I have run many personal experiments in regards to my account over the years I have been here and have learned a great deal from the processes. I have played around with all kinds of little metrics to see what did what and what was connected to what. Hive is a dynamic organism and it changes over time, users change, culture moves, trends come and go.
Over the last few months since the Hardfork I have had an opportunity to experiment in ways that I haven't felt able to before and while it has been interesting from some perspectives, I found this last set of experiments the worst to perform - even though the results supported my prior thinking - at least for me.
Shitposting just isn't my thing
The split of the chain meant that I had an account which was very similar, but not my main account and while imperfect, it has been kind of like testing on twins - with the only one at risk of getting hurt is me as the owner.
The start was easy, as there was not only big voters in the pool, there were active users on both chains while things sorted themselves out. I started posting shorter original content and cross-posting my non-chain-specific from Hive to Steem. In general, both did pretty well and while comments did drop off, there was still a fair amount of engagement going on.
However, after the first freezing of accounts, the level of engagement tapered off quite fast in terms of quality, with many of those who have been on and fought for Steem, becoming rightfully, completely disillusioned. At this point, the value on my posts fell dramatically, as some of those supporting me had their accounts frozen - but I was still getting pretty decent votes, because as I predicted, people still wanted something to vote on that wasn't complete crap.
I was no longer posting anything original and instead began reposting old content. This content was generally good by most people's standards and that means, was unlikely to attract downvotes, no matter what votes they got. I was getting downvoted heavily on Hive for posting on Steem though, and while this took more value than I was earning there, I wanted to continue the experiment further.
I do not think posting content on Steem adds any value to Steem, because of one simple reason, the community is gone. I was still getting some engagement and even the odd decent comment from people who still held onto some Hail Mary hope. But, there was very little heart in it or more commonly, ridicule of Steem.
After the latest hardfork, I went from reposting to shitposting, which I have been doing for what seems like an eternity, but is actually only a few days. I have been discussing much of this process with people over the last few months and how it feels, but as I described this shitposting phase to someone today, it feels like I am "kicking myself in my own balls".
It fucking sucks
While it was fun the first few times, it got old real quick. I don't know how some people have managed to keep this kind of nonsense up for years, even with large votes. No matter what votes I got, it feels empty, there is no pleasure, and since there is hardly any engagement - there is no positive feelings from the submissions at all.
Although, I am proud of this one titled, "Statistics"
That post got as many comments as the top 10 in Trending it references - and none of them were automated. In fact, the only thing that has been any kind of light in this whole process has been the odd comments I receive that take the piss out of Steem - from people who were among the most invested and bullish on the future. It has been these moments (as well as some Discord laughs) that has given me the strength to keep it up. But, even that isn't enough with the negative feeling of destroying something I loved.
This is where my Steem account is now.
I have put literally thousands of hours into creating for Steem and I haven't missed a day in around 3 years. This was my hobby, this was my therapy, this was my own hail Mary attempt to a better financial future...
Burned
And even though I have posted 50% more top level posts over the last couple months to Steem, The difference in the totals is telling in regards to engagement.
Steem 33716
Hive 35476
That is a 1760 difference in favor of Hive, or about 25 additional comments a day. For anyone who doesn't consider engagement important, I think that you are mistaken. Without engagement, discussion and the forming of relationships, the experience is terrible. again, at least for me. As said, some people seem to be able to never get bored of shitposting, but I just don't get it.
One shining light from this experiment for me personally was that I had a good reason to go back and unearth past content and it was enjoyable. I think that I have written some pretty damn good stuff, if I do say so myself. If I wanted to keep this up, I could repost 3 times a day for 10 years without repetition and probably half of it would still be relevant to whoever finds it. But my heart isn't in it - the experiment has to end and the outcomes formed into a conclusion.
