The real hive ecosystem, isn't a triangle but a pentagon! Believe it or not.

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(Edited)

In the post week I did read many post about the split between authors and curators. Currently it is in most communities a 50/50 split.
Some did add an extra corner to the relation, namely the investors. The question which does comes up to my mind, if those are really belong to the relation or not. To be honest I don't have the answer to this. Not the answer if a 50/50, 67/33 or 75/25 split is the best way to go forward.
Maybe it is an option to leave it up to the author. Just like they can choose to have the value of the post burned, do give a part of this to a beneficiary or keep it all to themselves.

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But first let's assume we do have a hive triangle. Who does have which role in it?

The authors

Let's first start with the ones who are adding some value to the Hive blogging part of this blockchain. The ones who are spending time to write a decent article. Let's assume that most do write a decent article. The quality of an article or if it is decent enough is always an extra debate.

My idea is that the post value isn't correlated with the quality of the article. Sometimes it is, mostly it isn't. The value of an article is mostly related to the Hive network of the author. The bigger the network the more chance on a bigger value, for sure if there are some big players in that specific network. We have to be honest and some authors could write a crappy article and still reel in more value than most of us will ever get.

But I am drifting, let's go back to the main topic of this article. These authors are spending time, without knowing what their Hive income will be. The ones with a longer track record could have done some math and will have an average post pay-out. In my case the average value of my posts is around 2.64. This is including the share for the other parties involved.

Most authors only write about the topics which are hot on Hive. Which mostly doesn't create real extra value for Hive outside Hive. Let me explain you why?
A great post, which decent SEO could be picked up by the search engines who do rule the internet. These post do attract people to a hive blog, who are interested in the article but weren't aware that something like Hive did exist. Let's assume this is a great article but not a lot of Hive support. While this Hive newbie which is reading the article and does see a value below the post of $1 isn't getting enthusiast to create an account.
Let's assume that a post with an value of $40 is spotted by someone who didn't know hive! But this is a crappy post, yes we do still have such posts. This will make the Hive virgin enthusiastic to create an account. But when he/she does start posting reality will strike the author hard.

So besides adding value to the blockchain, the good articles can be seen as commercials for Hive. So the author suddenly also has become a marketeer for Hive.
But an author alone, can't do the trick. He does need support of the Hive community to become a marketeer and get rewarded for writing a splendid article. So he does need the curators! Being spotted by the curators is one of the hardest part here on the hive blockchain. As a writer you will have to get noticed one way or the other.

So suddenly besides being an author and marketeer he/she also has to become a brand manager. Your blog on hive is your brand. Your brand could be topic specific or more like a newspaper covering multiple topics, which of course will make it a lot harder to create a brand.

So suddenly we do have a triangle within the triangle. But wait, there is more. Besides being an author it is easier to getting noticed if the author also becomes a curator. It is important for the author that the overall brand of Hive is as strong as possible. Because with only articles of one author, Hive would be nothing.
But due to the fact that the author is also a brand manager and has to interact with the community, this is an easier role to fulfill.

But how does the author can become a good curator (value wise) if he doesn't invest his earnings in his brand. So besides the 4 other roles, he suddenly also has become an investor. The more power he/she has, the more value his curating votes will have, he can reward his customer with upvotes on comment and most important of all the more power he has in the complete Hive network.

So instead of a triangle within the triangle, we do have a pentagon within the triangle.
This does raise the question if the triangle is really a triangle or should this also be a pentagon?

The curators

Like written above we are all curators. We all have to tough task to reward the articles with a value they should deserve.

Not only is it a tough task to find the correct reward, but the tasks becomes even bigger to find content which does deserve their attention.

There are some curation groups doing a splendid job with trying to find that grain of sand in the desert which does deserve their attention.

Well aren't we all curators in one way or the other. But we may not forget that these groups do consist of people all with their own interest. This has a small negative side effect that great written articles, with such a quality that they could be listed for a Pulitzer prize, could be overseen due to not sharing interest with the curation groups. This is only human and will always have flaws.

