Mass adoption of crypto/blockchain is a very important personal mission for me. I strongly believe web 3+ to be decentralized. Certain problems need to be solved for internet users.
Platforms and databases being controlled by governments. This is especially problematic on the side of censorship. A government can ban a type of music because it doesn't align with their values. Suddenly, it's illegal for all the media (including the internet) to host or promote that kind of content. And we're not talking about just porn or adult content. It could be music or art such as tasteful nude paintings to rap or rock music.
Platforms being "jurisdictions" controlled by corporations under the formerly mentioned governments. I'm pro-business. And I understand that companies have to make a profit for their shareholders in America by law. I also realize they are regulated and monitored to follow the law. And most of blockchain also applies sadly (most mostly monetarily, not socially posted content wise.) This often means shit rolls downhill. Platforms like Facebook and Youtube have strict community guidelines and terms of service that downvote and limit content. Some strange ones include things considered "violent" or "triggering" or "inflammatory." This limits REAL NEWS, and many types of ART and MUSIC. They often also limit affiliate programs, as well as, anything to do with cryptocurrency.
Platforms ask for too much. They want the rights to your actual intellectual property, the right to monetize your personal data and property for their gain, and more. All for the privilege to access a fanbase you built for them in a limited way (on their algorithm, which judges your popularity as well) at the expense of you advertising to the same, by paying the same platform for advertising to your own userbase you brought their... they did all this in layers, so it's too late to change your mind.
SASS/Services ask for too much money for tools. While I realize that the expenses of advertising and tools is often tax deductible (and you could build your own on the main web too); cost is a barrier for small-midsized businesses and creators. To speak for myself, I've spent thousands of dollars on tools to message my own friends, manage my social media, and advertise. After the pandemic hit, this (among a myriad of other issues) pretty much put most small-midsized businesses OUT OF BUSINESS including many mom-and-pop sized brick and mortar businesses.
Demonetization. Platforms have taken it upon themselves to remove monetization on all content previously monetized. It's one thing to say, "No more swearing going forward." But it's another to say, "We're removing ads from all videos with swears because we don't condone it." It also is a big lie that the companies advertising care about swearing. They were fine with their ads placed on anything generating them leads- period.
The Hidden Gatekeeper Agenda. At a risk of soundng tin foil hattish, this is very personal to me. I've made controversial content with swearing, violence, etc.- specifically, RAP MUSIC, and moreover, battle rap curation. As you may or may not be aware, battle rap is not violent. In fact, battle rap started a way to solve for violence by creating a platform where people could diss (disrespect) each other verbally, legally, debate style, and the audience would judge who won the battle (rap/argument.) But because of the verbal content, it's considered triggering and a bad influence. To digress, music and art that is considered DARK in any way is slowly being washed from the Gradeschool Friendly mainweb. And because it's not able to be advertised, monetized, and promoted widely- it doesn't get any visibility. Therefore it doesn't really get picked up by major publications. And it doesn't therefore easily get verified on social media platforms. As a result, only certain content is ALLOWED to compete and certain safe content becomes popular and it's a big "circle jerk. Also, the masses due to logical fallacy, BELIEVE that content to therefore be BETTER because it's more popular, verified, and press covered. We have seen things like PORN be pushed into the recesses of the web and I wont argue if it should be. (As a parent, I personally agree with PORN being behind a consent shield.) However, it seems as the world becomes more global that a lot of kinds of content is also being shamed into the closet such as MUSIC, ART, REAL NEWS, among other things.
These are just 6 of the dozens of problems that creators, influencers, startups, midsized businesses, and fans of these face.
Problems with SOCIAL-BLOCKCHAIN
It seems that social-blockchain can help solve some of these problems and I've been attempting to research and test where blockchain is at for years for this reason. Although it too has problems.
- Most blockchain dapps look like shit. They look like something out of the 90's. Even many of the games can't compare to the games on Xbox. The interfaces look worse than AOL circa 2000. I'm really proud of Peakd, and Audius, and several other platforms to stepping up the designs to be comfortable aesthetically.
- All things blockchain are complicated to USE. From wallets to exchanges to all the sections to how it all fits together is something most of the masses don't have space in their brain for. I really appreciate platforms like Bitclout for being mass adoption friendly (but their design sucks.) They did this by (a) removing the need to have a wallet or coin to get started. (b) Making it easy to earn something right from your first post. (c) Onboarding High Net Worth English Speakers, celebrities, influencers, investors, first. They also made everything intuitive by copying Twitter. I love how Peaked is alot like Medium!!! So in that respect, Peakd nailed it. Peakd will appeal to Medium writers. However, the other Hive dapps emulating other platforms have a long way to go.
- All things blockchain are complicated to UNDERSTAND. Building on their previous problem, diving right in and using it lowers a barrier. But beyond that, people need to understand. Large social media platforms have EXTENSIVE (and easy to navigate, complete) FAQs, forums, onboarding reps for influencers, books, classes, universities, you name it. And people have written their own as well. There are dozens of classes by Facebook and by authors on Facebook.
- Blockchain dapps don't get fast enough results. While we all love our principals and community, most get on social media with their goals as well. Why adopt something else- something HARD to do, HARD to understand, that looks like shit, only to see no results? I was reading a post about how it's better to onboard people that onboard their own tribe rather than looking for a tribe within the existing platform. But the truth is that Social Media is a little of both, right? People want to build fanbases, be able to reach them all, and monetize that effort. And they want the support of the community on the platform they're building on, not to be ignored or to be fought. Don't we hate it when we reach out to Facebook devs for help and they never respond? Don't we hate it when Twitter blocks our content without any explanation or remedy- just no, too bad, move on, 1 strike left? Yes, we hate that shit. And then worse yet, we still aren't getting anything from it. We just spend spend spend and hold hold hold and if we ever profit, we are demons. And to digress, after working, writing, promoting etc. if you only get 1 like, eventually we move back to Facebook where we get 2000 likes- because if we're not making money, the least thing we could get is some kind of validation.
