HIVE Is About A Lot Of Things

And that's for the best.

But to look at it, HIVE is all about the content, right?

HIVE Is About A Lot Of Things

I know. There is a lot of talk about posts. Long posts. Short posts. Posts on Trending, Quality posts. Garbage posts. Spamming, scamming, plagiarizing, phising and farming posts. Then, we get into upvotes or curation, downvotes, what's too much, what's not enough, so and so on.

Based on all of that, one could easily think content is all important.

But content is just one of the many priorities we have here, and unfortunately, that fact might not be so readily apparent, particularly to new users, but even to many of us who have been around awhile.

Regardless, these other needs on HIVE affect what goes on, and I believe it's good to look at some of them at least, so as to understand what we're really experiencing.

HIVE Is About: Development

A trip to the DHF will give you some idea of the work going on behind the scenes, and there may very well be more that doesn't appear there. Since the hardfork that created HIVE occurred, the same community group of developers have been working on different aspects of HIVE's blockchain underpinnings to make her better. Part of the next fork, HF 24, will be dedicated to these changes.

In addition, we're seeing some more development within the existing front ends, and announcements about new ones. These are all good things, because the more apps that connect to the blockchain, the more opportunity to increase users. We should expect to see more in the coming months as HIVE continues to mature, continues to draw attention, and ultimately defines a course.

Does Development Take Precedence Over Content?

In my mind, the two should go hand in hand, if the front end in question is dedicated to producing posts. Even what's being built under the hood should help in some way—faster, more security, more reliability—all are things that should help the end user experience.

Is Development Worth More Than Content?

I guess it depends on how you look at it. However, it shouldn't be much of a surprise to any of us that developers who have earned degrees and have shown aptitude for specialized work, like blockchains, can and will earn more than a blogger of any magnitude, but especially those of us who more or less do it because we enjoy it.

But HIVE Is A Social Media Platform!

I would say, not exactly. One of its potentially many aspects encompasses social media, and for now, its main use is still posting, commenting, and curating (along with gaming thanks to Splinterlands taking up another chunk of the chain). That does not make it exclusively a social media platform, and as more and more use cases emerge, my hope is that eventually, the social media side, even though it possibly grows to be larger than it is now, is just one of many ways to access, earn and utilize HIVE.

HIVE Is About: Investment

Along with development, investing is another element that really should be obvious. We are talking about a blockchain with cryptocurrency, subject to the whims of the open market. Aside from determining the value of HIVE and HBD, though, the investing aspect of HIVE drives a lot of what we do.

As much as someone could say the intent of curation is to cause the cream of the post crop to rise to the top, an equally compelling, and potentially stronger argument could be made that HIVE's voting mechanism, from reward pool, to reward allocation, to payout window, are all more in line with an investors' perspective, than they are for building a content creator to content consumer relationship.

Curation Is About Investing

We keep saying it's about 'quality' or value adding content, but the way curation is designed makes the content part of it only one of many considerations. Those who know how curation actually works, and then act upon it, tend to be more interested in maximizing their curation rewards, or Return On Investment (ROI).

The folks I'm talking about can have accounts of all sizes. They tend to autovote, because that's the best way to maximize rewards. They tend to spread out their upvote a bit, but they can also concentrate on a certain group of content creators who, what?—get plenty of upvotes from along the entire spectrum.

How early you upvote, who upvotes after you, how much you both upvote, and then how that all happens on every other post published to the blockchain, all factors in.

But I Only Manually Upvote, And I Read Posts First

Nice. So do I. It would be great to see a pie chart of manual upvotes vs. autovotes, but I suspect we're outnumbered.

My Time Is Limited. I Want To Help HIVE All I Can

That seems to be the main reason people cite when they autovote or join a trail of some kind. I've benefitted plenty from both, and I'm grateful for every upvote. It is what it is. All I'm trying to say, too, is that it's a part of HIVE, and if fewer are reading posts than they are autovoting, can we really say it's about the content?

I welcome your thoughts.

HIVE Is About: Community

Generally, when we think about community, we tend to focus in on those folks who we regularly interact with in one way or another. Or we may expand it out from there to include the accomplishments that individuals or groups achieve collaborating in some capacity.

Community also means governance. There are decisions to be made all the time. We're constantly deciding something. Who the consensus witnesses are. Who gets funded on the DHF. We've recently been voting on who can get the equivalent amount of HIVE in their accounts that they had on STEEM at the time of the fork.

There's plenty of good that goes on. And, there's those controversial and not so good things that occur. Any community or society is bound to have good, bad and in between.

Community will and does affect content, too. Just as we have the upvotes, we also have the downvotes. We have those who seem to be as concerned, if not more so, about the preservation and sanctity of the rewards pool than they do with the content of a post itself. So, when they see a post they feel has too much allocated to it, they downvote. Whether the post should have the amount of rewards on it that it does is purely subjective, be it from upvoting or downvoting.

Value Ratio

We each have one. We make value judgments on every post and comment we come across. In the case of upvoting or downvoting, what we think a post is worth definitely comes into play. But it's not the only thing. People are just as apt to upvote the content creator as they are the post. They like the individual and want to help them succeed. Yes, some of that is reciprocal. Some of it isn't.

This value ratio by curators or downvoters is often at odds with the content creators' own expectations. I don't know how many times I've read or heard about someone saying that they spent so much time on a post and didn't get anything while someone else made bank on a post deemed composed with far less effort.

To that, I say this: time and effort do not equal value. If you can pump out something of greater value faster than I can, should I be rewarded more?

Since we're talking about community, though, what we can make on a post often leads back to who we know, rather than what we know, or how good we are at creating content. In that way, it is often more about community than it is content. HIVE doesn't have an exclusive on that kind of behavior. It's a part of human nature.

Is it wrong? You'll need to decide that. I'm just trying to point out all the things that are at play that aren't strictly about the content itself.

HIVE Is About: Content

It's about time, right?

I don't think I've listed this in any particular order, but I think you could make a case that at least some of what HIVE is all about comes before content.

Is that good?

I think it's still early days to make a judgment call. If it continues, though, I think it can be detrimental, especially if we're trying to onboard the masses strictly through the elements of the social media platform.

There is, however, a lot that goes into the user experience, that isn't just about the content, or what they can garner, either.

Those who tend to find a why to keep at it, keep coming back, tend to be the ones who stick with it, while others move on to other pursuits.

In reality, content has to be a priority, and we all have to do our part as creators and curators to do what we can to bring value to HIVE through content.

I just think we should acknowledge the fact that there is plenty at play here, and some of it, while it shouldn't be and probably won't be in the long run, can seem at odds with each other.

HIVE is not all about the content.

But for now, that's okay, because it does need to be about more. Maybe that means don't lead with your best stuff of find out ways to retool it later.

That's up to each one of us to decide.

_{Image source—Pixabay}