Most Hive frontends are based around the publication of blogs and articles. They rival sites in the same domain such as Medium and, to some point, LinkedIn. The quality of articles is subjective to the consumer.
We've got a lot of highly educated professionals, niche experts, and general content creators who just want to share whatever comes to mind. Everyone enjoys a different part of the text or otherwise material stored on the chain or presented through the use of the chain on the frontends. We can all agree here on that.
And we all have a high regard for this type of interaction. Posting, commenting, upvoting, downvoting, linking to posts, reblogging posts, and everything else that can be done with a post.
We have these sites, we own these sites, we own the blockchain, we own our content. We see value in all of these.
We are decentralized, normal people who live in different parts of the world. In a city in Morocco, in rural Canada, in a town in Venezuela, and so on. We're normal people who have normal lives and in our spare time devote ourselves to Hive for our own reasons. We're all different but we see the value in Hive and in whatever Hive frontend we prefer.
So here is the problem: we see value in these sites but our confidence does not transfer to the outside world that doesn't understand what Hive is. They don't see value in these frontend sites and where they do, the value they see is a percentage of the value we see.
What's the problem? The problem is we publish on these sites that we value. Our main posts about why Hive is great, about why it has all the potential in the world, is on our own sites. We are telling ourselves what we already know. Even those who disagree still see this value or they wouldn't be here.
Now, a different train of thought. The other day I had to fill out the Twitter form to get a blue checkmark for the main Hive account Hiveblocks. The form goes like this roughly: you select what type of entity you are, then you present links from credible news sources that confirm that you are someone who matters by Twitter standards, then you confirm a few minor details and submit. You wait a week for the results. Sounds easy.
After you read this, go find five good news sources about Hive.
A good news source is an article, something that talks about Hive, maybe from the perspective of a Hive stakeholder, maybe its about when Hive was created as a public version of the privatized and centralized Steem blockchain, could be about a dapp where Hive is mentioned. Something that isn't insulting to Hive or untrue as a few articles are.
Now I know everyone at this point will put their finger at marketing. But, keep in mind, marketing is press releases and promotional, paid articles. Marketing isn't at fault for stakeholders who know Hive inside out not mentioning it in an interview or not pushing through an article about it when they themselves write for crypto outlets. This mythical scapegoat of "no marketing" has no place here.
We have stakeholders and regular users of Hive who have privileged access to news agencies, get them to pick up stories and publish articles, yet don't lift their finger to help Hive. Why is that? Is the work of so many people and the general benefit they get from using Hive so worthless to them? When we see one of them link to Hive somewhere at the very bottom of their site we drop to our knees in gratitude. No point in naming names here, this post isn't to cast a blame on anyone.
It's not all someone else's fault. The fault chiefly lies with our own perception. We value our frontends so we publish on our frontends. We limit our reach. I'm guilty of this too. We don't republish on our own sites, on other non-Hive platforms, on traditional media. We limit our reach when we do that. We preach to the quire instead of to the public.
The result is there are very few articles about Hive. We are getting press releases out but a press release and an article aren't the same thing. Money can't buy this, engagement can.
So what can we do so the next time someone searches for Hive articles, they actually find something? We got to use whatever resources we have, that's everyone, and get some articles out there. Local papers, anything. Hive information needs to get off Hive and distributed through publications elsewhere. We need to look for opportunities to publish about Hive, not to just publish on Hive. We do that anyway. That's done.
Let's end this with an apple.