Make Upvotes Great Again...Again.
I love getting inspiration for content by poking around the blockchain....
I'm starting my next big trip on the road and before I did, I had some downtime this afternoon. So here I am, spending time...Scroll the snaps on the blockchain and guess what I see...
Something that inspired me and hopefully could inspire you too!
And it's from a VERY active creator on Snaps.... @wiseagent
I have been screaming from mountain tops about short form content (microblogging) and it's importance here on the blockchain. When @leofinance introduced Threads on chain, I was beside myself. Here was the perfect application for our chain...
Remember these marketing messages we used to parade around...
- 3 second transactions
- zero fees
I mean, microblogging was tailor made for this blockchain and with the recent developments taking place here, across the board, it's evident that there is HUGE potential with short form content.
Everyone is doing it, Leo has Threads, @ecency has Waves, Peakd has Snaps and my favorite mobile app @snapie is the first thing I check when I wake up in the mornings... We're even seeing Shorts make a huge splash from @threespeak again which I'm very excited about.
And that's all fine and dandy but alas.....Take a look at what @wiseagent mentions....
The fun will be lost, if people don't feel valued and that means...No upvotes, no traction.
So let me get this out of the way right now....
Save that 'protect the rewards pool' for someone who hasn't been here since day one. We've been 'protecting the rewards pool' since I got here and it's left us with a 6 cent token and I think we're tracking at #600 or something on Coingecko.
I actually have a solution for this that would increase the price of the token (maybe lol), but more importantly would retain our members and make people actually rave about this blockchain to their friends and family...
And here it is....Use your upvotes.
Crazy, I know. Revolutionary in fact but let's look at this from a purely psychological angle...
New User A comes to the blockchain. They actually figure out how to manage 'account keys' and don't give up with the awful onboarding we currently have on chain and start seeing the amazing applications and communities here.
New User A starts to poke around on the short form apps. They hang out, they share some pics, they network a bit, they engage with others....And they do this, without expecting a thing in return.
After a few weeks of this, they get zero support in the form of upvotes, and they start to drift....Eventually because of no support they leave. No big announcements, nothing huge, they just leave.
Meanwhile, we have protected the rewards pool!
So what happens if New User A gets 10 cents worth of Hive when they make a Snap or two. What happens when they start seeing the boost in engagement from the other community members. What happens when they start to write and create long form posts and get a few bucks here and there.
You know what that develops.....Loyalty.
We have been our own worst enemy here on chain because we scare people off and then the people we don't scare away, we rarely support. So they eventually leave because why would they stay...Zero rewards, zero community involvement, and zero growth potential.
Yeah, they aren't going to stick around because it's 'decentralized' either.
We literally can become the change we want to see, we just need to stop holing onto our voting mana like it's a boittle of water in a desert. And I'm not saying support the obvious fake accounts, I'm not saying give people 10 bucks worth of upvotes a day.
I'm just saying....Let's start treating the rewards pool as a REWARDS pool. Let's see what happens when we do things differently than we have since Hive first started....
Which reminds me....I need to go use my voting power of @snapie , I'll see you there!!
Posted Using INLEO
Nice read! 🚀 Do you think microblogging on-chain can finally bring consistent engagement and real value to creators?
It's up to us.
I understand the thrill of microblogging, but we shouldn't overlook the fact that quality usually outweighs quantity. Just because something is fast doesn't mean it's actually effective ;)
No one is coming to Hive to read a blog.
THey will come for engagement and rewards.
This is a really thoughtful take, and honestly, you’re not wrong.
We talk a lot about growth, onboarding, and retention, but overlook the simplest thing such as making people feel seen. A small upvote might seem insignificant to many, but to a new user, it’s validation literally telling them they’re not just posting into a void.
Protecting the rewards pool shouldn’t come at the cost of killing engagement. If anything, thoughtful distribution is what grows the ecosystem.
Definitely food for thought.
Your reply is upvoted by @topcomment; a manual curation service that rewards meaningful and engaging comments.
That's exactly it. The rewards pool is there to reward people, not to keep sacred forever. If people feel rewarded (in more ways than one) they will stick around and tell the world.
I agree. People tend to stick around if they feel valued, so I think upvotes are fine. They can rely on other factors such as K/E ratio to see if someone is a net positive instead.
Yeah and with each account there is a track record. So I say, let's all change what we have been doing...And give those votes out to as many as we can :)
It was DBuzz that got me hooked into Hive. When @shainemata first introduced me to Hive the two things I understood was DBuzz is like Twitter and Hive.blog is like blogging. When he tried to talk to me about PeakD, Ecency, LeoFinance, Actifit, etc., it was overwhelming.
But microblogging like I had done for years on Twitter and blogging like I had done on my personal blogs for years. That I understood.
Had those early interaction not been so engaging and rewarding I'm not sure what my experience would have been like. Let's face it, Hive and Web3 in general isn't easy to understand. The terminology and ecosystem takes time to learn and understand. So those early days where a slightly confused me could do two simple things and experience the difference from traditional blogging and microblogging. It was huge!
Making it easy and relatable is key to not just adoption, but staying power. How many people onboard and then fizzle out after a very short time? Too many. We need some simple and easy to understand dApps that feel familiar and are exciting (and rewarding) enough to keep doing.
It's still an awful onboarding experience. Account keys absolutely kills us. I've tried to get a few people recently, they lasted a day and gave up because there was zero reason to stick around.
To make upvotes great again, we need to give them back to the people, meaning to the users rather than getting whales and (some) useless DAO projects fat. Sometimes we need to get back to... origins.
Agreed. EVeryone who has huge stake and is part of that inner circle of friends are the reason we are where we are. Change it up, be more liberal with the votes and watch this place explode.
This is a basic principle of business. Every time you treat one customer well, they tell two others; every time you treat one customer badly, they tell ten. Stop messing with people; it's the first step to reviving Hive. Unfortunately, I don't think it will happen. The stakeholders are just technical people with no business sense.
That's the main problem. The majority of the people that control this chain have very little social skills. And for whatever reason they dont understand that more people means more income for them.
Good point!
In PeakD you can enable and configure a 'one click upvote'.
I've set it to 15%, which allows me to give away quite a few 2 cent upvotes on snaps.
It would indeed be good if more people would do this. Even those with low stakes. Just the fact that people get some likes on their post would have a positive impact I think.
And see, that's brilliant. Even at two cents, people feel like their content made an impact.
I wish the good atmosphere would return to Hive. Profits always attract people.
Agreed!
I hundred percent agree on the sentiments
having it as a rewards pool is a great idea
Votes are the carrot that hooks people. Especially smaller accounts. Along with interaction. I feel that one word responses are often discouraged, but with the rise of short-form short responses combined with a vote can really spur people to keep going!
Absolutely! I've always tried to respond to every comment that shows up on my blog. I'm not perfect, but I feel like it's a good show of support for anyone that supports me. Combined with a small vote, things are golden!
Any new users are usually thrilled even with just a response! The vote is icing on the cake!
Incentives work, even in small amounts.
Posted using The BBH Project
very much so