Hive vs Steemit vs anything else ...one of you better figure out how to matter

in #community4 years ago (edited)

I've been on this now split blockchain for almost three years. Three years posting high professional content , sometimes exclusive content.

In case you are new to who I am...here's the SHORT bio

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I'm not a newcomer, or amateur, or hobbyist or up and comer...which is NO dig on any of those, some in those categories will go onto GREAT things. I mention that to point out the tools and resources that were, have been, and are wasted by this blockchain (blockchains).

as gleefully as some of you watched the temporary rise of your site related crypto, if you want any of it or your site of choice to matter, you'll want to pay attention to the the rest of this whether you want to or not. and I mean "listen" not rationalize away anything that takes you to task.

First, I've said this a dozen times, and I'll say it again before moving onto the current important point.

These platforms and their crypto will rise and fall on the amount of people who use it and the amount of people who use it is dependent on how well the word gets out about the reason to go there THE CONTENT AND THE CONTENT PROVIDERS.

That means, in tandem with attracting the masses these sites need to attract high level, highly visible, professional content makers. That level does not GAF about making 30.00 a week worth of crypto. they care about GETTING EYES ON THEIR WORK. LOTS of eyes...not this.

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and not this...

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That up there...that does not cut it.

This here ( below) is a good START...as in beginning not as in good enough to make it worthwhile for the level of content provider that is going to be able to bring a worthwhile amount of people to the party. and by the way this was on steemit...8 months ago. It has been 8 months since stemit got close to performing, for me, at a worthwhile level.

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High level content providers do not GAF if it is Hive or Steemit or Ned or Sun or twitter or instagram, because we cannot afford to. We have a higher agenda and that is growth of interest in our work PERIOD.

So you people who split this thing in two... that's not the end of your work if you want your split to do anything more than make both sites irrelevant. Seems some of you understand this as there is a bit of a push to get people's head's out of their asses and promoting the site on Twitter with the #hive. Unfortunately a large score of what is being shared and posted and talked about there is crypotnerd speak that no normal user of twitter GIVES...A....FUCK...ABOUT.

Look around the world in which you live...are their movies about cryto currency? TV shows? billboards? and people listening to crypto talk in their head phones?

NO THEY ARE NOT. SHARE POSTS ABOUT WHAT NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS ARE INTERESTED IN ...FOR ...FUCKS...SAKE.

If that concept is unclear...or confusing...by all means give this previous attempt of mine to get it into peoples heads what will and will not bring people to the site.

https://steemit.com/blog/@arseniclullaby/arsenic-lullaby-rant-everytime-these-guys-open-thier-mouths-the-price-of-steem-drops

I stopped fighting that battle...and have no interest in it, or time for it. There is not a single user on either site that can say I haven't been pulling MORE than my weight for the past three years. Years of quality content and sharing and calling attention to steemit...which now I suppose many of you no longer want attention drawn to...you want us to do it all over again with this new site. a you shitting us?

(BTW, I don't presume to ask people to share my blogs...but in this case...if you are a content provider, it'd be a good idea to share this. Because the more of us that do...the more likely some of these whales who split this fucker will see it and MAYBE get the fucking message)

How about we make the content and YOU get your shit together promoting it. Because if our job here is to make the content AND promote it...well...we don't need this site at all do we? We have out own sites and patreon and subscribe star and youtube and instagram and bitchute and twitter and gab and minds and on and on and on...

It's time for the people who put this split into motion to pick up the bit, and that doesn't mean crypto talk bullshit or adding another app to a site that no one, relatively speaking, is going to. all of that is putting the cart before the horse.

See this....this is a nice start but THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

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The majority of the free world is stuck in lockdown mode...you'd damn well better be able to get more interest right now, than that.

You need to do what US CONTENT PROVIDERS have had to do to grow. Post content people GAF about and often and in every place you can find.

Either of these sites growing would be nice, but not necessary for me or my work...and that goes for every other content provider out there.

So... you can start promoting what we do here...while we are still here, or enjoy the ghost town you created.

Recent post by myself here...in case you want to use them

https://steemit.com/hive-164671/@arseniclullaby/arsenic-lullaby-comic-nails-four-predictions-at-once

https://hive.blog/hive-164671/@arseniclullaby/arsenic-lullaby-comic-nails-four-predictions-at-once

OR...heaven forbid...look around on the site for art, music, comedy, writing, ect ...there is less now than there has been, but there is currently still plenty and post that.

