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.