RE: What Hive is...

Hive is not just long-form content. If we want to get with the times and encourage broad participation then that line of thought needs to be expanded more than just a little.

The Hive white-paper : https://hive.io/whitepaper.pdf

Makes no explicit mention of 'long-form' content anywhere.

In particular, it mentions that the interactions to evaluate content are "reminiscent of both social media networks and traditional economies"

Now, I don't know if you know, but medium has 50 million users, and twitter has stagnated at under 300 million for the past decade, meanwhile, you have instagram, tiktok commanding over a billion. The latter managed to do this in just a few years.

Anyone who is arguing that long-form is the only acceptable form, is protecting their interests for fear of becoming obsolete. It is what it is, and I understand that view, but such is the way humanity advances, and advancing it does, whether you are onboard or not.

Hive's 'value' is what people are willing to pay, on the margin, for the coins that people can earn in the various activities that happen on Hive. As a net buyer of Hive, and not in an insignificant way, I buy because I am a participant in certain corners of Hive and wish to see them thrive. There are plenty of people who opine about what 'Hive' should be, but very few of them put more than just their time in as skin in the game. I do both.

The white paper also speaks of competition for attention. Attention garnered from reputation, popularity, quality among other things. The ability to attract users is actually the first rung in a ladder which extends much further. The more users competing for that attention, the cheaper it is for stakeholders to direct attention around. I'm a student of on-chain relationships between attention and fundamental value. (see my posts on twitter about Brain energy)

Being able to capture and direct attention is one of the ways participants can really empower their communities. Whether your community is based around an app such as Liketu, or just a Hive Community, or even a creator wishing to strengthen their relationship with their followers. In the end, it is all about the marginal cost of acquiring and directing attention.

Whether or not long-form or micro-blogging is valuable is a pointless discussion when it comes to attention. They are both valuable, so long as we define "value" to be something which drives the sorts of things which lead to downstream positive participation, whether that's engagement, views, and subsequent purchases of Hive, powering up of said Hive..

The next time someone wants to assert that Hive is not micro-blogging, I'd be happy to sell them a few million of my Hive and let them negate my votes. That's decentralization in action and I'd be fine with that.

Either way, we are all early adopters and we yearn for change. The problem is, the world is changing very fast and we simply cannot afford to hold out-dated, asinine views.