Yeah statistical data would paint an interesting picture. The way I see it, the TRENDING PAGE shows the state of the platform. It's almost exclusively Spanish now.
Littered with the usual sensationalist/conspiracy posts like pressfortruth. Then there's the regurgitated garbage from taskmaster and edicted who for whatever reason keep posting rather than just stay obscured, plugged into those curation trails..
Which is what the rest that are still here wanting to "grow their investment" have accepted as what Hive provides. More actually: parasitically feeding from the aforementioned Spanish posters, which while it lasts.. Hive at least, can have a positive effect on their lives.
Occasionally though there's a good post worth the read from deepdives or an entertaining video from theouterlight.
Or some new popcorn drama between egotistical maniacs threatening to destroy one or more members.
Overall this is just not a chain exemplifying the tagline: JOIN THE REVOLUTION.
It is however interesting watching the different "classes" of users, loyalists, dev proposals, marketing attempts etc.. since that's the resilience of humans in general on display.
But as you said,
to the top 50 or so..
go the spoils.
This experiment wasn't designed with success in mind.
Soon™ the shine will be off the toy and we will have to float without bourgeois disposable income as a means of support.
The people that launched this will take their leave.
It is inevitable.
That won't be the end of the hive, just the easy price support.
You might like this post: https://peakd.com/steemdev/@adept/will-steemit-complete-project-xanadu-s-vision-of-what-the-internet-should-be.
Don't kid yourself, just because they have gone silent doesn't mean they don't still control enough coins to tank the project, if they wanted to do that.
Ned said he was hiding his stake when they threatened to fork is ass out, I refuse to believe that somebody that sets themselves up with 80% of the coins lets enough go to not still have control over what is happening, if only silently.
Somebody owns the 1/3rd of the hive on exchanges.
There are still people here from the launch, just most of the stincy ones are gone.
Not all, yet.
You are using peakd.com?
Yes, it was designed to expose that, and help fix it.
I mean, what would have been if ned and his ilk hadn't kneecapped us?
We were the number 3 coin.
We are just now getting to where we don't have to look over our shoulder, or bite our tongues.
Our accounts are not on the line like they once were for having a dissenting opinion.
Not that it might be so clearly visible to you.
Meh, the tech is sound, only a matter of time and persistence.
I get their butt hurt, they create this thing that has made many millionaires, many 100thousandaires, a few more thousandaires, and all they get is guff about how it's not better.
We forked out the co-founder for god's sake.
With friends like stinc, we didn't need any enemies.
Meh, we had all that mass migration coming in 2016-17, stinc kneecapped it.
Now we have to climb that hill, too.
Mass adoption isn't the plan, network effect is the plan, and that can work with far fewer users than even MySpace had.
We needed a golden boy and got ned, instead.