A few weeks ago I made a poll asking how others discovered Hive. I was quite surprised to see "other" as the 2nd most picked option. First was people found Hive from I friend. I was expecting that honestly. And marketing was 0, I want to discuss all of these findings my post today. Reading the comments was very interesting, and many people found Hive in unique ways. But a few stood out as a common way that people were on-boarded to Hive by its discovery of a certain dapp.
Splinterlands
I realized pretty quickly I forgot to list “Splinterlands” as a pick, as many comments came in during polling mentioning that is how they found Hive. In the comments it was the single most mentioned way of discovering Hive.
Many responses for Splinterlands, it came in second as "other" to the poll option "friend".
Jeff Berwick (The Dollar Vigilante)
The dollar vigilante came up a few times, that is really interesting. They have not had the best reception here on the Hive blockchain. So it is interesting to hear many of his followers found Hive this way. Jeff Berwick has talked about crypto for a very long time, so its great that a few people found Hive this way.
TSU
Another common response was a platform called TSU. I had no idea about it before I did this poll.
Marketing
Marketing got zero votes. This helps to validate my feelings about valueplan, as much of it is spent on marketing. Yet no one in my poll was on-boarded that way. @theycallmemarky did a poll about a week ago and 39 users voted that they found valueplan has not delivered in their opinions.
https://peakd.com/hive-104500/@theycallmemarky/has-value-plan-delivered
I also did a poll on the question about marketing, and should we be using Hive to pay for it.
https://peakd.com/hive-104500/@solominer/does-hive-need-to-pay-for-marketing
Some people support it, but most do not. To me and probably many others, it seems like we are wasting Hive funds on many projects that are seemingly not attracting new users or attention to the blockchain. It would be nice if we could put value plan up for vote and decide what the community wants to keep, and not leave it to the "gate keepers" to approve such spending. As I have said before I see no reason why every single thing paid out on valueplan could not be a DHF proposal. I am not sure if valueplan is just some relic of Steems past we kept using, but the DHF and proposal system seems like where all of these valueplan items should be going.
In conclusion much of the polls results I was expecting turned out to be true. Friends telling other friends is the most successful way of on boarding people on Hive. Splinterlands is a strong second, eight people mentioned this dapp. And I am really glad for that. Splinterlands in my opinion has been a great platform that runs on Hive as a Dapp, it has helped stress test the Hive blockchain with many transactions over many years. If Splinterlands stopped running on Hive we would see a large drop in transaction volume on the blockchain. And since Hive is fast and free with its transactions it just seems like the perfect place for a blockchain based game.
I am thankful Splinterlands has stuck around and moved off Steem after being censored and found a home on Hive.
https://peakd.com/steem/@themarkymark/steemit-inc-now-censors-posts-from-the-ui
Now with their proposal funded, I believe we will onboard many more new users as time goes on just through that dapp alone. And of course the power of "word of mouth" will do its magic as other people tell their friends about this cool platform called Hive.
So tell your friends about Hive, and maybe they will be the next success story. And enjoy the dapps running on Hive, as many of them have helped bring new users onto the blockchain as well.
Those are definitely some interesting results and not exactly what I expected. I can't believe that marketing had zero. I mean I can, but I also cannot. You would think at least one. Maybe they just didn't reply to the post.
Yeah, I'm not sure if 50 votes is statistically significant enough to draw any conclusions from. I definitely think Hive can benefit from marketing but that doesn't mean that what valueplan is doing is the way to go about it. Any marketing plan being paid for out of the DHF should be providing onboarding numbers or have some other way to objectively measure the success of the ad campaign.
I totally agree. Though the actual active users on Hive is still quite small compared to other platforms, so 50 might not be that bad of a sample size :P
Thank you for sharing the data gathered and the analysis of the data.😊😊
Yeah.. during summer break , is always the best time to tell friends about Hive..
It's true that like what you said my friend, interpreting the opinion polls about people finding hives mostly through friends, just like me, my friend told me about hives, thank you very much for also providing information about this great data and analysis my friend.
I still don't understand the pronunciation of the words splinterlands that you wrote.is this one of the webs?
Damn, missed this one. I Discovered through Youtube back in 2017, on a crypto trading channel. It was THE discovery, because I was also planning to create a blog after returning from a trip -- it all came together, perfect timing.
Greetings @solominer ,
What an informative post....enjoyed your commentary and the data....thank you.
Kind Regards,
Bleujay
NB Yes...please ..lets bring the Value Plan up for a vote. ^__^
Only 50 votes on the poll. Is that a fair amount to gather enough data for this?
If value plan is not keeping it's promise why keep it for a second round? Or what is the valueplan's team response to that?
Should hive consider them again and give them a second chance? Or was their "value" "plan" was really just a value menu scheme for cheaper hive and hbd reaping?
Another one from Splinterlands here as a couple of friends recommended it. Went from that to SplinterTalk and then branched out more in to the blogging side through Ecency. Very clear that there needs to be some kind of advertising push at some stage though.
I think there is a case to be made for marketing but ValuePlan's approach clearly isn't working.
Also, when you say "youtube influencers" or those people that have mentioned hive on their own or were paid to do so, in which case I would think that falls under marketing?
Value Plan isn't about marketing, i's about Guilty Parties Charity ideas. Because we are doing so well we can spend $3M donating to charity. That and Rally cars with 52yo drivers.
I discovered Hive via Splinterlands also.
This is so amazing summary. Like me, I was introduced by a friend. Thanks for sharing this
My son told me about it. I don't think I would have trusted anyone else, because it seemed like a money scheme. But I know he checks stuff out thoroughly and wouldn't get me involved in anything shady.
I love Hive. It's perfect for me, a long-retired teacher, mother, grandmother. What concerns me as I blog is that when we do onboard someone, we ignore them. I see posts with enormous payouts, and then posts (worthy posts) with 00.00 or a few cents. I think all of us have to put a certain percent of our curation reward interest aside and look for the low curation posts so we can keep the new community members.
Two communities in which I actively participate are good for newbies--LMAC and the Inkwell. In both communities if someone follows the rules and makes a genuine effort, the post will be curated. Nobody walks away with a 00.00 or less than a $1.00 reward if they have made a genuine effort and have followed the rules. I think that should be a goal for everyone. All of us though, have to make an effort to do that, to not only catch new bloggers but keep them.
It's basic psychology. People need at least periodic rewards to reinforce behavior.
I don't understand the finances of the platform. I'm amazed still at how it all works, but it pains me when I see people fall away because they are discouraged.
I am also a TSU veteran, and @stresskiller sponsored me onto hive. There are many other TSU members on hive.
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I discovered Hive through a friend @shainemata. It wasn't until later I found out Hive came from the legacy chain which I had created an account a few years back. So perhaps listing a combo of options.
Some people here fully understand marketing. Everything you mentioned in this post is a form of marketing. It is powerful when used correctly. Just look at Splinterlands who is responsible for most of the marketing in this space. Valueplan seems to be taking advantage of their DHF funding. What efforts are being made to dethrone bad actors?