What is Microblogging?

For those who have been living under a rock for several years and still don't know what microblogging is; microblogging is sharing short messages with photos and or links online. It’s like blogging, but then much shorter. They are ment for quick updates for instence by sharing the latest news or show people what you are doing at the moment.
Popular web 2.0 are X (formerly known as Twitter) and BlueSky.
But Hive also has its own microblogging platforms. Quite a few of them actually. A lot of front-ends have their own microblogging platform.
There is Dbuzz, Liketu, Ecency Waves, InLeo Threads ... and .... PeakD Snaps.

PeakD Snaps

From the aforementioned microblogging platforms, PeakD Snaps is the newest. @peakd released their microblogging platform Snaps in the 2nd half of 2024.
Why would they realese their own microblogging platform when there are already a couple of alternatives on the Hive blockchain?
I think they have created it because they didn't have one and many of the other front-ends did. And like some of the others, they implemented it into their front-end.

When you open up the PeakD front-end, which is one of the popular front-ends to display Hive (https://peakd.com), you can find the Snaps in the navigation bar on the top.
When you click the menu, the feed with the newest Snaps appears together with a text box where you can start writing your own Snap.

A Snap can contain a maximum of 270 characters. Apart from text you can also add photo's, links, video's and even a poll.
Within a few seconds you can share your short story with the rest of the users. Very quick and easy to use!

The Snaps are technically seen a comment on a blog from @peakd.snaps that functions as a container. But people can upvote and comment on your Snap, just like any other blog or comment.

Statistics

As I mentioned before; Snaps has been around for a couple of months now. So how active is it being used? It is not the first time I make a blog about Snaps. Back in January I created a blog about Snaps with some stats:

There were some peaks of 750 Snaps per day, but the average was more around 650 with a downward trend in January 2025.
Unfortunately this downward trend has continued. I've recently checked the stats and over the month of June, an average of 150 snaps were created every day.

How come the number of Snaps has declined so much over the past months? I think Snaps is a great way of both consuming and sharing short form content on Hive. So why is the number decreasing then?

Promotion

I think the main reason for the decline is the lack of promotion. Snaps has a loyal group of users who are very active, both in posting and in responding to snaps. When we check the top 9 users in the weekly chart, we see a couple of Hivers that create about 5 Snaps a day on average.
The leader of the pack is @bitcoinman. He has created almost 100 Snaps when I created this snapshot.

I think the biggest 'problem' of Snaps is the lack of promotion. There is quite an active community, but all the snaps are 'hidden' behind a menu item. And I hardly see anyone blog anything about Hive.
I think that when Snaps would be promoted a bit more on Hive, the numbers would certainly increase. And I've made the first step by creating this blog about it.

Why I use Snaps!

But why would you use Snaps? Personally I think Snaps really adds something to the blockchain. You can use it to quickly create something you want to share with others. It also works nicely when you just have a minute or two to consume content and you don't have time to read full blogs.
Here are some of the things I get out of it.

Discovery of content and users
I often use Snaps to scroll the headlines. This way I can quickly spot certain hypes that are happening on Hive or in the world.
The Snaps feed shows me posts of users I haven't interacted with before. I've started following quite a few people after I had been interacting with then on Snaps.
One of the funny examples is my interaction with @tegoshei
In one of her Snaps she shared a painting she made based on a photo of another Hiver (@oldmans). I really liked the idea and told her she could always use one of my photos. Not long after, she created a post of a painting she made of one of my photographs.
I think the chances I would have found her blogs on Hive would be small, but because of the short form posts you really can to find a lot of cool content.

Another example is a blog from this week by @stekene. He shared that he had earned some bucks, just by playing some games. I'm always interested in some side hussles, so I got into a conversation with him.
I investigated the app he promoted and found out it wasn't really something for me (I get too addicted to snmartphone games), but within the app was another action what resulted in a free boxershort, which I received today (I created a Snap about it 🤣)

Publishing
Apart from consuming content you can also create content. You can quickly share your thoughts, ask questions, promote your own posts or share a quick photo. Sharing photos is what I regularly do myself.
When I don't have enough photos or a story around it to make a blogpost, I just share it in a Snap.

Rewards

As you can see in my Snap about my bicycle ride above, Snaps can get some rewards. Don't expect much of it though. They won't make you rich, but hey, the effort is also quite low. And sometimes, when there is a lot of interaction on your snaps, the rewards can grow to +$ 0.30
And then there is also @commentrewarder which can add some extra rewards to your snaps.

Again; it won't make you rich, but if you're quite active on Snaps the numbers can add up in the end.

Conclusion

I personally think Snaps is a microblogging platform with a lot of potential. It's fast, easy, integrated in PeakD. It's an easy way to discover new content and interesting Hivers.
And apart from that it's also a lot of fun. You can scroll though the feeds a couple of times a day to check out the latest news on the blockchain and in the world and interact with others.
Or quickly share something you don't necessarily would create a complete blog for.
The only 'issue' is the lack of visibility of Snaps. I think that the @peakd team (@asgarth) could do a better job. But also the users of Snaps could help with that. Because by only creating more Snaps, you won't attract new Snappers because snaps are not shown in the regular feeds.
You need to make blogs about Snaps to make people curious.
So that's why I created this blog.

I hope you can help spread the word about Snaps. You can do this by reblogging this post or tagging users that might be interested in Snaps in the comment section.

I hope to see you all on Snaps soon!

Friendlymoose

I'm an amateur photographer with a love for indoor gardening, craft beer, and cycling. As the owner of the Cycling Community and the creator of the Topcomment initiative, I focus on fostering engagement and bringing like-minded people together.
Check out my projects below!

Topcomment is an initiative to reward high quality comments.

For all Hive Photographers: come join our Hive Photographer Discord Channel

A weekly blog with an overview of all the photography contests on Hive. #photocontests.

Share anything about cycling in the Cycling Communityr