Well. Yes.
Hive is definitely too "internally oriented," in terms of talking about Hive ON Hive doesn't do us much good.
But Hive also faces some fundamental issues at a systemic level. Sure, we need to tell people around the web. But if there's something 25 years of blogging has taught me, it's that content creators (and dApp creators) need to focus more on promoting their content rather than the platform. By all means mention Hive when you promote yourself, and your creativity, but a constant barrage of "Hive, Hive, Hive" is spammy and offputting... hence the site-level shadow banning we have experienced.
Another systemic issue Hive faces is the fact that so many community members started their entire social media/social content experience on Hive (or "Hive 1.0") and thus didn't arrive here with an established following elsewhere. Surprisingly few Hiveans have active 15-year old Facebook/X/LinkedIn, etc accounts. So — as a collective — we tend to be rather oriented towards only admiring the lint in our own bellybuttons. What's more, many here are actively/militantly ANTI conventional centralized social media... and yet we NEED web 2.0 in order to build web 3.0.
ADD to that, that many who came here were purely focused on earning rewards while creating content was not the primary objective, merely the "vehicle" to earning rewards. It's one of the reasons virtually ALL "get paid to create content" sites (going back to the first, in 1998) have failed miserably after the first few years.
Last, but certainly not LEAST, we lack a key ingredient in community building: "communication."
I'm not talking about communicating Hive to others, I'm talking about communicating with each other.
Scenario: I tell some friends about Hive and they say "cool, let's give it a try!"
What happens?
Assuming that we actually *HAVE "sign up with X/Twitter/Google" ease of account creation, how do I KNOW they made an account? Moreover, how do I TALK to them, to guide them and give them tips to get going, and encouraging messages to stick with it? Where's the person-to-person messaging system? Where's the "Your friend Bill just joined Hive!" notifications?
"Yeah but, you can talk on Discord!
WE might know that, and accept it. To someone expecting "Sign up with X/Google" usability and ease-of-access, that's a pain in the ass and reason to say "You know what? This is too cumbersome and slow. I'm going back to Facebook."
Point being, needing an Add-on to make something work in 2023 is totally off the map. That's revisiting 1999 blogging where we had to install a separate utility to service comments, and readers had to create a whole new account to comment.
And don't get me wrong, I love Hive! But we have certainly "elephants in the room" that we tend to not address directly. I feel hopeful that what's happening at LeoFinance will go a ways towards addressing these things.
Sorry for the blog length comment... but the thoughts just flowed...
RE: Learning from Friend Tech and Stars Arena