RE: Ureka.Social: Twitter/X style Microblogging is live - Earn Crypto For Your Uncensored Tweets!
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Hehe, great to hear you like the design and it is working quickly for you. I don't even have access to my own API server, so the fact that it is fast is inspiring. There are quite a few reasons to build Ureka:
- I built version 1 of Ureka over 7 years, starting around 2010 (iirc). It was blacklisted by Google before I even knew that the silicon valley companies did such things. So I found it very hard to get any traffic other than through my own efforts on social media sites. I then moved to Steem and added support for Steem to Ureka. So in 2017/2018 there was a Steem site that was hybrid with an exsiting database that handled private messaging and private posts alongside public Steem posts. Again, though, I got little traffic. At the time of the fork I decided to shut the whole site down as I felt there was too much power being directed to shutting down free speech online (I still see Justin Sun's actions as being to censor free speech at the time of Covid - he literally lived in Wuhan). So relaunching Ureka is a continuation of an old project.
- Having worked in this field for so long, I get frustrated using the existing Hive websites because I know they can be better - but the changes never get coded. A lot of money has been paid for Hive UI development and I think that while good work has been done, we can do a bit better. I would like to add my part to that.
- As mentioned in the video here at the end, I want to create new features that have never existed on Hive/Steem before. I can't do that unless I have my own site to add them into.
- The biggest problem faced by Hive, to me, is growth. This is partially because of:
- The unintuitive onboarding process in some places.
- The poor level of educational material and marketing, generally.
- Confidence/trust: The general crypto space being so full of scams and people assuming Hive is a scam - plus the perception of too much centralisation on Hive.
- Difficulty in using Hive on mobile.
I've put quite a bit of time over the years into trying to work with different teams behind the scenes on Hive to resolve these issues and haven't made much progress in any of them. The only way I can see the changes I am looking for actually reaching Hive is for me to do them directly.
Obviously, this is a lot of work and I am only one person. I have been in projects before where I was the only person who had the skills needed to do the difficult tasks and I ended up doing the job of many people for almost no income as a result. I am not going to repeat that on Hive. Fortunately, I am able to develop high quality code pretty quickly and I am able to reuse some of the code from different Hive projects that offer open source and API access.
Once the site is to a necessary level of completion (soon), I'll turn my focus to digital marketing and look to develop tools/strategy for viral marketing that bypass the censorhip (aka 'reach restriction) that I perceive is being directed at Hive on web 2 platforms (to prevent competition and free flow of information). This will be where I really need the help of the community, to take action and to play a part in growing Hive themselves.
I currently have no way whatsoever to generate income from this work, so any support I can get from the community to pay for it is appreciated and will speed things up. I may put a DHF proposal in once I am a bit further on, however, I previously put months of work into the @strategizer proposal to try to bring professional marketing strategy to Hive and it was mostly ignored completely by the larger stakeholders - so I am not confident that DHF funds will be directed as I would like here either.
Hey, being blacklisted by Google must have been a tough blow, and it’s understandable that it made things incredibly challenging. Sometimes, a complete restart is the best way to break free from that kind of setback and rebuild stronger. We’re really happy to see you didn’t give up and kept pushing forward with Ureka—your persistence is inspiring!
You’re absolutely right that there’s always room for improvement, and it often takes someone with a clear vision, like yourself, to take matters into their own hands and make things happen. We’re super curious about the new features you’re planning for Ureka! Any chance they’ll be open source, so the community can check them out and maybe contribute?
On the onboarding front, there’s a cool tool called checkinwith.xyz that’s been helping with face-to-face onboarding for Hive. It might be worth a look for your growth efforts. Marketing has always been a pain point for Hive—some of the past efforts, like that rally car, were pretty out there and didn’t quite hit the mark. We’ve seen success with community-driven marketing, like what we’re doing with TheDappList and the @Hive-Echo account. Every Hivian pitching in with their own marketing efforts can make a big difference.
As for the scam perception, it’s tough since crypto as a whole gets that label a lot. To break into Web2 spaces, we’ll need Web2-friendly solutions that leverage the Hive blockchain’s strengths. On mobile usability, Ecency’s app is a step forward, but maybe a compact “beginner” version of Hive, with clear steps to progress to intermediate and advanced features, could really ease new users in and help them grow.
Funding through the DHF is, yeah, notoriously tough 😖 almost like chasing a mirage sometimes. Keep us posted on your progress, and we’re rooting for you.
I think that the new features will largely be smart contract based on vsc. Usually smart contracts are publicly visible and need to be for transparency.
One of the problems with both open source development and transparency, is that other people who have built a larger following and have more resources have tended to make a business model out of stealing ideas from other people. We often never even hear of them because they were unable to gain enough exposure before they were snuffed out.
This is actually a huge problem in many different industries - especially those the deal with digital ideas and content.
The worst part is that people can adapt ideas and reduce their effectiveness, while leading people to think that they've got the best solution on offer. People then never seek out alteratives, because they think they are already getting the best they can and human evolution stalls.
This is partially what's happening to hive, in contrast to web two networks.
Any good idea that the surfaces in in vsc can be copied on ethereum, for example, and gain rapid exposure before the hive version has even started marketing.
So all of this has to be considered to avoid making huge losses and feeling frustrated
Again!
Better coordination in marketing and funding on hive might be able to overcome this, but in its absence i will not be launching anything specifically as open source for a while and will continue to try to build something fresh and inspiring that can start to pay for itself instead of being a constant drain.
BTW, I just tried to use checkinwith, but it doesn't accept hyphens in the username field, so I can't login.
I will notify the team. Thank you for letting me know.
Hello @ura-soul, @coldbeetrootsoup
Thank you for reporting the issue.
We've identified & fixed it before you flagged it but we missed shipping it on production.
github pull request
For your info, we are building open source - hive-flutter-kit which will help lot of flutter developers. They don't need to start from scratch because they'll get a lot of ready made components to kick-start their idea-app on Hive Blockchain.
Tested it
working fine in following version of checkinwith xyz