I was watching a man feed sparrows outside the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris and was pretty impressed by how they each excitedly came to feed, but they never seemed to get in the way of others, no fighting, no squabbling, no pecking - despite how much fluttering and activity was going on. I have always been in a little bit of awe at how quickly animals are able to move on their instinct - the speed at which they are able to navigate their world. I have always wondered why we with all the brain we have, we are unable to use a slice of it to move similarly.
Over the first year or two, I was onboarding people and working extremely hard for some of them to not only help them develop their content, but also get the some support where I could. In my opinion, people should have the internal motivation themselves, but what I found is that for most people, consistency was always going to be an issue if they deemed the reward no sufficient - so I stopped onboarding.
It is not that I stopped talking about Hive with the people I know and stopped signing people up, it is just that I wasn't actively going out of my way. When I did talk about it with people, I generally talked about myself writing on a website and a few of them check my content out from time to time - occasionally bringing it up when we meet. Most of the consumers don't have an account.
However, there could be benefits for consumers to have an account, if they start to understand what is happening here. While it has already started, the coming years are going to see an increase in people willing to pay for content, but Hive offers them some return on their subscription with that return having the potential to increase in value. While it might not amount to much, it also means that people will have the sense of being able to directly affect the rewards of those they enjoy, rather than have the platform choose who they support - I think that this will become more important to people.
A lot of people don't see the curation return as significant for the small accounts, but the thing is that it is all stake relative, meaning that the return for big or small is all subject to the same blockchain rules, except that small accounts could actually earn more percentage wise - but that doesn't matter.
At the moment, an account can get between 10 and 20 percent yearly increase in tokens through curation, but as the inflation rate drops, this will start to decrease percentage wise. This decreasing rate of inflation should of course make HIVE more scarce over time, so while the percentage return will drop, the hope is that the token value will increase in response, but this depends on demand, which is why we need to increase demand, not just on HIVE tokens - but Hive as a place to come for content as well as a place to share content to and share content from. Wouldn't it be great to have people who don't have an account on Hive sharing content from Hive as consumers?
But, this is only part of the future for Hive, as the way internet manages and rewards content is going to change rapidly, being driven by a multitude of factors, including microtransactions, ownership of experience and security where the trust in content is reaching an all-time low, and platforms are going to have to offer real verification, which is going to mean that platform like Twitter and Facebook are going to come under more pressure for what people are sharing - and what their algorithms are showing. They are going to start being held accountable as publishers of content, even though the content isn't directly theirs - it is user sourced.
The disruption coming to content distribution is going to open many gaps in the processes and allow for all kinds of decentralized seeds to be planted. We on Hive already know the benefits of fast and free transactions to any account, and I think that this is going to become one of the hinges that opens the door for Hive, as people discover the value of controlling their funds.
It is a long road to fixing all the economic ills of the world, but participating and learning about ways to move in a healthier direction is a valuable service that Hive offers through consumption and participation here. This is why instead of onboarding creators, I will be spending more time sharing Hive articles that I find useful directly with my friends, rather than onboarding them first onto Hive. I don't know if this will slowly convince them to take part, but I think that it starts to set a foundation in their mind for what is happening here and elsewhere, places out of the spotlight of mainstream media.
Things are changing and we are part of the change and part of the shift in global narrative. We might only be a tiny sliver of the global online community, but the voice we have will become like a pebble in the pool and ripple outward.
Humans don't move as fast as the sparrows, we get in each other's way, we argue over ridiculous things and fight over the morsels offered us - but perhaps somewhere through the mess, more will start to see the hand that has been feeding us and what we have been blindly eating.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]