I learned a lot over the last couple months through this experiment, but I think that the most important aspects can be boiled down into three points that support what I have always thought:
- My content matters to me
- Engagement is vital for retention
- Without community, there is no value
While not everyone will agree on what is right or wrong in regard to posting ever, there are three and bit weeks until my powerdown is complete and I can close the book on Steem for good. It is difficult to do after putting so much of myself onto that blockchain, but on to another I will move. Thankfully, it isn't onward alone, it is forward with the community that made Steem valuable in the first place and will continue along the path for Hive. Will the Hive experiment be able to overcome the challenges that Steem failed to negotiate?
We shall see.
Stay active, stay engaged, stay positive.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
yeah Steemit is completey devoid of interaction. The trending page is almost completey kposts in Korean which I can't read and there are also hardly any comments! I can't see how they can keep this going for long. We should perhaps remind the users there that we have a better chain now, I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few didn't hear about Hive yet.
And some of them are alts of the same people, they have two or three accounts in Trending :D
This is another option, just post the same invite over and over
This is true lots of them don't know and I was one of them. When I asked my friend that introduced me to steemit at first then she told me about Hive. Glad I found it.
Это экономика. Ничего личного. Если шитпостить выгодно люди будут этим заниматься.
Прям как я )))
Yep, people will go to where there is value and depending on the person and situation, the levels will change accordingly.
I gave up a few days ago, even doing something fun whilst earning didn't feel right in the end.
Two days until what is likely to be a sizable STEEM dump.
From shitpost one I felt like shit - but pushed through to see if I could. I would have to be pretty desperate to only shitpost and if desperate, I wouldn't, I would put in the effort to earn better than continual shitposting would receive.
Tomorrow is going to be interesting - data yet?
No data :(
Yep, I've got beer and popcorn, and 5k to offload :)
Seems to be holding up so far?
Yep, no excitement at all. Bodes well for those dumping shortly :)
Maybe shitposters are able to keep it up because in their eyes it's quality, and/or perhaps they literally don't care as long as they keep getting upvotes. The thrill of someone "liking" something (with the added bonus of a couple of cents in the case of here) or buying something in the case of new artists desperate for people to buy their commissions to the point they charge literal cents for it is sometimes all consuming.
I'm impressed you were able to keep up the experiment for longer than a day XD I could barely bring myself to post the character roll I did in lieu of a progblog x_x
Maybe, but don't they read anything else? Are they so narcissistic they can't compare? :D
It was an effort...
It is difficult to do after putting so much of myself onto that blockchain
Always the hassle isn't it? All of the dreams, the targets, even some friendships gone, just like that. All of the hard work and long hours down the drain.
Now every time that I have to go back in there, it is almost like I don't recognize the place anymore. Another 3.5 weeks and I will also be gone.
All that one can say is Selah!
The strangest is the friendships as well as seeing how some people have flipped like they are different people. Anything for a little money - a lot of money in the case of some.
It is like a shell of a once grand building, twisted and distorted by fire.
Oh yeah, as usual you can place a better tinge on it.
The friendships and the money I can understand. Been there many times before.
If they cannot use one, you simply get spat out like an old piece of gum.
Quickly turning into an ash heap methinks!
I know a couple rich people like this and they churn through friends - in old age, making new friends hard. I also know a couple rich people who are decent, have your back kind of people - even without the money, they would have good social standing.
I think all of us have been put through that mill my friend.
As long as it doesn't leave the residue of bitterness inside us, we can accept and move on. For every 5 false friends there is one good one and that's just the game of life. And greed of course!
I haven't copied/pasted my hive blogs to steem for 8(?) days now. The place has a weird 'feel' to it.
I just zap over there to give people some upvotes. (not that they are worth much).
The place is
deaddying rapidly.Oh yeah, you know what I am talking about!
Yeah, it's quite draining even to shit post. I guess it's truly time to leave the place to burn. :0)
Yep, it is. It is crazy to think what has happened in less than 4 months to the place. Sad. Even though I was leaving, I actually thought that those who stayed could have salvaged, but they have destroyed anything that makes it attractive - who knows, they will probably pump it to the moon and sell it under the Sun.
That was what surprised me. It's decent into destruction. It is little more than a carcass now.
I was going to keep a wodge of steem for a potential mooning but I don't think I will bother. I only hope it lasts another 4 weeks
I was going to do the same and was even considering keeping a week or two for curating - but it is ded to me. Weird.
