Despite these pluses we struggle to recruit users. I did a Facebook post saying I would like to see more diversity in political opinions here. Steem/Hive attracted a lot of people from the so-called 'alt-right' as they stand a good chance of being blocked by other social media for spreading hatred and encouraging violence. The fact that they can operate freely here puts other people off. A friend who did join Steem is not keen to return due to this. He's a smart guy (psychology lecturer) and is well aware of the issues. If you look up topics like BLM you tend to find people dismissing it.

On the financial side new people will often struggle to make anything. This can be down to mis-understanding how it works. It is not necessarily about how hard you work on your posts as you only make dollars if big accounts give you votes. There are some curation projects that help to get votes to small accounts, but you do tend to see the same names on trending.

Talking of trending, I know some people have issues with it consisting largely of posts about Hive itself. Is that what will excite a new user? Or do they want to see art, photography, music or just good writing? I think a lot of established accounts (including mine) benefit from automatic votes. That is not necessarily the best way to earn from curation as the algorithm rewards those who find new stuff first.

You know I am a big fan of the platform, but we have to be realistic about the issues that hamper growth. It needs to be a compelling experience given that the rewards are unlikely to be great from the start. It is at least looking a lot better than Steem is now. It needs to look better than the big platforms too.

I keep saying we need a few 'influencers' with large followings to join. I know people are working on that. In some cases bringing 10% of their followers could more than double the active users on Hive. The issues there may be that they have to build an audience and they may be making more elsewhere. It may be better to get those with a few hundred or thousand followers who struggle to make anything on other platforms. Moving their activity here and bringing over their fans could benefit both sides.

I am not giving up. I am creating accounts for people who want them. Just need to find more who are interested.