I can't say it enough, the more diverse content we do have on this beloved blockchain, the better it is brand wise for Hive. The combination of all this different content could become a wikipedia on it's own, a world newspapers with news from all over the world, opinions about every topic there is.
So the task for all of us is immense! We all are responsible for the Hive brand and to keep the great authors on board.
But how many of us, do you use the search ability or try to find articles which are great but without our own interest zone? Not many, if we all would do this ones a day it would make an enormous difference.

Okay I have explained why the task of curator is so hard but also so important. But to have an impact as curator, we also have to be an investor.
So you can't be a curator without have a stake you own or having an investor backing you up. An investor which does trust to do well for the Hive blockchain.

The investor!

Like I wrote in the author part of this way too long article. We are or should be all investors.
Besides buying up Hive on the market and bring it towards the blockchain there are more ways to invest.
An authors does invest time into writing his article, so (s)he is a time inestor. Besides this the author could also invest his earnings.
A curator mainly is also a time investor, because being a great curator does take a lot of time. But he also does invest in the authors who do get rewarded. They are keeping the wheel of Hive running around.

You also do have investors who do invest money into the blockchain but aren't interested in not writing or curating, they just want to make a profit on their investment, nobody likes to loose money.
This group does have multiple possibilities. Their first way of investing in just staking their power. Only by doing this they will get rewarded with a 3% APR. But of course they do want more. Because the value of their investment does fluctuate depending on the sentiment of the crypto world.
In the old days they could invest into voting bots, creating a daily income. These days, they could invest into Hive tokens, buying hive mining tokens or delegating their power to curation groups which also does give them a daily revenue on their investment.

But regardless of what you do on this blockchain, you are an investor. An investor in the Hive brand. If this brand get's bigger and bigger, the value of the investment will keep on increasing.
And if this situation occurs, people who are selling their Hive on the markets are fueling the investment vehicle. Because without people who are willing to sell their share in the blockchain, there is no way investors could but a share of it!

Conclusion

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Can there be a correct conclusion? We all do need each other, that's a fact. And I honestly I do think that a change in split of the rewards won't make a big difference. We did see that when the reward were brought down from 75/25 towards 50/50. And if there was an impact that the impact mostly hurt the small authors, suddenly see their income vaporize a little bit.

The only conclusion that I can make it that most of us here on the blockchain has to fulfill at least 3 or 4 from the 5 roles described in this article. We really have to see Hive as brand and we are all responsible how this brand is seen by the outside world. This and only this way, Hive will continue, Hive will get bigger. This will have as a very nice and sweet side effect that the value will increase. And this will of course drip down to all tokens and communities on Hive!

So pick your role, because we all have a role to play! We all are responsible for the future of Hive. Not the authors, the curator or investors. Those are just name of the roles we all have to fill in.

Guess this post is long enough. Maybe it will give you something to think about during the weekend, maybe you will find it utterly bullshit, maybe you just like the post and move on. Regardless what you do, have a nice weekend!
I do think that this article is also valid for all communities with the hive ecosystem!

Cheers,
Peter



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23 comments
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That's a good point and right now there are no direct rewards for the 'marketeer' and brand-manager roles which is probably why people aren't sharing their posts outside of the Hive ecosystem.

I wouldn't expect anyone to fork out their own money to promote but sharing a post or two on Twitter could make a small difference.

To really get more users on a big scale will require some coordinated promotion and that requires partnerships, sponsorships, ads etc. all of which cost money.


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I know that there was an initiative from #ocd that give out extra votes when the post was also placed on the bird feed.

Publish does have a small ref program but I don’t know if that would be possible for Hive. Guess the witnesses should decided that.

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I know that there was an initiative from #ocd that give out extra votes when the post was also placed on the bird feed.

This is a good idea. I think if it were done Hive-wide or tribe-wide, for a few cents here and there, it could make for some natural, organic promotion.

But yes, ideally the witnesses should decide so. Not sure who does the governance on Hive tribes. I guess it depends on the tribe.


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But yes, ideally the witnesses should decide so. Not sure who does the governance on Hive tribes. I guess it depends on the tribe.

Indeed probably the tribe owners. But those tribe owners do need to have also an interest in Hive, because that is their bloodline.