This is what killed it for me in the end. The hardfork that started the unfair appropriation of user's accounts was a big one, but I would've given it up anyways, since my posts on Steemit was, as you said, devoid of any quality engagement. It still got decent votes, but I felt nothing from it.
My posts on Hive receive fun and engaging comments, and it was a joy to reply to them. Switching tabs over to Steemit, and instantly, I was disappointed. Not necessarily at the lack of comments on my own posts, but the fact that there's little engagement at all. Shame...
The "come for the rewards, stay for the community" quote was more accurate than most thought at the time. :)
Very few are getting much of anything and those that are - it isn't pretty.
Lol, very true. There's just nothing going on at Steemit at the moment, and I'm still wondering as to where the energy's at. Maybe at one of those Chinese and Korean Communities that I understand nothing of? It's a peculiar feeling, since I remembered it had quite the vibe not too long ago.
Steems largest circlejerk ever, now powered by steemit Inc :D
I ran couple "shit-post" advertisements on Steem since the split, intended to direct traffic to my actual posts here on Hive. All I was trying to do was bring eyes over from there to here, which in my opinion should have been a goal most content creators here set early on (no need for politics or the "Hive is better, Steem is failing" spiel/aggressive sales tactic). I wrote a couple posts about it, one early on here on Hive, talking about the importance of creating your markets here, where you want the eyes to be permanently. Consumer spill over is a thing and if you attract ten pairs of eyes, that's ten pairs of eyes that might look at all the other various examples of content once they're done with yours. Similar to how a customer goes to store to buy milk and comes home with a snack because it was conveniently placed near the check out line. I'm glad to see more folks now finally give up on that place, since the focus is here, right? We've been dying for consumers. If you open two fast food restaurants, one on each side of the street, thinking you'll collect traffic going both ways, all you end up doing is making both establishments struggle unnecessarily, plus put in more time and effort than required to earn an actual profit. Blah blah blah nonames and his business talk...
Just for the sake of argument, I can argue this :D It depends on how many others are in the area and what the traffic flow is like. Fast food joints will often do this to capture the market or make sure that they can serve without being too busy. Competing chains will also group themselves together to offer variety, one car load of people can have McD, KFC and BK at the same time.
PoS upsell does work and is why there needs to be some kind of range of content types, as while one might be led here through a meme, they might stay for an essay. ToS increases heavily.
Sure, one could argue. But clearly in this scenario, we could see how one side of street wasn't being used as much as the other. Steem was dying out long ago. One my final real posts on Steem, when I was concerned about the change and looking for honest feedback. part of my problem was I was uncomfortable with the sudden change and knew (predicted/educated guess)I'd be losing at least half if not more of my consumer base if I stayed on Steem. I was right, plus many old followers still haven't shown up to Hive yet. I'm sure many here have noticed that.
And yes, of course variety and the success of all these branches always leads back to the trunk, then onto other branches. The more successful acts we have, the better chance of it trickling down. That's why I'm always pushing for big names to actually bring consumers when they come rather than doing what they usually do, which is take the rewards but have little to no engagement. They could bring one paying follower with new money and eventual skin in the game, that follower supports the big name, then has nine other daily votes to use.
I suspected and assumed that many people would remain active on Steem for their 13 week powerdown or close to it - with 4 weeks now, that timeframe shortens again. Many will stay on both, but I don't see many of substance staying exclusively on Steem.
This has been the downfall of pretty much any "name" that has arrived from other places - they fail to build, expecting algorithms to find them because, "Don't you know who I am?"
The activity was of low quality and the atmosphere was quite stale. Plenty of reruns. Toxic politics. I lost count of how many times I was told something like, "Go back to where you belong," if I left a comment. No place for me. Now it's paid votes again and those only make me angry, so they can have it, and shove it up their asses. I had to stay true to my word though. I said I'd leave once I saw censorship. Could have earned maybe $1000 in that time but what I believe in is more valuable to me I guess.