Or don't ...Arsenic Lullaby has endured and thrived through multiple culture wide large paradigm shifts. If steemit and/or hive just becomes a memory...that'd be a shame but shrug Life goes on for the rest of us.

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This is exactly what I've been saying for months now, but you wrote it so much better and to-the-point than I would ever do. If you like, check this and the original post. I wish I could broadcast your post every 30 minutes to all related sites on both sides.

and that doesn't mean crypto talk bullshit or adding another app to a site that no one, relatively speaking, is going to.

I think it is exactly as you say, the stars here are the devs themselves instead of actual content providers and they engage in power-circle-jerking, not caring about growth or future plans, as long as they get the rewards. What is interesting is that when those people got away from Steem, things there changed and now seem less "cryptonerdy" -- but, on the flipside, there are no more high-stakeholders there to properly curate quality content and give incentives to attract more content providers. And by "incentives" I mean decent exposure and decent rewards.

Hope they get the message and act accordingly soon.

(Also a shoutout to @katharsisdrill, @steevc, and @slobberchops as they are great to keep a discussion going and I'd like to read their opinions.

I agree on all counts my friend and I'd like to add/point out to all the whales and devs
"not caring about growth or future plans, as long as they get the rewards" That such an attitude took steem from being worth 7.00 or so down to being worth .16
So what I say here is in their own financial best interest, you wanna make money? or jerk yourselves off to the tune of 30.00 a week?...and then 20.00 and then 2.00 and then 0.20

I've been producing art here for years. Plenty attempts at the humor as well. I insist you read the post I published today. It'll piss you off even more.

well...that's fucking infuriating. I hope they are happy losing money, because that's were this road will take them, I'll still sell plenty of work with this place or without it.
will repost that tomorrow ( I try to limit to a post a day )...fucking...infuriating @steevc you seen this?

I've been saying things similar to what you're getting at here, a million different ways, for years. People get it but there's always something working against the flow.

Yeah....what's working against the flow is that the whales seen to want this to be their own little cryptonerd echo chamber instead of a social media site for human beings. Which worked out real great for steem....it dropped by 90% and got bought up by something with a brain. and by the way, he implemented and fixed a lot of stuff, and I wouldn't count him out yet. He didn't invest all that money just to take it in the butt. It's an even bet he turns that site around/hires someone who knows how.

I left the old place due to censorship. At one point I used to enjoy writing a lot of local satire. A good example is a recent post with the Sunday Sunday Sunday thumbnail. I wouldn't feel 'safe' writing that kind of material, or even pushing it further, under someone acting like a boss. I took a few stabs at dark humor as well and even included artwork containing cartoon violence. That freedom is gone when working under a panel of censors. Plus they're selling votes over on Steem again. I battled that for years and was forced to earned peanuts while my blog was one of the most active on the platform consistently. I can't buy votes for something funny. Wtf happens when I bomb?

As usual I can't remember one whale arsehole from another and I am not sure if I have chanced upon this liquid bloke, but as I wrote somewhere else on this page only organised resistance (like it was done in flagrewardpole (or what is was called)) can hinder these things. Seems we have to destroy the business of liquidpants as best we can and try to compensate the victims.

... And see if we can get a consensus of some sort of white paper that could stick out a course in the general direction of Utopia.

But what a prime arsehole.

It's clear now he's just being a bully. Went and downvoted everything like I'm supposed to give a fuck or something...

Yes, exactly. I don't give a shit about the Hive, but I do give a shit about rich idiots trying to dominate others.

Yeah. Rich idiot, so far, since I have a temper, that I'm trying really hard to put down, has killed Hive for me.

I was through this - exactly the same - with the Norwegian cunt called Fyrstikken when I made fun of the vote selling business by making a satirical cartoon. People actually helped out and he was driven off the network by the downvotes. I for one voted down every poor, little sod who used his vote selling service. In the end he powered down and left. Motherfucker!

It's funny, now that you mention it, that it IS tough to find good, creative content on the chain. I put in a lot of search time trying to find creative folks to follow and support, but it ain't easy. In addition, I plug away, making posts every day, a book review here, painting there, short story-poem-freewrite-comic this time, music playlist or something similar the next... And I do pretty well and feel I get decent support, but it took a LOOOOOONG time to get to where I felt like anyone noticed what I was doing. Most SANE folks, who are making creative content to get PAID and not because of some PSYCHOTIC compulsion, are going to try their hands here for a few weeks, post some quality work, see it get ignored or (much worse) downvoted, and say, "Screw this. It's not worth the effort."

