Hive is a different kind of animal and when we try to approach it in terms of legacy social media any concept seems to fail. One of my main insight from years of thinking about this tech and community is that, new tech needs new patterns of thinking. We can see that in terms of marketing, organization, we just learn to tame this powerful beast. Also, I believe we shouldn't simplify Hive, it can be as complex as needed, the key is breaking down this complexity and creating tools to teach it. It's quite complex anyway. Inevitably. And since we have new unbound way of organization I let myself to think freely and wildly here. Take from it whatever you like and let's discuss it.
While listening recent Hive Town Hall there was idea thrown loosely about reaching new users when they get to 100HP or so. You know, just to communicate there is more going on than simple posting, rewards or games. That made me think. How are we suppose reach this people? The thing is, memo messages attached to transfers are invisible, these are absolutely counterintuitive in terms of communication we all got used to. At the same time we can't have traditional system-messages, because, well, there is no real system here. Let's digress for a brief moment though.
Retention is a continous challange. Recently I had another idea to improve it, that I shared with three major frontends. By far I had the best communication with PeakD team. You see, we have this un-official thing with introduction posts, there are 4 different tags (which is ok) and if you are not guided by somebody it's impossible to find out about it. No system to prompt you but human guide. This creates bottle neck for adoption, we just loose great oportunity with every user who doesn't really know what to do here. I remember my beginnings, it was a big challange to start with Hive, I found it on my own. I remember reading many posts, just to find info about intro posts.
Frontend profile tabs are heavily based on Web 2.0 model, except of mysterious reputation, there is nothing new which would catch attention of users. The main purpose of such tiny feature would be prompting new users who fill up their profiles to write that intro-post. Being able to share it and being seen is just secondary but interesting and valuable too. And now, having somebody written this post it's much easier for others to find newcomers and guide them further.
But let's come back to the idea of on-chain message system. From the perspective of people coming from Web 2.0 we lack this little envelope icon. It could be another great tool to improve retention by spreading information and guiding new Hivers. Moreover, it could serve project managers to communicate new proposals or changes in their projects. I realized messages on Hive were talked over and over, but hey, it can be done in many different ways and I agree, traditional one is pretty useless here.
One relatively easy way to do it would be from frontend level with ability to interpret memos as messages and display these in a special folder. This would increase usability of memos and create one way to communicate. The thing here is that it would be harder to automate it or use mass messages. Another thing is it doesn't scale in terms of necesity of spending this little ammount of Hive to spend message.
Let's spend RCs instead. And here comes another option, much harder, requiring Hard Fork and a lot of work. I'm not even sure about feasibility, but let's start with functionality and benefits. Obviously, not every communication needs to be on-chain, most of it don't need to be saved forever and such system is not envisioned as 1-on-1 private chat thing. I'd see it as mass-message system.
Who could access it? Anybody with stake big enough to spend massive RC costs for sending message. In that case, there would be a place like a Hive info wall. News would be seen by everybody and accesable with icon that pings users similarly as notification button. It'd be meant to use sparsely and communicate the most important things by project owners, proposal creators or community managers. To avoid bad actors or ads it could be accessible only for people above some reputation level (return proposal style mechanics comes here to my mind too).
Messages there would be customizable in terms of lasting and some of these could be pinned, since some informations are universal and timeless, like tutorials for newcomers. Infos could be visible above some HP/reputation treshold limit. Calendar with events or meetings could be seen there too. There are great Hive tutorials created which are hard to find if we have no guide on our Hive journey. These things don't work optimally with neither memos nor posts. Discord and X are not sustainable in Web 3.0. This is an elephant in the room nobody seems to take seriously.
And there is question of technical feasibility. How could that be done is beyond in a decentralized way my abilities. New transaction type? Some special type of post included every day to chain automatically? Maybe there is some way to combine ideas I spit out? If somebody tech competent reads it, please help me out with it.
I believe such system would increase retention, engagement in proposal voting and usability of chain in general. Also the incentive for powering-up would be greater. I don't really know a perfect sollution here, these are just my free-thinking ideas. Although, I hear people asking me "what can I do on that Hive thing, bro?". I see communication based on memos as not sufficient. And I see people not staying on Hive.