In Praise of Spam - Mass Adoption?
Spam Yes Spammers No!
I've spent the last year getting my YouTube channel monetized again (not easy) as well as posting weekly to Dtube and the hive front ends.
The YouTube thing became a personal challenge just to do it and not for the money but just to prove it can be done with some very simple ideas.
New Content Strategy
This got me thinking about on boarding and adoption of our Hive apps.
Most people begin life on social media in exactly the same way as we all did.
Not for profit or money but to be social usually with just a few family members and close friends.
Meet Jet
I teach computer science, economics and ICT. I've been building apps and websites since the late 1980's.
My leisure time is spent making videos and blogs just for the joy of it and for the last 20+ years some of those blogs actually made money!?
What with the challenges we have all faced with the pandemic, film making gave me something to focus on and it is something I enjoy doing.
I carried on posting to D.tube and hive etc weekly but video making takes so much time that posting about my photography took a bit of a back seat.
I was still filming and photographing my travels but not posting my photo essays.
I have a large stock of travel videos and photos that I made during the breaks in lockdowns.
I'm using the @mopal account as an experiment to see how it would be for someone to just use these platforms the same way that most people use fakebook! or Instagram 'socially' without actually posting 'content' themselves but just liking and sharing things they find interesting useful or just dumb fun.
The idea behind this is that most people are 'not' naturally 'content creators' but more usually just consumers of content? e.g. What some of us would consider #spam is in fact just the kind of thing that Normie's post online.
I not talking here about those people who post 10 times a day and upvote their own content with massive upvotes in a criminal intent to steal the reward pool. We all know who you are.
I wrote this blog about user generated content (UGC) over 10 years ago.
People don't usually think to deeply about what they post to those platforms. Photos of their lunch, cat, dog etc?
If we want to see mass adoption we need to see our platforms from a normal users expectation, experience and perspective.
They are not geeks, nerds or cryptokids.
They are in the main not technically savvy at all.
I know. I've taught enough of them.
Mostly people are little more than just users with enough knowledge to order a pizza online or buy crap on Amazon.
So it is on us to make entry into this system idiot proof and not be so harsh on some of the content we see. If it's crap just don't vote on it. If it's deliberate theft down vote the shit out of it. Sadly we still have the same bad actors here on hive that we had on the other place.
We still have work to do to streamlining joining some of our platforms. @splinterlands do a good job of onboarding as do several other dapps that we have already which allows users to sign in with their social media accounts.
@peakd is brilliant for data freaks and @ecency has great #gamification so we are getting there with our iteration of #web3
The communities have helped a lot to index our options @dswigle #marketfriday project allows people to show interesting things from their local area and more.
The popularity of #photograpy is well catered for by many communities.
Making this place even more accessible for the non technical masses will involve much more 'low' quality content. Which is in itself totally a subjective view.
I ran a photography competition which became quite popular based on street signs and signage. It was popular because it was simple and easy to take part in.
Most of the front ends have some good parts but the sign up process is still to clunky and promoting our sites as a place to make money attracts the wrong type of users?
My first earnings from posting content online was $0.04! (2009) I'd been posting stuff for years prior..for free! 😂👍
What do you think?
Remember this KISS.
Keep It Simple Stupid.
Have a fabulous weekend folks.
This post came about and is largely influenced by a conversation with @melinda010100 that we had recently.
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I agree, Some on hive think you need a essay to post but in reality if they want mainstream it will be the short post that make hive popular, The blogs are awesome and likely to earn the most but the short post are what will bring hive to the masses
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Yep my point exactly. The masses will come when they see that our platform is just as good as anything else out there and the place to be.
All social platforms have a lifespan. Remember Myspace?
When privacy issues become more important to the average user we will be here ready and waiting.
Most people couldn't care less about the things we obsess about on chain.
Tokenization cryptocurrency is still very niche even with the seemingly mass media attention it's getting recently.
Hi, Michael! First off, thanks for the mention for me and #MarketFriday! I appreciate it.
I took a peek last night at a post I did last year when we lived precariously between two platforms. I got $0.12 ! Such a blow to the ego. :) Kidding. By the way, I started on MySpace. Before it was all music. I was fascinated with it.
I have to admit that I am surprised that there are not more people here, but, I can remember my own reluctance in coming. @uwelang tried really hard and finally, after a year and some change, talked me into it. I didn't think I would last, it was difficult to navigate without proper knowledge on how to manage your tokens, swap money, save passwords. They have all sorts of help out there now.
I like some longer format posts as some of the best writers are fascinating, many times, the shorter of nice, I can read them in a short amount of time and leave a comment. I like all the different formats.
I love that you will be doing the guitars! You have been posting some and they are quite enjoyable! They are interesting AND you look like you are having fun!!