And not to mention that I forgot an important role. The advertiser.
The advertiser does curate and then reb-blog the post. This way the post does get more visibility and potentially some more upvotes. Due to the fact that he voted earlier he will get a share of the votes coming after him. But the article was already long enough.

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The outside views is why they stopped showing view counts on posts in Steem. It would show that a person's post got more engagement than a bot curated post.

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At least in the old algorithm, it is clear that views don't matter. Views can be gamed with bots, as with most things, but that's why the bigger platforms have tools to discount such cheating.

I feel like 'authentic' views should be a big part of the metric when rewarding posts. For example, if an author wrote a post and went all out to promote it and got a ton of organic views, then the mechanism should reward him. Maybe not directly, but by making the post more prominent on the platform.


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I see that when you write a post in ecency, it gives you are word count and a guess as to how long it takes to read the post. So, if there was a timer on the page to count views by how long the person was on the post, then that might help make for better engagement counting.

I'm sure some bot will figure out how to by pass that as well, but it would be a start. If it was based on Hive users, then if a bot was open on open post and then another post, then it could be caught.

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Those are great ideas. I suppose the big centralized media companies track IP addresses as the main component of thwarting botting. I'm not sure if Hive even tracks that as it would go against privacy and all that.


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I'm sure they could tap into Google Analytics and see how many unique views the post had.

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Fantastic idea and yes, relying on Google Analytics would be a good proxy, without having to do the effort. Perhaps a combination of unique views and time on page relative to the estimated reading time would be a good way to display trending or hot lists.


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They stopped showing the view count because the mechanism was broken.

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Finding a way to make rewards for marketing might actually get HIVE noticed somewhere

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Yes and no. A referral program could only work of there would also be support for the onboarders.
If not they wouldn't stay long.
It is a difficult balance reward people for attracting new people. In a way each new subscriber does bring added value so the reward is implicit due to the fact that this should increase the value.

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It was a long post :) lots of good stuff there though. I for sure feel like I am in a couple of those roles from time to time.

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I am surprised myself about the length of the post. Doubt it that many will read all the way till the end of the post :)
We are probably all switching roles from second to second without knowing that we are switching.
You and I are both increasing our brand by this conversation. I did add value by writing the article, you by reading it. And so on, so in second your switched from client (a role I forgot) to promoter/curator/investor and so on.
Just like I forgot the re-blog thingy, which would turn you into an advertiser. So feel free to also take this role :)

A brilliant system but we often do forget this.

!BEER

Have a nice weekend!

Cheers,
Peter

Have a nice weekend!

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So pick your role, because we all have a role to play!

Or multiple roles to play.

While I was reading this, I wondered if the bot that checked for steeling content from the web was still working. That was the one bot I really didn't mind, because it pointed out those who would just copy and paste from someone else's work.

Would that be another role? The Hustler - not really authoring, nor curating, certainly not an investor or a marketer. I guess they would be similar to the brand manager, working to make more money for their brand.

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The Hustler

Mhh, forgot about that one. Guess those have decreased on Hive compared to Steem. But there still indeed are.
Did also forgot the role as advertiser and client.
The advertiser does reblog a post after upvoting it, so that it can generate more value.
The client, well we all are also clients. You do write for your clients and if they do read they are a client, a client which could turn into a curator, advertiser or something else.

There are even more roles than I did imagine, but the article was already long enough. I do have some inspiration for next week :)

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It is hard at the moment, as there aren't enough of any particular group, and most will look to earn through content creation, without investing directly.

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Which indicates some flaws in the system or at least in how people do think.
I onow that engagement could get you a step further. But we will have to honest that most just upvote their circle, comment on their circle and that’s about it.
I do understand that lower ranked accounts will have to get noticed but kost accounts do need enough time to reply on some non saying comments on their posts that there isn’t a lot of time to discover new content. If you know what I mean.
So thanks for taking the time to read my post.

Cheers,
Peter

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engagement could get you a step further.

It goes a long way. Life gets busy and it is hard to continually remember everyone, so keeping some engagement going can be a reminder, like a random call to a friend asking, "wanna go for a beer?" Relationships take work to maintain, yet a lot of people don't want to maintain them, but simultaneously, don't want automation.

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