Can HIVE/Peakd be a solution?
I've been trying to learn the interface because I come from the pre-fork platform. Some suggestions for HIVE (and peaked where applicable.)
- SOCIAL MEDIA EMULATORS. If it doesn't yet exist (I haven't found it) grabs the code from appics and port it to HIVE asap. And make peaked automagically NOT copy the content ie filter out the content from the appics clone so that they SEEM on different chains. Or use a different token. It would be well to clone:
- Youtube /Twitch (done w/Speak and Dtube)
- Soundcloud (where did dsound go???!??!!? omg! get that back!)
- Medium (PEAKED is IT! It is wonderful)
- Facebook (Peaked works for that too)
- Reddit (Peaked works for that too)
- Patreon (I thought there was one?)
SOCIAL MEDIA SHARING. Some mechanism by which posts can be shared either automatically to social media apps. Even a way to easily link up IFTTT or Zapier.
FOCUS ON AUDIO-VISUAL, NFT, AR/VR & Images
- Embedding is super important. Wordpress lets you Embed almost everything. If it isn't supported, it can be created easily. I realize that's a big undertaking. But it might be helpful if the Discord has a channel that would allow people to easily request sites allowed to embed not just the common ones. And a running list of sites allowed to be embedded.
- Various layouts for the header image. Not that important since Youtube thumbnail size is fairly standard. But square is also pretty standard. And also long, because most stories are long.
- Support for video or gif headers to actually animate. Do they? I've not looked. And if video cant be supported, then maybe an easy video to gif header tool.
- Some way to embed buttons that aren't an image.
- Embedding NFTS from all the NFT sites. Sorry, I know they compete with NFT showroom but it would be helpful if people could embed their NFTS from anywhere.
- Audio/Video media-- here is the tough one. Most social media now have "stories" and audio clubs (Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, etc.) I noticed Hive uses Discord for most of the audio chats and video chats. However, HIVE has live platforms. It might be well to deeper integrate them so that (like other social plarforms) friends are notified when you go live and those lives are visible on the profiles top space when live, and available in a tab for later viewing. Also perhaps integrating discord audio chat and video teams, or something like tiny chat (preferably discord because it's free.)
SIDECHAIN FRIENDLY ASF. Something that has me really turned on about Phantasma is all the work they're doing in the NFT space but also because they are wrapping ETH and making it possible to transfer NFTS bought from Ghost to Metamask to sell on Opensea. In addition, they have pavillion which is making it possible to use those in actual games on steam. Also, thru steam, many VR worlds will be able to use NFTs from the market, and possibly also those bought with eth through metamask to phantasma. Not shilling. And they have a long way to go. But do you see the use? *Here I saw some star cards "on wax" and I noticed Leo doing something with eth. Otherwise I noticed most commentary to suggest hive and hive tokens don't play well with other chains. My suggestion is hive learn to play well with others. It's about the users being happy, not loyalty. Wide adoption is about if the users can use it and are happy.
NFT CRAZE. I'm not going to bullshit anyone, Ghostmarket has the most advanced NFTs. They are not popular granted. And ETH NFTS are more popular but a headache. Bonus for some platforms accepting FIAT! I would love to see NFT showroom compete at that scale. Especially the "russian doll" feature and loading an NFT with other crypto. Imagine if Hive NFTs could load coins from the other tokens? Whoa.
Parts need work together I noticed how BeeChat didn't include my followers. That's essentially a different app, yes? And then we see how notifications lack. Hive mind is different, yes? It would be great if everyone were on board with each other more perhaps? Because from a user perspective, we don't "get" that these don't always play nice together, or play at all sometimes.
I still need Wordpress, here is why.
I'm a creator, influencer, small business, crypto-enthusiast, affiliate marketer, anti-statist, occultist, secular, woman- whew.
Installing Wordpress on a host is fairly easy and boom, I have a blog. From there, I can import Bossbuddy plugin and have my own mini-Facebook member site. I can also set up Woocommerce and create paywalled content, member tiers, classes, a shop, etc. I can install other plugins to have points, gamification, and have a whole economy. It just works seamlessly, mostly. I can email or ping or message my whole userbase, in groups or individually. I can create drip email campaigns for my music releases. I can embed almost anything, or there is an app for that.
4 Big Drawbacks of Wordpress?
- My host can shut me down
- The government can shut me down
- My content and everything could be erased by a DB error
- Although people can buy points with crypto, the point system isn't crypto itself. It can't be cashed out into anything. Points themselves can't be used on another site.
- Hackers and others can just attack it easily
First things first...
I think onboarding lots of regular users here is a bad idea right now. I think HIVE should FIRST onboard PROGRAMMERS and DEVELOPERS first. Perhaps those who can really support the backbone, dapps, development, support, education, etc. People that can create all the things to make it truly superior to not only other blockchains but also to social media in general. Get them on board and delegate them MUCH POWER.
Second thing second...
I know some of the whales here are doing practically NOTHING with their HIVE POWER. And many lease their power out. But really? Wouldn't bringing up the overall value of all of hive be worth more to you than a few dollars from a leased HP?
EMPOWER THE BEST PEOPLE HERE FREE! JUST DO IT! You don't care. You know you don't. Let them free to build it up. Consider it a form of enlightened capitalism.
That's it for now. I'm sure I'll be back with a part 2.
I don't have a signature yet.
If you think I'll be valuable here, delegate me HP, make me a voting proxy or tip me.
xoxo
-O