Hive's losing the social media battle.
We, as an ecosystem, have never understood the importance of social media real estate and what it means to have a voice in platforms where our target market resides. @acidyo understands how important it is to make noise on X and that's why he created the @poshtoken, but problems with their API makes it virtually impossible to tap into their database to make things automated.
Even so, as an ecosystem we continue to fail to realize that promoting a project within Hive is never going to get it adopted by the actual masses.
We know how to build, don't get me wrong, I love Hive. But we don't know how to market whatever we build. @liketu is doing a good job in Venezuela and @elmerlin is pushing adoption in that country and it's working.
But in the bigger scale, we are losing the battle.
Friend Tech
If you don't know what FT or SA are, do your own research.
Around a month and a half ago, Friend Tech was launched. I can't recall the actual numbers but if memory serves me right, they amassed more than 300k users in less than a week, and the platform made millions of dollars in fees. Built on Base, it has a future even if the fees are killing the small users.
They launched a barebones user interface full of bugs that lagged constantly. But they were the first ones to punch in web2, so the whole cryptospace flocked towards this shiny new platform where users could monetize their influence.
Does that sound familiar?
Hive's had this for years, but we never really took it upon ourselves to create a social media presence that would get us adopted.
Anyway, Friend Tech's revenue model both for the platform and the users is not sustainable and it will ride the hype wave as long as the users keep pumping money in, then, it will die.
Stars Arena
Again, do your own research if you don't know what I'm talking about.
Stars Arena is basically a copy of Friend Tech done better. They had a user interface much more friendly, less fees, more content discovery tools and it basically stole all of FT's clout for the past week.
It was still a barebones platform though. They had a feed, a chat, a user profile and a wallet. But they got adopted a TON, it made FT look like a desert and up until a few hours ago, it was meant to skyrocket and render FT useless even though it was just an iteration of the first project to punch.
Since the users started to ride the hype wave on the arena, FT's maxies started attacking and FUD it, and they were somewhat successful. Watching this mediocre battle happen in front of my eyes on X was pretty entertaining.
Of course I never jumped into this bandwagon, I was just watching carefully from the sidelines, benchmarking on their wins and learning from their failures, taking notes of what works and iterate our own emulation for LeoFinance's rebrand launch in a couple of days.
Stars kills the Friends, then Seppukus
Stars Arena was on track to be the biggest player in the space - until Leo rebrands and relaunches - and it rendered Frien Tech useless and outdated. It killed FT, the space knew it, and except for the maxis, everyone was flocking towards the arena.
But then, the Arena got exploited and the main smart contract was drained. Three million dollars drained from the ecosystem in a couple of hours, just 4 hours ago.
The Arena was killed, and it left a big space for Leo to come in and battle for a spot in the narrative of SocialFi/DeSo.
This exploit was pure serendipity for Hive, because now we don't have to compete with two giants, but with one big dog licking their wounds after being exposed as a mediocre platform on their way to rugging.
But what can we learn from this whole thing?
- Punching first doesn't guarantee success if you have a UI full of bugs and with just a few features.
- Build a long term marketing plan, riding the hype wave is short term semi-success.
- Security is king, especially in a space where if you become a real competitor, every tech oriented investor in the other projects will try to poke holes in your protocols.
- We're in a bear market. People will flock to any new shiny thing that comes out, but having a robust ecosystem to welcome them is king.
- Twitter (X) Sign Up is the biggest advantage a project can have against other similar projects.
We are doing a lot of marketing on X, and for the October Campaign we have a 5,000 HBD prize pool to share with those who help us.
Join the Campaign here! and help us make Hive get mass adopted!