Engagement has an incentive and it also brings social mobility which is imperative for a product like Hive or any other social media. After all social media without mobility is not social media.
Web 3.0 is built upon the foundation of decentralized technology(i.e. Blockchain) and ideation of ownership. It seeks to transform the role of a user into an owner. So it entails ownership for the end-user and that is iterated with concepts like Stake power, airdrops, and creating a new middle class through token distribution(task-based).
Hive Blockchain being the technological vehicle has erected upon it many dApps such as inLeo, Ecency, Peakd, and many others.
These dApps mostly encourage and incentivize users to engage with each other and produce a network effect. That said it does not set the term for you nor does it trespass the freedom of your "interest area" or "will" to engage with whom, when, and where. It just encourages you with an extrinsic motivation.
Very often, the question of synthetic vis-a-vis organic engagement enters the discourse of engagement. It is true that in traditional social media, web 2.0 e.g. Whatsapp when you are engaging with another it is purely out of social communication, fun, or on purpose. That may or may not be the case in Web 3.0 in its infancy. Because Web 3.0 is new, and here social behavior is shaped by tokenization.
But why initially does it appear to be so synthetic, why not permanently, or is it going to change later on? Well, tokenizing social behavior translates to tokenizing social mobility, and we have the conviction that Web 3.0 is the future because Web 2.0 at some point will undergo technological obsolescence when the masses will be permeated with the message of absolute ownership and data privacy, and when they will be made to understand that they are not mere end user, they are potential owners and that can only be possible in web 3.0.
Change is the only constant. That implies each one of us including the technology, and the biotic & abiotic components around us are the variables of that change.
Human effort when factored in with time and space gives rise to certain outcomes.
Similarly, technology, when factored in with time and space, gives rise to evolution.
Similarly, you can call this engagement, leaderboard, or extrinsic motivation an effort to internalize this habit of tokenization into your social behavior.
Interaction with one another is the essence of socialization. A social media bereft of mobility is an empty shell and no way can be classified as a social media.
Just being underpinned by decentralized technology may not be enough to make it thrive as Web 3.0 social media. For that, a vibrant community must ensure that it's a living embodiment of energetic people, not dead ones. Because the dead can not socialize.
You may argue that creating a leaderboard, encouraging people to engage, or incentivizing them sounds like a synthetic craftsmanship of social media, in that case, even if it appears lively it is bereft of organic interaction or for that matter may appear un-romantic.
But in my opinion, even if appears to be so, this is merely a kink of that long-drawn process of the perfect synthesis of Web 3.0 as a technology, absolute ownership as an ideation, and people at large actually using it as a realization.
Technology+Ideation+Realization is a sequent paradigm of social media evolution & a long-drawn process; it will undergo many kinks and imperfections. Today's engagement even if you find it synthetic is part of that imperfection which will undergo course correction by the perfect/true faction to achieve that perfect synthesis of Web 3.0.
Therefore engagement even if it appears synthetic is indispensable for the manifestation of Web 3.0 and the synthesis of social consciousness. A decentralized community can potentially bring that absolute consciousness with regard to Web 3.0.
Quality= May become Dry if not complemented with Numbers
Number= Un-romantic if not complimented with Quality.
So, Quality and Numbers are not antithetical, they are part of that continuum. The network effect is the synthesis of quality and numbers of both.
Hive got a new lease of life in 2020, today we are negotiating the year of 2024, so it is slowly factoring in with time and space to transit from infancy to young adult. In that process, tons of data will be uploaded into the Blocks...being appended into the chains. You all are becoming an agent to create a network effect through engagement.
Whether you are engaging with another out of fun, or for earning tokens, or obsessively taking it like a job, whatever case it may be you are directly or indirectly contributing to that database. You are writing the history of the transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 only to realize in hindsight after a decade when people will be talking about Web 3.0 wallet/Hive with the same craze as people are talking today about Whatsapp. You are creating that future Whatsapp unknowingly through your engagement.
In gist, even synthetic engagement could bring value propositions in the form of learning vocabulary, getting exposure to the culture of another country/region, news, economic opportunities, free compliments, tech know-how of web 3.0, etc, etc.
In time, the network will expand, and so will be the leaderboard, we may see different faces, figures, personalities, consistency, inconsistency, and volatility in the top 10.
To be honest, we do not want those inflated figures, what we need here is expanded ranks like 1000s, 10,000s, 100,000, or even millions.
Just imagine if everyone produces just 10-15 comments multiplied by 1 million users what would be the net network effect of such an interaction and how will be that tree of engagement? That complex web that you are weaving through engagement is the real worth of this network effect and that is where the fundamental value of this platform resides.
Put simply, through engagement, you are creating the fundamental value of this platform.
Infographics created by me using Canva
