Dear Hivers,
It warms my heart to share this:
Almost 30 days ago, Hive was born. And today it is our birthday.
I am surprised we don’t have enough posts around this — as this moment calls for a tiny celebration and discussion over the community’s victory against centralization.
I first tasted this victory when I was on Steemit almost three years ago. I wrote full-time for 3 months. And I wrote things I would never ever write.
Like this:
I received lots of love, messages, and started gaining tremendous attention. But deep down, for the first time in my life, I also saw a new opportunity.
Things back then and now seems so much different though.
There I was late. And here I am early.
In fact, I have been secretly watching this transition. A lot was achieved in the first month, as you know. You may also know that this astonishing feat of 30 days saw several problems.
You see, in the first few days, the site was throwing tonnes of errors — with wallet issues — igniting questions in the minds of both the investors and publishers.
This is where things changed.
Everyone within the community worked relentlessly to fix the issues while the Hive Devs were continuously dropping new features — eventually multiplying our good experience here.
(And maximising the potential of the project).
In just 30 days, we are here – burying old issues while introducing new dreams. Hive has certainly bagged a great vision to empower decentralization. My hope and wish is that it moves mountains - and blows up into the best blockchain project out there.
Right now, this wonderful feeling also leads us to the next set of engaging problems. In this post, I would like to share it all with you:
I will start with the good — which is a generous comment on the benefits of this platform, and then move onto the bad — and finally the ugly that we need to address.
As a full-time blogger, I entered Hive on the first week — and then promised to write regularly for the next 30 days. I have enjoyed the process since then.
So what's good?
In comparison to blogging:
1. Hive offers better engagement
Example:
19 out of 20 posts has more than ONE comment.
What does it tell you?
We have people — and we are growing each and every day with new accounts:
2. Hive has an instant community
As the engagement level is ravingly high compared to blogging… anyone can get started almost immediately.
The audience already exists – unlike blogging where building an audience requires more than what meets the eye. (Think SEO to marketing to social media)
Here's an example from a recent post:
3. Hive offers content freedom
Quick story: WhatsApp (the messaging company) once contacted my hosting company to delete my content – and the entire website. And the hosting company suspended my account without my permission.
Because, you see, I was pushing content against their TOS.
On Hive?
That will never happen.
There's so much of freedom!
No one is looking over your shoulders. No suspension. No censorship.
(That is why I started my own series here)
4. Hive offers faster rewards
Typically, ad networks take about 30 days to make the payment. That’s a lot of waiting.
With Hive? It is 7 days.
Plus, the upside is huge because the token value fluctuates – if it goes south, we simply wait. That is why to show my support and long-term involvement, I am also powering up my recent posts:
5. Hive improves your writing
Having written over 3000+ articles, the only formula I know:
Write. Consistently.
Fortunately, Hive takes away all the unknown responsibilities — managing server to designing your blog — so that you can simply write.
Plus, more I write? Better I get.
Challenges, like the one I did before, are also compounding my experience as a writer. I get better with each post.
As part of the community, I feel responsible to share the "bad" stuff.
I have read a lot of unpleasant stories – stories around voting, manipulation, and capitalism. Though I am not exactly an expert, the bad you see below is purely from a publisher's perspective:
1. Content is not organized
Tags are not doing a fantastic job.
Even the homepage dropdown menu is limited — and discovering quality content is incredible tough.
For some reason, once a new content is pushed – the old content gets pushed down with absolutely zero attention.
Plus, the search doesn't work:
2. Communities make it tough
Not sure why we do we need so many communities. Again, posting on one hides the content from the rest. Or impacts visibility.
(Until we cross-post – which also seems like, ugh, spamming).
One more issue:
When I post on a certain community, the content never appears on the "blog" section. I have to "add" the post on the blog.
3. Content Plagiarism
As a no-censorship everyone-can-join platform, we have to live with this fact:
Plagiarism will exist.
Though accounts like @jaguar.force are doing a great job, we still don't have a mechanism to find content that is rewritten. I see a lot of content rewritten.
People who have been here for years know one simple fact: Nothing in life is crystal clear – not everything is black and white... or good and bad.
And they know the battle will continue. This "ugly" part is that ongoing battle worth paying attention to:
1. Lack of real authors...
We are onboarding new users — not necessarily publishers. For Hive.blog to grow, we need writers and authors and bloggers.
They will bring content that ignites debates, adds value, and takes Hive on the social media. For some time now, I have been thinking of ways to get popular people on this platform.
Otherwise it will feel like a closed circle with us cheering each other inside an empty bar on a Friday night.
2. Bad content gets worse
Look, I get it:
I am no one to judge good or bad content.
But some of the content is terrible. I am not talking about grammar or spelling mistakes. We can live with that.
I am talking about useless content. Content that adds no value. And serves no purpose. I don't want to call out any names. No pointing fingers here.
But to make it clear? I can show you an old example:
- The content doesn’t match the video.
- Reading a script (and doing a bad job at it)
- Multiple posts like these (from multiple accounts)
The bottom-line?
When the content adds no value, it doesn’t get shared — and the community doesn’t grow, eventually leading to a point of stagnation.
3. Overrun by get-rich-quick folks
Recently, this was a hot topic here.
You see, deeply rooted desire for many here is rewards. And they are willing to throw away ethics.
As @Tarazkp points out:
The problem is: this selfishness can limit our growth. As we think about it:
Pick any of the attention economy platform:
- Lunyr
- Invest Feed
- Peerity
- Synereo
- Akasha
And so on…
They all failed to gain attention because they didn’t focus on what was truly important. It is not merely content. It is really about collective growth.
You see, our collective growth is more important than individual success.
And so if the platform is dominated by bad content filled with dangerous minds — who are burying ethics for selfish reason — then our growth as a decentralised platform is severely challenged. These are, of course, the next set of problems we need to deal with.
We are in this together — and this celebration calls for upgrading ourselves with a collective mindset to grow.
Because wouldn't it be fantastic for us to reclaim the throne – to convert Hive into a full-fledged platform meeting insanely high amount of engagement and monetization needs in the next one year?
I hope you can feel what I am feeling. And I hope we can ALL be part of this journey to celebrate our first month – and the future... with a smile!
Cheers,
Sid
100% Hive-exclusive. If you liked the article? Feel free to upvote and rehive.