Intrigued by the promise of crypto and web3, I’ve taken the plunge to add some of my stories into this new realm. The first thing I found in moving into web3 was the focus on the cryptocurrencies or NFT parts which seem to fill the searches. Getting those searches down to blogs and similar writing sites led me to site which remained overwhelmingly filled with the technical aspects of the ongoing projects with a strong reward programs for the developer community. I used my first post here on Hive.blog to express my initial thoughts on the usability this site and offer a general analysis of what I think is necessary for web3.
This picture is one used on the first issue of the Morbid Ink magazine. I threw it in just for fun (and a reminder that the upcoming posts will focus on the stories).
As a user/creator using places like Substack and Medium, it’s immediately obvious that coming into sites like Hive Blog with a wallet as your id creates a large initial barrier to entry. For me, I’ve had many years of IT, so I find the change easier to manage. However, for general users with the web2 focus on email/passwords for site entry, use of wallets (even with creating an ease of use by adding browser extensions) is something I feel many potential users will bypass.
Beyond that initial thought, the actual implementations I’ve found Hive Blog appears to have an ease of use similar to web2 blogs. However, this blog doesn't have a feature like real time spell check. Time will tell me about the actual reach of this second post. To test the reach of this and others, I've set up my accounts on other platforms like Steemit and Mirror.xyz. Some of them show use of analytics back to the Web2 world (along with links).
As part of my initial research, I did a quick analysis of the users coming from Google to each site organically. Steemit is by far the leader with about 1.5million per month (but it’s nearly all crypto/drop focused from what I can see). The second seems to be Peakd.com (I'm not sure how many come to Hive.Blog) which gets over 220k per month in users. Mirror.xyz gets about 30k per month. t2 is another one that looks good but only a couple of hundred each month for users from Google.
However, the proliferation of various sites and various platforms using multiple underlying crypto currency begs the following questions.
How do users find the platforms?
Which crypto is the best for their particular needs?
While I’m not a fan of Google, Bing, or others, the search directories are at least minimally useful to finding information about platforms/sites. So far, I’ve not stumbled upon any similar on Web3. However, I’m a relative newbie, so if you have a suggestion, I’d love to hear it.
Obviously, I’m looking at writing/publishing platforms for my stories/novels. Some of the information and implementation pushes strongly in using NFT. However, with the saturation of Bored Ape collection on places like Open Seas (not to mention their upcoming fun with the SEC), I don’t see how trying to place your novels/stories into an NFT can complete. In my mind, Web3 must carry over the familiar and successful traits of Web2. This would include a better search engine(s) and search functionality, along with specialized marketplace platforms.
I can see the immediate need to push areas of online marketing with searches to build new user confidence while maintaining the decentralized approach. Addressable.io has several case studies, but the focus appears to be on building and creating new ventures on-chain. It leads me to believe Web3 remains in the infancy stage similar to the Web2 years 1998-2002 (Google's rise to prominence).
To that end, I’m curious about finding whitepapers that focus on those areas of platform building/hosting across rather than the next iteration of another cryptocurrency which can knock off Bitcoin/Ethereum.
I found this great cartoon on Reddit to make my point (I'm using it under Fair Use and I have no idea who to credit).