I think a lot of people do come here and fade away quite quickly because they don't give it a chance for one and secondly when they look at the trending page it's a full on geek fest or filled with stuff simply because it has had large upvotes on it.
None of our platforms look anything like what the public expect to see on a modern social media website.
Our front ends look like something from the 1990's because the blogging thing was only ever going to be an experiment to see the capabilities of the blockchain.
We have no news feed, virtually no memes and all that other detritus that fills their feed. Because it was only ever an experiment and no one thought to develop those things. Maybe we should do it now?
We are getting there but it is taking a long time primarily because everything is built by volunteers like yourself with #marketfriday
Even developers are often unpaid and under appreciated.
We are not monetizing user data (mostly) and so we have a struggle on our hands.
I'm sure we will eventually become mainstream but it's going to take a lot more work and diversification in content.
The video above was the day I launched my new content strategy on YouTube. It worked like a dream and achieved my objectives a year later.
The reason it worked is because I enjoyed what I was doing and it was very niche focussed. #music
We do have niche's on hive etc it's just getting the message out there that matters.
Think about the competition.
TikTok content is 10 seconds long!!? But it works.
I'm working on some videos now that include our community here but very subtle.
Not shoving it down peoples throat...instant turn off and it doesn't work.
I want to see all sorts of content on Hive. Some people do post their dinner (and possibly all meals each day) and it's up to the community to decide what that's worth. Not everyone is into writing quality posts or doing proper video production. It's going to be interesting if/when we get to a million active users. There will be lots of spam and other abuse that we will have to deal with, but I hope it empowers lots of them when it's hard to get by generally. I'm not so interested in those aiming to be millionaires.
I did smile that the old video mentioned me. It doesn't feel so long ago that you came over here.
Stay well and have fun.
!PIZZA !LUV
This is the thing. There is a distinction to be made here between spam and spammers.
I would argue that 95% of stuff on social media is 'spam' of one form or another. News, celeb gossip etc.
What one considers quality content is a completely subjective judgement call.
In our case we have the same people from the other place spamming and scamming the reward's pool day in day out. Those are the people that need sorting out.
As for spam in itself that is not aiming to rob us blind but merely wants to share stupid memes. That I'm afraid is the reality of the current web and if people find value in it. That is no one else's business and trying to control that is fruitless unless of course they are also robbing the rewards pool.
Its hard to believe this video was made after I saw you play in the pub. Time flies.
I can truly say you inadvertently had a massive impact on my direction of travel.
Thanks Steve. Hoping we get together at some stage? Covid permitting.
Yes, people love memes and Hive will change as it grows. It is debatable what has value, but I hope those with the influence will be able to get rewards where they are deserved.
When I referred to spam I really meant stuff that was was not even intended to have an audience. Like this. We'd had a few like that before. Just have to spot them quickly and tools can be created for that.
I hope we can have meetups early next year. May need to be outdoors to start with, weather permitting.
Wow what possesses someone to make an account like that? That is truly bizarre. I don't get it? I'm baffled. I've never seen anything like that?
Wait a minute yes I have haijin used to post a screen shot of some bs technical analysis and upvotes poured in?
That account is still on here too up to the same tricks.
We agree. That account is pure spam crap and should be flagged to extinction.
I've delegated my down vote to the groups on hive vote.
If you want my down vote delegation let me know.
Looks like you find some terrible stuff. Very frustrating.
There's a lot of shit most people are unaware of. Those who say we should get rid of downvotes don't appreciate what would happen.
There are a lot of very sick people out there in the world.
Mentally ill people seem to have increased exponentially in recent years or maybe we are just more aware if them?
We have both issues here it seems?
Closing down the asylum's was another terrible Tory idea. Drugging mentally Ill people and putting them out on the streets is just inhumane but saved money and freed up loads of hospitals to be converted to luxury flats!
We have a lot of psychopathic thieves on here.
They thrive at the expense of the community.
I'm glad you are tackling this because I sure don't want to.
It must be very depressing to see this every day? How do you keep sane? 👍
I do think some people I encounter here have issues of some sort. The good stuff more than cancels out the bad for me. When I see abuse I try to deal with it and move on, but we have a guy who has been sending low value downvotes to us for years because we took him on. He's earning hardly anything as he never posts.
That's good to hear. FB etc are jammed full of that kind of crap. I haven't used FB in years. Its just full of trolls and maniacs.
I think I know the account you are talking about. It has no blogs and virtually zero hive but it spams out 1% down votes constantly?
What's the point of that kind of behavior? What purpose does it serve?
There is no purpose. There's a script cancelling out what it does anyway, so the more it downvotes the more people earn.
Haha kaching! Don't ya just love Hive?
I really ought to study the hive database scripts more.
😂👍
There is just so much going on that it's feels like being a Deer caught in the headlights! 😵👍
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