LOL... unfortunately, yes, so true. Starstruck curators with high value votes hand them the big bucks, they take it, eventually run. Every damn time. If people didn't bend over backwards for them, they'd simply say the platform is broken and useless. Not one, over the span of many years, was ever able to do some simple math, then convert those numbers into encouraging thousands of their following to stake tokens instead of donating, and vote, daily. I don't want to talk about that though. Right now the push is to focus on onboarding new content creators by the thousands rather than consumers by the thousands, so this is the part where I retreat to the shadows and watch.
For the most part yes, but for me as a creator, nothing much changed - as a consumer, it did.
At least in the past, people complained on those posts, now there isn't even a comment. =D
I probably got somwhere around that, as did the curators who voted - they are nearly all on Hive from what I have seen. If they are going to vote anyway, they might as well vote to support Hive.
I think most believe it is the logical order of things - but that is not how most sites start. people start consuming before the "real" creators come in, as they need an audience before it is worthwhile.
We were talking about fastfood places today, in the city I lived, there were 7 McDonald's (at the time) and there was no possibility for more franchises to open. There were 105-110 thousand people in the city, and they need at least 15,000 per location on average before they will grant another in that region of Australia.
The dual posting has been a strange experience, indeed. The thing I've been watching for the past couple of months on Steem is my friends/follows feed... and how the time gap between posts just keeps growing and growing.
My original strategy was not to follow the mass exodus from Steem, but instead wait it out and post unique content to both chains... and then when JS would make some massive pump of Steem to profit from his own exit strategy, ride out on that wave and get as much Hive for my Steem as possible. Seems that particular scenario is becoming less and less likely... but hey, it was a gamble.
I still have no interest in shitposting. It rubs me the wrong way. regardless of whether it's my own or someone else's. It adds no value, and 20+ years experience in this gig tells me that shitposts are a certain route to site failure... not because they may/may not "make money" but because who the hell is going to bother to sign up and participate in a social venue that's just an ocean of uninteresting crap?
For me, the experiment is also likely to end soon, mostly because the latest series of shenanigans seem likely to reduce the potential ways to "move out" from Steem to perhaps ZERO, and what's the point of holding tokens in a project that has zero liquidity?
Yes, anyone hoping for Steem failure should be shitposting :D
There is very little value there now and almost nothing interesting to read in the feeds other than some of the criticism. The ridiculousness of what is in Trending now, makes the previous shit prior to the EIP look like content gold.
Hmmm... long worthy post. I started following your content barely one month ago and i discovered you wrote cinsistently. I comment when i have something to contribute. I dont think i saw trash on your blog for once. I also decided to reduce my activity on steemit. If you are someone who loves to improve, shit posting will always leave you empty. There are some spaces upvotes can't fill. I value some feedback on my post than the upvotes. There is this feeling of fulfilment you get. On my last post, i was so fulfilled when i saw @galenkp commenting on my post. It gave me this joy. You probably lije to see things get better that is why you feel that emptiness.
This is good, but it depends on what you think is worth contributing too. Generate some discussion, use what you read as a source of inspiration for your next post - explore what you know.
Thanks boss. I have a topic from your recent post
nice :)
Ohhh... Nice expressions of feelings of your past and your experimental feelings of what will happened! Just be consistent don't be affected of what happend to your surroundings just be in your self and share your thoughts according to what you observe and sees...
You are talented of expressing your thoughts unlike me?! The problem is, this is not my native language because I am a Filipino and it was hard to express in English. (^_^) and I want to be in a neutral position to avoid problem and discrimination...
I hope you get my point...
Neutrality is good for some things - but one then always has to care about what all sides care about.
Shit post is not going to be fun in the long term!
I truly gets a lot out of you as you have to just waste your time without getting anything with value.
In my opinion, it’s not sustainable!
Definitely not sustainable for me - it was boring and did nothing for my imagination.
Very true!
It's time for me to tie. A community without people is an empty place.
Yep, and Steem is fast emptying. It is going to be interesting to see what it becomes in a year - maybe a chinese government surveillance site ... :D
I'm certainly not going to judge shitposting on Steem, I actually considered doing so myself. A friend and I discussed it at some length. She called it 'mining'.
