If there are consumers, creators will come. It's just so eay to earn rewards posting uninteresting, low effort and low quality conent.

> I wonder how many work out that creation isn't for them and instead spend their time consuming and engaging on the platform, because they like it.

At the end of Feb I had almost 2900 steem, so when Hive started I had about 2900 HIVE and on April 1st I had 3054 HIVE. Today I have 3515 HP, with 260 hive waiting for me to decide what to do with it. Almost all of it is from steem, but some of it is coming from curation, from consuming content. And that curation number is getting bigger with every HIVE I earn, buy or get from a trade. 

I still earn more through the few post I put out to share a few meaningless things, (no earth shattering post), but most of it is because I am a consumer. I like reading, looking at and commenting on post. I also vote on the post, and get a little back in return.

I am primarily a consumer of the content. I like Movies, that does not make me an actor, but not being an actor would not stop me from making a home movie if I desired.  HIVE does allow one to consume and to play at the same time.

i am in the period where i stopped thinking about value, engagement... because for this 2 years that i was posting here, absolutely nothing had sense. Some cool stuff no one seen, some shit got decent amount of engagement...
So i am currently in the "i made this (thought about this) today, here you go hive do what ever with it.
I realized some time ago (few years) that i will never have an audience on youtube because i am all over the place. and i am all over the place because it is not my job and it will most probably never be. youtube for me will always be 300-600 views from people that know me (small town everybody knows everybody) and few random people, and that random people will not be there because next video could be something that they are absolutely not interested in.
Think the same thing is on Hive. 
So my work will not bring people to Hive, not make people stay on Hive, so there is no value :D

Content is important, but not as much as the people who generate it.
My answer is that the most important content is the first 5-10 articles of new users who are just starting to learn information about blockchains.

Try to ask this question in the communit #askhive. 

Hello @tarazkp,

Curiously, despite being following you on Hive, I consider that you have interesting thoughts, this time I got here via Twitter.

The final sentence is very eloquent.

> The most valuable content is the audience in the seats watching

Many times I ask myself, what drives me to be here? Just the yearning for rewards or the need to be heard. Probably both.

I think that on platforms like Hive, there is valuable content for people like us. In the short time that I have been here, Steem - Hive, I have come to understand that it is we who give value to the chain and that there is room for many genres, you just have to constantly work on building it. We are creators and audience at the same time in a process that will advance to where we want.

Hello pal I hope you can mentor and help me on this new platform.

I had a conversation with my wife today about Her ***Non Participation*** over here. I told Her....

***"You should be at least pimping my stuff over on those sites You spend all Your time on."***

You are Soooo right. We need eyes on. It is disturbing how many Lemmings do not seem to care that the content they put up, the personal info they share is being profited from, sold, pillaged, censored, manipulated. 

My wife says She spends time over on the FecesBook site, cuz everyone else is there...... SMFH

My fathers fave phrase when I was a kid, pleading my case. 

***"If Your friend SHITS HIS PANTS..... Are You Gonna SHIT YOURS TOO...?"***

Maybe that is why I do my own thing and hate to follow the ~~Crowd~~ Lemmings....?

>I have heard often people talk about how many great content creators have left, without them seeing the problem. Yeah, we need great content creators, but more than that - we need far, far more eyes on what is created. Without eyes on work, there is no value. What Hive needs, is a great audience, people who come in, consume content and share it out to the world - the topic matters less than the reach - which is why initiatives that push out to Twitter, Reddit and similar are great.

That's a great point. @runicar made a post about SEO-ying our posts to improve the domain authorities of the front ends as well as improving the page rank of our posts.

We also need to start rewarding people for looking for new people to onboard, onboarding them successfully and helping them get a good start. Account creation is a natural sink. And someone new powering up most of their initial earnings is a sign of them looking to grow. Rewards based on Proof-of-Onboarding, if you will. 

> As individuals, I think that we should perhaps be inviting people in as viewers of content rather than pushing with the creator aspect to begin with. This way, they can get in and enjoy the content, get accustomed to the ecosystem and culture and then, if they want, start posting. Of course, they might want to post straight away also, but that is up to them. Most people who use YouTube have never posted a video - yet still use it often.

So much this. 
For years now, I've had the same piece of advice for newcomers. 
Find good content, make insightful comments; don't post until you have at least 200 followers.
Trying to build a following by posting is like doing excellent stand-up comedy in your front yard. 
I like how you've taken it one step further. No need to post, just come for the info and slowly build stake with curation rewards. One could make the argument that there isn't enough non-Hive content -
* cough * @holoz0r

to make it worth visiting, but it's the chicken-egg thing, isn't it? 
We need to remember that our comments, our upvotes, our engagement is what keeps the creators creating.
This is one of many reasons I post so sparingly. If in the 2 hours I would've spent writing the post, I can encourage and engage with 10 different authors, that's much better for my investment in the long run. 

This:
> This is why the focus should be far less on getting paid to post and far more on getting paid to consume.

...and along with a lot of stuff you said under that:

**Did I write this post?  LOL!**

There's far more 'value' in a department store than a fruit stand that only sells apples.  Content is a simple product and yes, finding ways to attract paying consumers is important.  You know I could talk about this for days.   

Wow! You have laid it out well here and thankfully I can read very fast.
You are totally correct that the value lies in the audiences,
I say audiences because of the huge variety of content in the posts here.

But then again simplicity is also a big value creator.
Take Facebook for instance, one can click on the link, open it immediately and talk to your friends and family. No need to jump through a few hoops to get in and no need to decipher anything. Money of course is the game changer, as security is an issue and sets of keys need to be generated.

Usually greed is a big drawcard, but eventually it levels out, especially where consistency is required. When Papillon launched in 2002, we had about 30 volunteers raring to go. After 2 years we had 9 left and eventually ended up with 6. Nothing was wrong with the content and we had great successes, but the consistent factor was missing.

People want things easy and quick my friend. Two professional friends that I invited to steem lasted for a few weeks and then gave up.
I will be here 4 years next June.

Just my 2 cents here!

That's the beauty. 
Content will find it's real value in a decentralized environment.

For other's eyes only

https://twitter.com/tarazkp1/status/1251971466020696064

Great post with several very interesting points.

>With content on Hive though, what is it that adds value? I believe that it is ultimately an unanswerable question unless the answer is, it all adds some kind of value. However, this doesn't mean that all content should receive value in return.

100% agree.

>This is why the focus should be far less on getting paid to post and far more on getting paid to consume.

Interesting approach. But then a problem occurs when many users focus exclusively on creating content, and forget about those who interact with the content they have created. Do most of the comments that are written receive a response? Are few or many comments receiving votes? Does the content creator read the comments or ignore them? Are consumer comments good or bad? They are questions that need answers to solve that.

>While I still have no idea definitively what kind of content adds value to the blockchain, I think that it has to be something that people enjoy consuming or, offers them something that improves their life.

I think that would be the best definition of value.


Thanks for sharing.

You discussed a nice topic here. Well, value depends solely on perspectives. What you see as value might not be the same for me, however, you made some cool points on what valuable content should be. For me, valuable contents are those that I can learn something from. We all publish basic random posts about our lives and still get rewards for them. Are those post really valuable? Are people learning from our lives? There are communities here that reward users for just sharing what they do through the day, are they also creating value on the chain?