I probably would have given up in the first two months if I GAF about making money. The amount of work it takes to get noticed (not JUST on here) is disproportionate to the reward, whether that be economic OR simple gratification based entirely on "eyeballs reached."

My hope/plan is to keep accumulating Hive Power until MY vote is worth something, then go around upvoting all the creative folks I can find who need a boost---maybe even throwing them some "tip money," now that Peakd has made that option available, (I haven't tried it, yet, but I will soon,) and I'm going to use all of my magickal and psychic powers to HEX the shitheads who try to suppress the artists and writers and creative folks on the platform... That's my plan.

By the way, if anyone wants to form an ART and CREATIVE TYPE vigilante/gang/coven/guild with me to encourage and protect artists on the chain, and be all spooky and intimidating to the haters, I will eagerly join or help form such a group!

Oh, I'm with ya.
and as far as this "The amount of work it takes to get noticed (not JUST on here) is disproportionate to the reward, whether that be economic OR simple gratification based entirely on "eyeballs reached."
you can get there...you get a small piece of the pie. If it's a large and growing pie then it's worth the effort. That IF is my concern here.
Many of us put in a solid effort in good faith on Steemit, and for us...the difference between Ned and Justin was un-noticable. So for OUR proposes these powers that where split a site in two...if they don't have a plan, and execute it, to make the user base grow here...they can say goodby to many of us. and what will they have then? I crypot fan club with a currency worth about as much as the Bolivar

I think one of the things they need to focus on that would help is a better search feature. Been here for awhile myself and this is the first time I've seen your work, and only by doing something I never do and skimming new posts on the site. Got so used to there being mostly shit posts I quickly stopped looking at the new/hot feeds and resorted to finding interesting people in comment sections. I say all this because without being able to find talent or interest they will come and quickly leave again. A bird in the hand and all that.

Followed you now that I've found you. Glad you're here

another excellent point. which reminds me, Steemit had "featured" posts that were 99% of the time crypto nerdspeak.

I agree that Steem failed to achieve its potential and Hive may struggle too. At least with Steem there was a company who could have promoted it, but they failed at that. With Hive we have a group of random people running things by consensus. It remains to be seen if any of them can do any sort of marketing.

I've done what I can, but my reach is limited. I've signed up maybe 20 people. Not all of them stick around. Despite being one of the few places where anyone can earn something we struggle to gain and retain users. That's partly down to usability, but lack of community is a factor.

I notice your own site does not have a Hive link yet. You have a few thousand followers across various platforms. If a third of them have you votes on Hive it would add to something, especially if they invested a little money in it, for which they could get a return.

I fully understand that content creators will go where the audience is, but maybe its worth directing fans where they can go to give financial support. If a few people like you each bring a few thousand fans to Hive and start earning better then it may get some attention. It has to start somewhere.

I am not a marketing person and I am not selling anything myself, so this is just conjecture on my part. I can appreciate that people have finite time to create stuff and interact with fans. I admire that you have persisted with the blockchain stuff and you have definitely entertained me.

Cheers.

I've got close to 10,000 followers across the various platforms and an email list larger than that, but I'll be fucked if I'm going to plug this mess until the powers that be start showing the creative community some respect, or at least take a smart pill and start understanding that we are the one's that make or break a site.

It's a bit of a dilemma, as it really needs someone with your sort of following to make the leap and really push Hive to give it a kick. The 'powers that be' may not be organised enough to do what is needed. We need to go viral through building niche communities. It will just spoil it if some malicious whale flags stuff.

Ha! Well, I am almost too tired to write about it, but here's my thoughts on the subject.

Steemit was a flawed experiment from the very beginning. The biggest mistake was that it never defined what it was supposed to be. A blogging platform like Medium, a news board like Reddit, a social media like Facebook, a micro blogging platform like twitter. Ned and Dan are no doubt crafty businessmen and engineers, but they don't know shit about entertainment. Problem is that the entertainment industry don't know about entertainment any longer either.

Facebook is the most clever business model for decades - the idea was that you produce an empty frame and let people entertain themselves and each other with home made kitsch, political opinions and kittens. You then abuse everybody's privacy and make money selling everybody's asses. This idea was what attracted the founding fathers of this mess. They just didn't have any idea how to present an understandable format and they hadn't any plan on how to directly capitalise on this place. Growth should create value, but they should have looked further into what it was Facebook and Google did when they had grown. They made it into an advertising machine that is right now destroying large part of the old news and entertainment industry.

