What Am I Doing Here?

Back in January I started @chibititan. We are developing a video game and my thoughts were start social media now so people can follow our progress and perhaps we'll have a following ready when we finally get to release. Instead of going straight to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, I decided to start what is basically a dev log on Minds, PeakD, and Steemit. I also started this personal account on each to explore more as a general user. I plan to write a separate post about our results on the three platforms eventually.

Should my opinion matter? Maybe. Maybe not. Any platform like Hive should always want more development and a new objective point of view should always be welcomed by anyone legitimately wanting to improve their product. Bubbles are bad.

Hive Sucks

Click bait? Yes. Legitimate criticism? Read on and decide for yourself.

Problem #1 - Not user friendly.
This one is kind of aimed directly at the core design and devs. The onboarding and scattered social platforms is a total mess. I am a very technically inclined person and sometimes even I feel like it is unapproachable.

Just to get an account is confusing enough that 99,999 out of 100,000 Twitter users will have no clue how to start it. How are you going to grow the platform if users can't even join? I have tried to get my closest friends on here for months, 20-35 year old gamers, tech nerds, etc... and they can't even be bothered when I start explaining what they have to do to join.

Signing into apps in general is also not only confusing but somewhat scary until you know what you are doing. At this point I personally use Hive Keychain, which is awesome (thank you @stoodkev), but again, to the average user installing a browser extension, giving it all your keys, etc... is just not something 99,999 out of 100,000 Facebook users will do. Not to mention the app devs have to actually choose to use it as well.

I really like the idea that so many app devs are building on top of the hive blockchain and it all creates a single but branched eco system. However, it gets extremely confusing where things you post are going. I have mostly posted here on PeakD. But it also is viewable on Hive Blog. If I post a video on 3Speak and choose a community it shows up here on PeakD in that community. If I then use the button on the video to share it to d.buzz it shows up there and under my 'all posts' here on PeakD but not on my blog. As awesome as it is that all these platforms can interact like that, it is just very confusing and difficult for a new user to understand (I would use the 99,999/100,000 user thing more but I think the point is made...) It also means some things feel like double posting.

Problem #2 - Too much drama.
It took me a while to really wrap my head around the Steem fallout. A rich guy no one likes used his wealth to control enough of the platform to control decisions. Hive splintered off and basically gave that power back to the dozen or so rich guys that had it before. There are now little groups of rich people (and bots) that act as gate keepers.

As a new person this is really not a good look for the platform as a whole. I've seen quite a few people get hit by these gate keepers and it seems extremely messed up how unapologetic they are about it. Even the d.buzz app seems to have been attacked by these people some. There were times I considered giving up myself just at the thought it could happen to me.

Drama is always fueled by good intentions. They think they are doing what is best for the platform. But frankly, that is bubble thinking ignorance. The split itself was bad enough but seeing the gate keeping is enough to really hinder growth overall.

Hive Is Awesome

Hopefully you all made it this far instead of downvoting and leaving. Here comes the praise.

Praise #1 - Dev Power!
The amount of development going on here is amazing. Steem is basically a dead platform now. When I first tried to go through Steem's dev docs... it was sad. Almost every link was broken. Those that were not mostly just linked to the new Hive version of the tool. And I'm pretty sure this has STILL not changed.

Despite the problems mentioned above, the shear dev power behind the Hive ecosystem right now is really keeping this platform's head above water. If it continues, the drama starts to fade, and things start getting more user friendly, Hive could really propel us all into the forefront of the Web 3.0 era.

The major highlights for me have been PeakD and lately 3Speak. Just started using d.buzz too and it seems like a promising twitter alternative.

I think PeakD has the best editor available on a social platform. Writing this post for example has been pure joy. Most of the things that confuse me about the Hive platform as a whole are well abstracted while browsing on PeakD. Joining communities and posting between my blog and those communities is also great. The user experience is just top notch. If PeakD was an isolated web platform it'd be good. The fact that it is in the Hive ecosystem is both great and bad for the reasons listed above, but mostly great.

When I looked for video sharing possibilities I found 3Speak, Odysee/LBRY, and d.tube. Not a d.tube fan at all. It is the most confusing of the three and ultimately I abandoned it. I liked Odysee/LBRY but it just doesn't seem to perform well and I had some issues with their reward system. 3Speak had one major flaw. I couldn't log in, and when I tried to sign up it said my name was taken! Eventually I realized there was a question asking if it was my name and I got in but... seriously 3Speak devs if you read this. Fix the sign up/log in process! Once I figured that out, 3Speak has been great! I think I'm going to just drop the others and use it for all video content at this point. Simple to use, streams well, easy to navigate.

There are plenty of other apps in the Hive ecosystem that have a lot of promise or already are popular that I just have not tried yet as well.

Praise #2 - The Community
Didn't I just bash the community and complain about the drama? Well... sort of. The toxic drama filled parts of the community do suck. Not going to mention their names because I don't want their wrath to blacklist me...

However, I will mention a couple people and communities I've really enjoyed interacting with. Hope you don't mind.

@enjar welcomed @chibititan on our first post. That really meant a lot. Inviting us to the Game Development community before I even knew what a community was. Lots of cool projects over there, like @smjn's Hive P v. S which stores high scores in the blockchain! So cool. Everyone has been friendly and I really enjoy seeing the progress on all the games (sorry I can't mention all of them.)

I also joined the COMIC BOOKS fan/pro community and met @bryan-imhoff who talks comics with me which is awesome. It is another great community full of comic enthusiasts and creators. I always look forward to the next Nerd By Northwest by @northwestnomad especially. (Again, sorry I can't mention everyone.)

Closing Thoughts

I've been wanting to write this for a couple months now. But never know how to start it. I still don't think I've expressed what I wanted to express very well here. It would be way too harsh of me to say that Hive is a platform doomed to failure but I do think if some of the issues I mentioned are not addressed and improved... Hive may not make it much further than it already is. But the potential is definitely there and I have enjoyed this platform more than any other so far. I guess that is why I wanted to get my thoughts out. I do actually want to see it succeed.

I really want to @ some of the people and say "you are ruining the growth of your own investment and do not even realize it!" But they're obviously in their own bubbles and would just downvote me because they did it to people that already said similar things to them in the past.

Part of me wants to actually go all in on Hive. Convert all my crypto holdings. Close down my Steem profiles since Hive users seem to hate when a user has both sometimes... not sure if I should go that far or not? But also any projects I build also could include some kind of Hive blockchain feature.

But then I see this group of gate keepers step on people all the time because they have all the power (in what is supposedly a 'fully decentralized' system, it certainly does not feel that way sometimes.) So if I were to go all in on Hive and somehow catch their ire. It would just not be good...

I wish I could offer solutions but I'm not familiar enough with the tech to help with the user friendliness and I'm not rich enough fight back against the drama.

For now I think I'll just keep enjoying what I enjoy and see how things progress. And at this point I'm probably just rambling and kind of doubt many people will really read all this anyway so I'll end this here.