Why Addiction, Not Price Hike, Will Scale Hive

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A few months ago, in what can be described as one of the fiercest controversies on the crypto space, the Steem blockchain was forked and Hive came alive to forge a new destiny, to create the most decentralized blockchain-based social media platform ever. And, quite frankly, without a central authority and censorship tendencies and a formidable community at its disposal, one can say, without bias, that Hive has achieved the basic goals of decentralization.

That said, not much has improved about Hive’s interface and user experience. It is, to a large extent, still very similar to what was obtainable during the good old days of Steem. Therefore, Like Steem, Hive is still a place where most people care more about the rewards than the pleasure and addiction that naturally come with the use of modern social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

The implication of the above situation is that, like what was witnessed on the Steem blockchain in December 2017, people tend to stick around and stay active when while the price is reasonably high. Nevertheless, users tend to hibernate and go into hiding when the price crashes to a few cents. The blunt truth is that the scalability of social media sites cannot solely be hinged on users’ rewards ─ Steem being a failed experiment in this regard. Consequently, mega social media sites are built around the addictions, addictions that come from user friendliness and fun.

Once users begin to develop psychological attachments to a social media platform, they become addicted and tend to spend more and more time on the platform even when there are no financial rewards involved. Today, each day hundreds of millions of people login to their Facebook accounts for no other reason than that they have become addicts. If Hive must scale, we must not again go in the direction of Steem, one that fruitlessly continued to hope that people will ultimately come for the money. We need to build addiction into Hive if we care about scaling.

And one way to do that is to significantly improve on our user interface and friendliness. Peakd is doing a very good job in this regard. Yet, a lot more needs to be done. Users must be able to access a Hive platform that is attractively user friendly. This is one good way to get users addicted.

Another thing that needs to be done is to improve on the post discoverability mechanism on Hive. It is still very difficult to navigate the Hive blockchain and easily discover good but underrated contents. To remedy the situation, developers need to find ways in which related contents can be discovered like it is done on Reddit. If this is implemented, many hitherto underrated posts will be discovered and rewarded and interacted with. The traffic to Hive will also improve, creating room for unique visitors to sign up.

Lastly, more useful Dapps need to be built on the Hive blockchain. Not everyone wants to blog or comments on posts, some people are interested in playing games, chatting, watching videos, etc. The migration of Splinterlands, arguably the most successful blockchain-based game, from Steem to Hive is a big plus to the Hive blockchain. But for Hive to thrive, and attain its potentials, more games and other stuffs that get people addicted need to come on Hive. Only then can we begin to genuinely scale and move forward, not when the price of Hive hits $5 or more. Money will not make people stay, addiction will.



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8 comments
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If you are here just for the money, your journey will be boring!

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Another thing that needs to be done is to improve on the post discoverability mechanism on Hive.

This is the biggest problem of hive to me. There are people with wonderful content that are not being discovered due to this problem.
I talked to a new user @the-polymath about hive and told him to publish one chapter of his new book on hive. The post is good but no reward.

How do you convince a person to join #hive without talkong about reward?

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One thing that is different from IG, twiter, FB and HIVE is posting style. FB and, twitter and IG users can post few words or one pict, then many fans likes no problem with one few words or one pic with no text. In hive, posting one pic without text followed the or story behind the pic will be judge as spam by some users. That is the differnt.

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Not everyone wants to blog or comments on posts, some people are interested in playing games, chatting, watching videos, etc

A Hive chatting dapp would be really amazing. I know many that would adopt that.

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This is a nice post and also a nice point being raised to tackle a very critical issue. Anyway i feel people should be made to understand the essence of communities like this and see beyound the monetary reward aspect of it. See it as a platform were people can come and connect with others and also relief themselves of daily stress and get the best fun out it, cause sincerely that's how i see it. I always feel happy reading people's post and commenting on the it feels like i am connecting with you personally or i am chatting with you on my WhatsApp dm. Also as @bhoa said also increase the reward system for a good work especially for those looking for it as it's a source of motivation and a means to do more. I also wish we could indulge more active minds out there as i believe it will really help the system.

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HIVE.D!

All good points as usual. I agree that it was my addiction that spurred my growth with Steem. We WILL soon see a day of major HIVE price hikes but only true attention and activity will make this Chain successful.

Kind regards.

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True, the addiction is required and that very few hold it. When people do not earn as per their expectation they lose interest. Also the other SMs are trending because they have short content. On Hive and Steem it is a usual practice of writing big post and over a period of time many lose interest on that part. If they would start earning rewards on shorter contents and just images then we can see more traffic here also.

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On Hive and Steem it is a usual practice of writing big post and over a period of time many lose interest on that part. If they would start earning rewards on shorter contents and just images then we can see more traffic here also.

The truisms in your words are too evident to be ignored. I entirely agree with you that users should be allowed to post shorter contents and even original memes. As you say, it will drive traffic upwards and make many users stay. Cheers!

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