Yesterday we published a new version post with a list of a ton of new changes big and small to https://peakd.com/... today we want to go over more in depth what was the biggest project on that list. The new Home Page.
Our new home page is about education and expectations and sharing a message that we believe is truly marketable. We therefore wanted to write a longer post to help our users to be on board with this approach. Maybe we can help you with your marketing pitch to your own friends.
The home page was many months in the making. Not because it took a long time to design. The new home page represents months of talking about our core values (internally and with others) and debating our unique offering to the world, both for PeakD and Hive. In the end it doesn't seem like it should have taken us this long to get to something that seems so obvious and it was always what we were working on for the last 3 years... but now it's been vocalized in a way we love.
PeakD is a Partner in Decentralized Social Media with True Ownership
Hive/PeakD offer many features and product focuses.
We use the 4Cs to classify those products.
On the home page we talk about how each of those 4 are decentralized and you can have TRUE OWNERSHIP of all of them.
COMMUNITY TOP PRODUCT: We have decided that COMMUNITY will be the product that we want to talk about and promote the most. It gives PeakD/Hive the most unique feature set and we believe it will end up being the biggest product so we want to focus on it now... even as communities are barely one year old and there is sooo much room to grow technically speaking and also user base speaking. Check this post about the history of communities.
So you should expect that many of our future features will be created to help improve the community experience though we will still improve many other areas of the website and the other 4Cs.
Like What?
The PeakD.com home page will go through more changes in the years to come but for now we had a particular type of person in mind with the home page.
The person we had in mind for the new PeakD.com home page is:
The Thought Leader and motivator in each person's group of friends
That person who researches, has strong opinions, shares those opinions frequently and effectively and has lots of friends that listen to what they say.
This person will likely be a good source of support to new users helping with education needs and customized support for new users.
In short PeakD is very interested in getting that type of individual to come to PeakD.com and then be a support to bring in lots of their own friends. And we want that individual to come to PeakD because they believe in our core principles and are good at sharing them to others.
Therefore we need to do a little extra work to present that message to them. We believe this type of individual will be willing to read a few more paragraphs because they are thoughtful and careful and when convinced they are also the type to jump all in and share the message.
STILL WORKS FOR NEWBIES
At the same time we also want to make sure the home page quickly identifies what kind of EXPERIENCE a new user can expect on PeakD.
Even if they don't fully grasp the importance of Decentralization and Ownership and how PeakD is more of a partner for the content owner... it's important that they realize what kind of site PeakD is.
We believe that on the new home page users will realize pretty quickly what they would expect inside.
We believe the outspoken friend will re-share our principles to newbies (sometimes in their own words) and do a better job of convincing them at their own level. They'll tell people they can "take control" of their content and share why it would be important to their friends. They'll tell users that other sites give "pinky promises" but Hive and PeakD play a completely different game where they don't need to trust a pinky-promise (Terms of Service)
UP FRONT ABOUT KEYS AND LOGIN METHODS
On the home page we mention keys and in our video we share why they're part of our unique offering: they are part of what allows true ownership. So we are connecting the idea of Ownership together with letting the user know there is some responsibility on their part. In a sense we are marketing some of the harder aspects of Hive as one of the cool things about Hive... a thing that is worth understanding instead of running away from.
On Hive we often talk about "bringing in the masses" but we also need to have the masses understand how to be a part and then for them to STAY.
Frustration, disappointment and departure are often symptoms of bad or un-met expectations
Here's the awesome part... this message of "True ownership" WORKS and it's more efficient. (Your mileage may vary)
I have spent time talking to lots of people recently, from the "technological illiterates" to the content creators with millions and millions of subscribers... they understand the message of Content Ownership and they understand it quickly. True ownership is an easier quicker pitch to convince them how PeakD/Hive is special and worthy of looking into and how there is nothing else like it and they see the connection between what is happening in social media and what we are offering.
The news has done much of the job for us with Twitter, Trump, Parler and Cancel Culture. Users quickly understand why having true ownership is at least different. Doesn't mean that each of those people has a personal hole in their life where they are desperately wanting True Ownership but they get it and they think it's awesome and they know it will help some of the content creators they follow. They also understand when I bring up that: "a companies terms of service are as easy to change as using a word processor and the delete button and therefore sites promoting 'censorship resistance' are just like pinky-promises and they are setups for future disappointments."
Therefore... We think the best option is to orient the pitch of the home page to people who will most be attracted to hese core principles and understand them the quickest and then share them the most.
These principles are propositions/incentives that are more durable than economic propositions... it's a pitch that is not dependent on the price of Hive token nor dependent on success being how many "Hive-Whales" that content creators can get to see their stuff. The user will always have true content ownership, it is a constant they can always be happy about.
WHERE DOES HIVE-REWARDS FIT IN THE PITCH?
It's there... at the end.
You may find it interesting that PeakD only mentions rewards at the bottom of the page and hive-rewards-pool is not at the top of the list... it's TIPS... because tips you have much more control over. Tips is a one to one transaction between you and someone else. Hive Rewards Pool is a decision made by every single active account on Hive... meaning the actions of every other hive account impacts your reward, not just the votes on your post but the votes on all other posts will impact your rewards for your post.
We like Hive Rewards pool... but it isn't as solid of a foundation to make new users excited and would never be economically fulfilling enough for large influential content creators. We want large content creators to come to PeakD and bring their viewers here. If the pitch for Hive was about hive rewards pool then they would have less incentive to bring their viewers... they would instead be mostly interested in getting users like 
Decentralization of economic incentives is the name of the game. We want business minded creators to have several options so that there are no dependencies on any one in particular.
Maybe not perfectly yet but it does a better job than previously. Also we did add a nice video and a link right on the top of the home page that describes how to login and post. We are also going to be doing lots of individual feedback reviews with new users to make the site more intuitive and we'll get more feedback about the home page as well. Meaning we will work at understanding what it is a new user wants to know the most or will set up the best expectations for their Hive/PeakD experience.
For those people seeing someone login and post in about 90 seconds or less is perhaps the most valuable thing.
And PeakD is going to be working on making many of the tougher parts easier / more intuitive.
Hive does need to figure out how to handle onboarding millions of users both with account creation costs but also infrastructure. A faster but measured growth is not a bad option specially if those users are educated and can be a good foundation for when "the masses" are ready.
We would love to hear from you and perhaps more importantly we want to hear from your friends who come to PeakD for the first time. We will always be working to improve our messaging.