Steemit had some fine ideas like getting money back to the people and little businesses like ours. But as the whole thing was based on some lofty libertarianism that doesn't work in the real world it was (of course) destined to run into troubles. And troubles there was.

Vote buying, circle-jerking, plagiarism, self voting etc. There's one name for it: corruption. Having no centralised way to deal with these things, the community came up with their own institutions and many, among them me, have been working tirelessly to stop the corruption since 2016. But for all the frontier spirit there still isn't backup in the system for these efforts. And that is the problem we are facing. I am not sure how the perfect system is accomplished, but I know that it will come by through trial and error and not by ideology. I see Hive as an opportunity to actually do something about it, because Steemit inc, the semi-abusive company behind isn't in charge any more. It will have to be done by you and me and the rest of the people here who actually cares.

So ask yourself this very important question:

Who are you talking to in your post? Whales is pretty vague. I have a general impression of many of them as being OK people, who like you see things from a very personal angle. Why should they help out with creating a place where quality content is rewarded. Why should they stop self voting, voting for their friends or people they fell good about etc. ??

As my project (which is only part of what I do for a living) is about ditching editors, art dealers, music distributors, media and all the rest of the people who took advantage of me and my fellow artist before Facebook destroyed them all, I just know that we have to organise this ourself. This is not Twitter or Facebook. This is a prospector town where you have to build the water supply, the poorhouse, the theater and the police station. Gangs of criminals will inevitably try to take control, that is just part of it. And as Steem/Hive is not at all as decentralised as it is made up to be (The miners have a major control of this place) we need to convince them that some sort of fair democracy should be built into the meritocratic system.

In short We need to write a white-paper.

I am not even sure if I can find the time for participating, but that is what has to be done. Both you and I have delivered a lot of quality content, but that doesn't solve the problems of this place, and if we, the middle class of Steemit/Hive does not work to change it there will be no changes...

EDIT: I would have liked to present this in a more orderly fashion, but I hope my thoughts come through. The creative community is definitely being fucked over as usual. Cheers.

You laid out a lot here, and I am hard pressed to disagree with any of it. Every point you're making is spot on. The whales I'm referring to are the people who set the split in motion, advanced it, and/or executed it. Which if they have no plan to grow usership...will in the end amount to a temper tantrum, and another crypto currency that no one gaf about and another social media platform that might as well be a niche message board.

I would wish that the system had another weight between proof of stake and proof of work. I think that is one of the main reasons for a lot of the drama here. Proof of stake are the rich investors, and they have the power... also the power to forge. Proof of work is a good idea but has been treated stepmotherly. Sadly this reflects the real world, doesn't it? The freelancer or little shop will have to follow the prices, the percentage of the large newspapers, editors, distributors etc. An art dealer who split 50-50 with his artists will, if he work for 10 artists, have an income ten times the artists.

Bringing the money is seen as value, the product is downplayed and neglected as a cheap commodity.

I would have liked to see a system where reputation actually meant something. Since Slashdot invented the karma system there has been many tries to value quality, and it can be. The argument that everything is equally good is just so stupid. We humans use a lot of time to evaluate quality in so many things and we have built systems to do the same, like academia. Programmers are just immature when it comes to understanding these things. They have to use a Gauss curve instead of a boolean.

They have driven the Authors away, now all we get fiction wise is pretty much only the 5 minute free writes. I used to be able to read full stories, bit by bit, but still full stories the authors would share, I suppose there might be some still writing, but not many at all.

I loved reading and commenting on stories and even offering suggestions when asked. Those days are gone, they died a semi silent death in late 2018 early 2019. I don't visit face book or you tube very often because there is always that chance of enjoying something, then it being banned removed or blocked. Most other Social Media sites are that way. Steem and now Hive has also adopted that, lets make it hard for people to find things, lets grey the people out so people think they are bad actors.

I hope after the final separation Hard Fork from Steem that the first two things they fix are the Witness selection, and the down vote system. If a person wants to down vote a post for excessive rewards then that down vote should go against the excessive rewarder not against the post creator. That the person that cast the down vote would have an auto comment made, and then the community can decide. Yes people say that will only start flag wars, fine!!! All wars eventually end. People will learn they can not just go about down voting willy-nilly that others are watching and will take action.

It is time for the content creators and the content consumers to start pushing for a fair down vote system that does have an effect on plagiarism, and abuse.

I agree on all counts, and find your solution here to be very clever
"If a person wants to down vote a post for excessive rewards then that down vote should go against the excessive rewarder not against the post creator. "

First time I believe I've come across you so hello!

