothing to show for it. Not even a thank you! I thought I was working towards something great. That I was also going to build for the future. Much of that was my own fault, I put too much time into it when I should not have done so. I became significantly happier when I came to my senses and realised Hive isn't working, that it won't be around forever, and that it isn't what we assumed it would be almost ten years later. Instead, putting focus on my own life and building something for myself.
These days there are people that'll come after you for admitting it. And I think that just goes to show that even they realise this isn't working out. When people attack over what people choose to do with their rewards, it's a sign that there is no real community anymore and even they don't have the answer. And that's fine, it's not like we're expecting anyone to come and fix things out of nowhere, more just wishing we could talk and form something together. But instead it comes to more drama, more downvote wars, and of course more disconnect.
My sentiments exactly! I think it's funny you brought up OCD, Acid was the one that came at me with the cherry picked post when I was bitching on X about the lack of real engagement, lol. I was never one to try and get involved with him or his group because it comes with a level of ass kissing that I absolutely refuse out of fear of his downvotes. Nope, not this dude.
I came into this thinking that I had found a like minded group that wanted to build an alternative economy using crypto. So what did I do? I build Hivelist... The ONLY REAL ECOMMERCE PLATFORM TO EVER HIT HIVE... And what happens? It's basically ignored. Like WTF People? We have a fucking stablecoin on chain and you don't even want to use that? It's sad. Everyone just wants their fiat number to go up so they can feel rich, instead of being FREE!
But I have been beating my head against that wall for over 5 years at this point and have just recently decided I am done. The so-called 'Hive community' doesn't deserve me or my efforts to build on this chain anymore. So I'll build my homestead, drones, and mining farm for me with my power downs until I am completely out of Hive.
I think there was more interest in it in the past. I think a lot of people had motivation. I'm not sure what happened, I guess many moved on, many just gave up. Or perhaps many suffer from the 'idea guy' syndrome but don't have the skills. All of which are fine. It happens. But it is sad to see that we aren't building like we used to. When I was trying to get things going, I even asked people on Hive if they knew anyone that might want to contribute, the requests just got ignored. I get your frustration for sure, and I don't blame anyone for trying and packing things up. Even outside of Hive I think it's common.
The other thing is a lot of those people did move on from Hive. Some of the best people I knew on here are no longer present.
I have a lot of opinions on it all. I'm so sick of Hive drama though that I won't bother mentioning them. I do consider the years of daily curation I gave a waste of time. And I think many others that are/were in the same thing feel it now too. Hive has a lot of people working stupidly hard but not really getting anything out of it. Whether it's people posting or people trying to build something. It's a massive flaw that we have that leads to so many burning out and just saying fuck it and moving on.
Again our biggest problem being we can hardly keep people around. So a lot of projects with great intent and features just aren't used. There's no audience for it. We really need less internal fighting and drama and more ways of listening to each other and trying to figure out the broader problems. Not scrambling to fight over who is selling their Hive or drama over holding power over certain things.
It doesn't help that many people choose to mind their own business and do their own thing but still end up being targeted because of someone's differing opinions on how things should be done here. Putting your head down and just using Hive as it is intended doesn't even keep you safe from the drama anymore.
Massively underrated platform on here. I've been needing to use it myself, slowly putting together a digital photo book of some of my travels. It's taking forever though. But it's genuinely surprising that there aren't people finding ways to interact with it. Though again: the people that are really doing well on here are a specific type of person; mostly posting about finance or general blogging. They aren't the creator type. They don't understand that economy, they are bloggers, a people of another era. And it's the total opposite of those people that we are missing. We need more creator people. More musicians, artists, designers, filmmakers. Aaaaand again: we can't find the right ways to support them in the first place. So that's why they're not here.
I hear you on all that brother!
With Hivelist, I had some momentum going into the 2021 bull run, then 2022 happened and I have only seen 3 sales on the store since, which was the revenue model for the project. Most people don’t use the platform as intended. It’s just a use the tag to earn the token kind of crap. So much so, that the people actually trying to use it as a classifieds platform get lost in the wash of garbage posts.
I have been out of my own pocket for everything. Never had any funding or help. When I saw in the beginning how the DHF was going to really be ran, I didn’t want a part of it. It’s just a whale circle jerk slush fund.
The biggest mistake was that I overestimated the Hive community in thinking they really cared about supporting projects like Hivelist and building something bigger than ourselves, but nope. 👎 That requires work, and most people in crypto now just want to hit a button and get free tokens, then dump them.
Yeah I can imagine that even for people using it, it's not easy to market whatever gets listed. This is a Hive problem more than anything else. Someone can post about something they've listed, and it'll only maybe be seen for 24 hours, then it'll be buried. Which just requires another post about it, to which then someone finds problem and will begin spam accusations. Snaps is a great feature on peakd now, I love it, but such an insanely small number of people on Hive use it. So there aren't really ways to market something on here. I guess that's another reason why so many other front-ends and such fail. Even in the case of peakd, they'd have to add a huge banner which advertises Snaps for anyone to really take note. If our biggest front-end struggles to advertise its features, we can't really be surprised that smaller, community-made things can't get up on their feet.
Snaps looks like a ghost town when it comes to engagement so I have stayed away. Inleo Threads is really just a few of the same people talking to each other or feeding some AI bot. I tried doing a 'daily classifieds' on threads and only had like 2 people actually trying to use it. You are absolutely correct though in everything you have said.
If you look around there are tons of artists that burn with passion and do so daily with little to no reward.
We've become a bit of a clique us popular hiveans and we fail to see the true beauty of what is underneath.
No more -- I'm picking up all the bright stars that shine brightly.
Yep, and without people focusing on those with the passion, they will move along the way just like the rest of us. I appreciate your efforts for sure.