One of the most important applications that Hive has seen is now in beta.
This might seem like an overstatement at first but, by the end of this article, everyone will see the potential of what we are dealing with.
Veews is now live. This is an application that brings content discovery to the Hive blockchain. Since the early days, most were aware that one of the drawbacks to Hive is finding content relevant to our likes. The only way to filter the information was through the following of others. While this could help us to stay on top of authors we enjoy, this made discovering new content an issue.
At the same time, we have the situation where people are diverse. Hence, a blog might have different areas of focus. One might like the posts about cryptocurrency yet detest the individual's politics. Veews is a way to come across the crypto content while leaving the politics aside.
In this article we will not go through the mechanics of the site. There is a video on the front page that covers it along with other articles popping up. What we will focus upon is the potential for Hive and the impact it can make.
Veews mirrors Stumbleupon, an application that was popular in the early Web 2.0 era. Along with Digg and Reddit, they were the second tier behind Facebook. Over time, due to a poor business model, the company ended up folding, taking the app with it.
The idea is being revived, with a focus on Hive. For the moment, only new content (within the 7 day vote window) is applicable. Eventually, we are going to see all content on Hive since the genesis block be incorporated.
It is a system that uses machine learning. This is how it was summed up.
Basically, the process starts with users selecting from a list of commonly used tags which are on the home page. From there, as people use the applications like/dislike system, the machine learning starts to build a personal profile in an effort to deliver content that is preferred.
Over time, as more people use the system, the ML engine will improve, providing better results for everyone.
The key to this is we will come across many authors previously overlooked. It is impossible to scan the mess of Recent posts on a front end like PeakD. Hence, Veews handles a lot of this for us. As our preference is learned, more pages tied to that topic are shown regardless of who the content creator is.
This is operational at the moment. Now, it is up to everyone on Hive to help train the system by Veewing.
One of the other issues with Hive is what happens to content after it is more than 7 days old? Basically, we have a decentralized database of information that goes back 6 years yet we only really see what was posted in the last week.
Veews will end up changing this. Once the bugs are worked out and the basic training occurs, we will see the entire database opened up. This means that content which is outside the voting window will be accessible.
This is important for recognition. There are authors who only post a couple times a week but did that for years. With the one week timeframe they might be overlooked. However, the culmination of their work might stand out better over a wider window.
The other factor in this is rewards. We all know Hive inflation only pays out over the 7 days. The tokenomics of the system are not released at this moment but there are going to be other ways to reward older content. This breathes new life into what was done before.
Since it is a layer 2 solution, there is the flexibility to adopt payment mechanisms that are not at the base layer.
While we have no idea what it will look like, focusing in this direction can add another element to the Hive ecosystem. We have years of data (posts) that is just sitting on-chain, not being utilized. In terms of return as a content creator, if older posts are eligible for some type of reward, that could add to those who have spent years filling Hive up with content that is of interest to people.
Perhaps we will see life pumped into these older articles over the next few months.
This is something that struck me last night when going through the application.
Veews is mostly a reader. What this means is the front end is designed to provide content that people view. There are some Hive-based functions such as the voting on the article along with commenting. However, one cannot create an article from the application.
Since we are accessing content on Hive, one of the keys could be to turn Veews into a distribution hub. Since the article is already in front of us, how hard would it be to access a few buttons and distribute.
For example, there were a number of times I found articles that I would like to post on LeoThreads. To do this now, the article had to be opened, address copied, and then carried over to Threads. Why not do it right from the application itself?
The same would hold for Listnerds. This is an opt-in email marketing program that is available on Hive. Why not have a button that enables the same thing?
Of course, we have traditional social media. Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit are areas that distributing content could be appealing. Again, going direct from the application increase the number of times this happens.
One of the key points is that most of the content we see was created by other people. Thus, distributing it means we are gaining exposure for other content creators. Why would an individual do this?
To start, people love to share content they find interesting or informative. Look at the links shared on Twitter. Most of that is citing the work of others.
That said, there is a big advantage on Hive. Any exposure received by another is putting Hive applications in front of different people. Hence, by sharing the content of another author, the reader will end up seeing PeakD, Hive.blog, Leofinance, or CTPTalk. This is a great way for communities to start to gain more exposure by marketing their favorite articles out to others.
There is no doubt that Hive has content creation covered. This is only going to increase as the social media offerings expand. In addition to long form content creation there is Liketu, Threads, DBuzz, and 3Speak.
We now have the first step in content discovery. Veews brings a traditional Web 2.0 idea to Hive. There is now a way to find content that is much easier than it was 24 hours ago.
Implementing a few simple tools to Veews would then make it the go-to hub for content distribution. Thousands of people on Hive could share dozens of articles in an easy manner.
As we can see the possibilities are tremendous. This is a huge addition to Hive and the evolution that it is undergoing.
It is also why the long-term vision is always required. We are still in the early stages of development yet more pieces are falling into place.
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