I hadn't decided when all the 'witness sock puppets' came to be. That act angered me and I decided I was all done. I haven't posted there since, and have no regrets about it.
I left my 'voting trail' intact, started a power down and haven't looked back much. Once a week to collect my rewards and the results of the power down.
One of the reasons I continued was because I know that my Steem is coming out of there and most of the people voting on me will pull there's out too. It gives it a good chance of ending up on Hive or supporting people on Hive. Some people are voting on what will get them curation returns, but I would prefer the 100% of the vote going off that platform :)
Ditto on the three points. I posted an article every day since April 2018, and for each one, I tried to share my best. I am no blogger. If Hive is solely for writers, then it won't go far. Sharing my life journey in stacking precious metals, sharing my love for home-cooking, the adventures of my travels, and just sharing my general thoughts in my posts keeps me grateful for all the experiences (good or not-so-good) and relationships in my life, including the social media relationships. Yeah... so let us "Stay active, stay engaged, stay positive."
I enjoyed reading your article, @tarazkp. Have a wonderful week, and take care 🥰🌺🤙
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 8/12)
It isn't just for writers and perhaps isn't well suited to writers all up, but some will of course do okay. I am hoping that overall, there will be more personal content that builds relationships, not just content for solely entertainment - make it more of a community, not a business.
I totally agree. Hahaha... a business? Oh yeah, so many have "invested" fiat money into this! Mine is organically grown, in the sense that I have not added a single fiat dollar to my account. I contribute my little bit to this blockchain by posting articles daily, reading other people's post, upvoting and commenting....... grass-root level kind of stuff. Nothing big-time, and remain nothing until someone discovers my value. Hahaha.. pipedream!
The only thing I have been doing lately on steem is voting while the power down happens. Prior to this current theft Fork, I was powering down, but I did think there was a very small chance for a turn around so it was not a full power down. It is a full power down now. I can not see Steem Block Chain recovering from this latest fork.
Shit post or not, I'll vote, likely not comment, (only 3 comments in 7 days there).
Price-wise, any token can do well - but the value of that community is dead. Didn't take long to rip it apart, but it also didn't take long to build something new.
I can certainly identify with your sentiments about making posts that give the impression of minimal effort and being intentionally lazy. On the other hand, when thought and effort have gone into a post and it results in lively discussion and constructive feedback, then one can enjoy the notion of having added true value to the community. Recognition of meaningful work is often a reward unto itself.
I don't mind the short posts that generate discussion, not just comments. Some get a lot of comments, with no real conversation taking place at all - lame.
I enjoyed reading this.. :)
Thank you, I think it is the title :D
yeah, we can't ignore this feeling forever, it's there and it sucks.
Well, on to better and brighter - it was worth the experiment :)
All I do on steem is post my actifit report. The rest is steemauto automatic curation. I can’t be bothered to do more.
Take what you can there, have fun :)
Sure, I might do the ‘repost old stuff’ thing as well. See what it does.
FYI there are active hivians ! Our discord ( a group of silver and gold stackers posting on hive now) is more fun than the actual steem/hive posting. Without discord I would have left a long time ago. We have chats and life meetings on discord and a community (hive) account with leased hive power etc etc giving juicy votes to all posters.
If only I had gold and silver :D
I just found this community a few days ago after leaving steemit 2 years ago. I really hope I can build a niche and a name again here. But really not sure which way to go. On steemit I wrote 196 Love & Marriage posts because that is my passion. Do I go back to that or found something else to write about?
But as you said
Stay active, stay engaged, stay positive.
Thanks for that it's encouraging.
You might want to look at what communities are around and see if any suit your interest areas.
https://hive.blog/communities
From there, you might be inspired to get involved in what you were doing or start something new. THere is a lot of pathways, but whichever you take, have fun being a creative :)
Thank you, I will. Have a great weekend.
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STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Maybe you should try Google Translate and post in Korean or Chinese. The community has not moved it has been shattered.