I've been sharing my music, some travel posts and beginners guides since I joined 2 years ago and it does take time to get noticed but you can say that about any site, crypto or not. You don't just turn up on soundcloud and Spotify for example and expect to have a million hits in the first week.

There is an initiative called @trendthis which is highly supportive of long form content and is strictly not looking at crypto/hive related stuff to get on to the trending, which is our shop window but completely dominated by Hive stuff.

As one of the comments said, I've been trying to grow my account as well so that my upvote might be worth something but have also delegated a lot to curie to help with their manual curation.

I might write a post about content discovery and using the right tags because people just post in some communities for the rewards and not in communities to have like minded people with a similar interest comment on them.

Anyway, there's lots still to work on and the foundations are hive are still being set. This does feel different and I have definitely seen increased engagement in my posts than vs steem.

Hello back!
I'm not new to this rodeo, nor to self promotion on the internet. which is why I say flat out that a small site like this, as new as it is...needs to start giving us a reason to use it. There are a dozen others out there with larger bases of users...I can post on Instagram (just as an eample) anytime I want and have several thousand eyeballs on it and several hundred interactions. and so can other creatives...we know what we're doing, does hive? They need us more than we need them

I've left comments on other posts of a similar vein but really, what is Hive? To me, this is what makes the most sense.

I think Hive is the blockchain and code used as the foundation layer to build other things on top of and therefore THAT should be the marketing of Hive itself - to developers, app builders, platform designers etc.

Then those dapps themselves need to find their own niche and market their dapp that uses the Hive foundation. For example, things like Travelfeed for content related to travel, PeakD for bloggers, Dsound for music lovers etc etc...

They need us more than we need them

True, but you could also say that if no-one used Instagram or any other site. All these platforms need users but why should users go to these platforms in the first place?

These are just rhetorical questions and my own thoughts but I'm more of a "serious hobbyist" (i.e. not a pro but enjoys what he does and takes it seriously enough to put his best effort in to things) and I'm enjoying being around here for the time being.

Whenever I share to Twitter I try to focus on the other communities of people. There’s a lot of ball fluffing here for crypto work. I get the support for those who develop or wrote about what they did to perform X action but there’s so much of that. If DIY posts, which I tend to make most and do get rewarded fairly well considering others don’t make squat, made as much as some of these people fluffing each other’s balls, we could have a lot of good stuff going on. When I made my first hive post it was titled ‘first post on hive, last post about hive’ because the wider world doesn’t give a shit about echo chamber ball fluffing dudes. They want to write about their lives and get rewarded to do that. Hopefully someday I can gain the stake required to get out there and give more people a starting place to create accounts and get them using the place the way we know it can handle.

well said-- "When I made my first hive post it was titled ‘first post on hive, last post about hive’ because the wider world doesn’t give a shit about echo chamber ball fluffing dudes."

I'm glad I stumbled on your post because I've been describing steem and now hive as ghost towns. People have a a real second chance with hive but it will pretty much be just like steemit without a real marketing plan and beyond that plan, high staked people need to learn to protect their investment by voting on all content creators.

" a real marketing plan"...yeah, that would be smart, wouldn't it?

Bravo! And Well said! @arseniclullaby

And HOW WONDERFUL this site would be if we ONLY had to focus on content?! I can't imagine such a wonderful world. If I merely had to make new artwork, writing, or even sharing the garden and NOT think about FB and INsta and all the other crap I am so bad at and HATE to use and go to what a joy that'd be. I mean we'd be doing a LOT of the work by making the interesting content ( I mean I think we make some darn good stuff round here!) and "THEY" could do the work (and I hold no illusion that it is NOT work) of social media.

It's funny how Social Media and internet life is SUCH a double-edged sword. It is so good for we artists/writers/content creators opening up worlds and people to us that used to only be accessed through small channels of 'agents' and 'gallery/moviestudio/musicstudio/publishing houses' but WITH that comes the also very REAL multi leveled job of promoting/advertising/accounting/managing production that are , all in themselves , single jobs for SOME people, so if #Hive did the 'social media' work how much MORE I'd be likely to encourage all others to use the site. AND others would WANT to use it, if they can think , "Gee I'll blog about my obsession and this site will make sure other people similarly obsessed will find it and we can all get our little crypto tips".

So, maybe the New Normal will have #hive become that sort of place? If not if there becomes A PLACE like that, I'm high-tailing it over that right quick!

Great post, perfect sentiment and Shared!

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