Thinking back to a very long time ago, I remember being part of a study group evaluating web usage as it relates to whether people were Introverts or Extraverts.
It was a rather interesting discussion, in the sense that it turned out — perhaps not surprisingly — that introverts are more extraverted in online groups, while extraverts tend to be more "at a loss for words" in a written, rather than spoken environment.
The discussion and study lasted for several months, and one of the primary takeaways was that extraverts are more likely to be online for learning and information but not for social purposes, while introverts are often seeking/practicing social engagement more than anything.
Being an introvert myself, I didn't find any of this particularly surprising, as I have long insisted that I prefer writing "because my mouth doesn't have a backspace key."
There's some deeper research to explain some of that — which I will only touch on very briefly here — namely that extraverts tend to access speech from short term memory, while introverts access speech from long term memory... explaining why they often seem "slower" in face to face conversation.
So what is the purpose of this very long preamble? And what does it have to do with Hive?
Well, it's no great secret that engagement has dropped of significantly since the "early days," and it has dropped off even more if you compare to early days on the legacy chain.
Much speculation can be had as to the why, and the where to lay blame, if there's any place to lay blame.
Now we have new initiatives working, in the form of @commentrewarder and @topcomment to help inspire engagement... but will it work?
My purpose for blogging — and I may well be in a minority — was as much for social reasons, as anything. I enjoyed digging into subjects I really enjoyed, from philosophy, to psychology, to gardening, to collecting, to business — and then engage in some form of discussion and engagement on these topics.
"For the money" was never my primary motivator, perhaps because I had already been burned repeated by other sites promising to reward content creators — that's right, folks... the idea of micropayments for content predated our community by a good 16-17 years.
Initiatives aside, one of my primary lessons from all these years of writing that engagement is typically the result of engageworthy content.
Yes, maybe that sounds basic to the point of rudeness... but it's true!
Which brings me back to Hive, and the path forward. From where I am sitting, a significant part of the reason engagement has dropped off on Hive has to do with the content, as much as people's willingness (or not) to engage with it.
When content becomes a bit "formulaic" and somewhat obviously seems to be structured to "catch upvotes" rather than stimulate discussion, then discussion is just less likely to ensue!
Again, this is likely painfully obvious.
That said, maybe we forget.
I expect a fair number of people feel anxious about not publishing on "popular" topics most likely to be seen and rewarded... rather than perhaps more meaty/personal topics that might catch a lot of attention and fire up people enough to engage. Of course, not everything has to be meaty... lately, I've noticed that many of the most engaging posts on Hive are related to travel, perhaps because they have beautiful photography and are highly relatable.
Some topics might be well covered, but they are not relatable... including the 1000th rewrite about the same minor piece of technical analysis of something.
One of the best pieces of writing wisdom I got was that the best approach is not to "write FOR your audience,' but instead to write for yourself, which keeping an audience in MIND.
Content invariably becomes more engaging if what we share "comes from ourselves," rather than from some structure we "think" will attract an audience.
I read a fair amount of content on Hive that is definitely "good," but it's not necessarily engaging, so I often end up just acknowledging it with a small upvote, but I have nothing to comment on.
My interest in pursuing this also has to do with one of my Hive goals for 2025, which is to be much more active in the commenting and engagement side of things... including one of my old "practices" of following the "recent posts" feed several times a day to discover interesting things.
But I look for things you can actually have a conversation about... because the whole "nice post" thing just never did it, for me.
Not at all related to this post... but perhaps making it a bit more relevant... as I write these final words (I started writing this post this morning when Hive was about $0.38) our Hive token has reached $0.63, which is its highest point since August 2022.
I add that as a bit of an afterthought, because it's almost inevitable that the activity level in the Hive community will increase significantly as the token price increases.
Will that activity level include more engagement?
Time will tell!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Sunday!
Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days! As extra incentive, I've activated a 10% @commentrewarder bonus on this post.
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Created at 2025.01.05 00:05 PST
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It's not just that my mouth doesn't have a backspace key. I prefer having a moment to organize my thoughts and decide how to present them on text or speech because big ideas are hard to communicate, and crafting a good sentence which clearly presents those ideas takes effort.
I suspect the rising price of our token will bring people back, but it will also probably being in another wave of plagiarists, scammers, and spammers. We'll need to encourage engagement while downvoting abuse.
Agreed.
One of the things I picked up on during years of studying the psychology of introverts vs. extraverts is that introverts "think inside" before saying anything... while extraverts "go off" because they use external dialogue as much the same thinking process. We introverts tend to think of it as "needless blabbing" but it serves a similar organizational purpose to our own internal dialogue. We just don't like to talk before we have formulated an actual cohesive idea... at least that holds true for me.
Undoubtedly, we will get our share of spammers and scammers, and it might be even worse this time, since mass-market AI "became a thing" since we last played this music in 2021.
A.I. is a double-edged sword for sure.
I also dislike the tendency of internet discussion to devolve into insults and strawman arguments. A text-basee forum where I can consider my response and present links to the evidence I use to form my opinions is especially preferable for me. I think it's another reason I embrace our forum format over short-form content or other efforts to duplicate Facebook with its ephemeral posts and short attention span feed.
I have no idea whether Im an intro or extro, I speak because my mouth has no backspace and I engaged because my fingers knows where the edit button is, hehehe. I read whatever posted in the community and try my best to engaged and I don't care about the rewards (oohh I got few commentrewarder transfer from friends) all those tokens which make me curious what's that for?
I comment on your post sometime but I didn't see your comments on other posts in the community, so I skip to comment on yours for sometime too. I thought that you don't need my unnecessary comments which usually full of rainbow something smelly and made of gas thing.
One thing that I agree with you, engagement always an issue since the first day I joined in 2018 (I'm having my hivebirthday soon) no matter how many initiatives made by communities to make people engage more, there's always for the prizes and rewards. Maybe because there's so many extrovert around? they read but they won't comment? I made 13K comments (hivebuzz noted it) and sometimes I forgot which posts I have read and commented on. That's the only way I can contribute and engaged rather than create a post myself. I did that on the previous platform, hehehe.
have a wonderful year!
Much of the time, I have very little idea what all the extra comments and robotic votes are about, but I do feel that the amount of engagement on Hive seems to be getting less and less with every year that passes.
Myself, I am almost to my 8th Hive anniversary and I do remember in the past that people had a lot more conversations on posts than they do now. Whereas I really enjoy writing — that is, to create the original posts — I also enjoy the discussion of topics and sometimes I miss that there isn't as much of it around anymore.
Anyway, thank you for stopping by and sharing your opinion, and you have a wonderful 2025 as well!