The News

I cannot resist keeping an eye on the crypto prices, but it is $HIVE I care most about. It has been holding quite well against Bitcoin this week and it catching up on 'the other coin'. This has meant a rise in the dollar value, so our votes are worth more.

From @coingecko

In terms of activity @splinterlands is racing away with around 50,000 daily active users. In that case the numbers of @dappradar seem about right, but it under-reports for some others.

It is a good time to be talking to people about Hive even if the time to buy cheap $HIVE has passed. The great thing is that you can always be earning it. Power up what you have and vote or put your $HBD in savings to get some interest with the option for a fairly quick withdrawal.

Friday Followings

As usual I will include some people who I think deserve more follows and support.

• @drwatson is giving us more previews of his Ithaqa horror comic. Hive gets mentioned in their newsletters and on their site, although the latter still has links to 'the other place'.
• I helped out @samsmith1971 by running a @hivesql query to find new people using Proof of Brain for a competition she runs. There are tokens to be won.
• @emrebeyler is a witness and a runner who just joined our Strava running club.
• Other runners @run.vince.run in New Zealand, @toofasteddie in Spain and @rthelly in the UK are a constant source of inspiration for me.
• @davidfar is writing about music and sharing his poetry.

The Doghouse

This is not about abuse so much as my own preferences for what I vote on. We are free to do what we like on Hive and cannot directly control how others treat us. I vote to spread rewards where I think they do good. These are some of the things that may make me give a smaller vote. I do like to comment and if I do then I like to give at least some sort of vote on the post.

• I have written about self-voting many times and it gets debated a lot. I see some people who give themselves a vote of several dollars on every post even when they will make a lot anyway. I decided long ago not to self-vote at all. If your own vote is one of the biggest on your post then it could have done some good spread around. I know in many cases people are doing this no more than once per day, but that could be up to 10% of your daily votes. For the extra rewards I would get I decided it was not worth it, especially as others may view it as I do and give me smaller votes. I do not expect people to vote on my posts even if they comment.
• Some people, myself included, can pretty much guarantee to get good votes on every post. Many of these are likely to be automated and so have little to do with post quality. If your post is making $20+ then I do not think it needs much extra from me when I can boost a good post that is on less than a dollar.
• There are some people who post content I like, but they almost never respond to comments. Whilst I want people to earn here I also want them to engage. I see little point in commenting if they are unlikely to read it and am less likely to give them a vote. Some of these people still do pretty well and I would hope that they see value in Hive. They ought to be getting their followers from other platforms over here, especially if they suffer from censorship issues.

I am not going to mention names for these categories and am not saying you have to do what I do. I am just making my methods clearer. My voting is not influenced much by what I might earn from the curation. I do okay on that as it is and maybe the recent changes from the last hardfork are helping with that. I want to see good content get rewards as that makes Hive a more attractive platform.

The End

I think in general things are looking pretty good for Hive. We are seeing good growth in various areas, but we still have a long way to go in terms of visibility. Various efforts are going on to improve that, but each of us can help by sharing across other platforms. That need not just be our own posts. If you see a great post that is exclusive to Hive then tell the world.

Hive five!