We've been running @lovesniper for a while now, for those unaware what it does in a tl;dr is: a bot that checks and alerts us in the discord when a new account makes its first post (created by @rishi556), then a team of curators checks what kind of post it is, recommends them to make an intro post if it's not one and throws the accounts a follow to check back later when they do introduce themselves and then unfollows them with the @lovesniper account. If it's already an intro post or once they introduce themselves, they are nominated for curation and highlighted in a compilation post where other readers can curate and throw them a follow if they're interested in what they may be writing about. It's quite the process but should over time produce a higher retention of new users, get them their first rewards + RC and then they're also directed at communities they might be interested in after finding out what their interests are through the introduction. As you can tell a lot of work goes into the process, thereby the curators get also rewarded for their efforts through the compilation posts.
Some things we've been seeing lately happen though, as expected, is that people want to abuse the good deeds of the curators by targeting the lovesniper project with fake identities and introduction posts - i.e. it being the same or a group of the same people producing these just for the rewards. This has caused us now to become a lot stricter with the rewards we dish out towards these intro posts, no matter how long or how much effort went into them, I check for other things as well now before casting the ocd votes on them, such as if they've been commenting or posting more since the intro post. Luckily for us the posts are usually 3-4 days old when I get to voting them, this is since the curators are a bit behind on getting to the first posts of accounts due to the big number of accounts being created lately. This gives us some leeway to check on the activity of the accounts, if they've started posting in communities, started engaging, etc, which factors the vote we give to them. These smaller votes are to disincentivize scam/id theft/fake id rings but still give something in case the users happen to be real but just appear to be another fake account. We've also been helping ecency with account creation lately as they've been running low on account credits, and as they're one of the few free account services that only rely on email verification (but have made it harder to abuse) there are some foul apples that can get through either way. In the end we don't see it as a big loss or damage if some fake accounts can muster to get a couple $ in rewards for writing unique and placing effort into the posts, as long as some of them are genuine the upside should be better. It sucks that we can't reward introduction posts a lot more as that's one of the beauties of Hive where anyone and everyone can join, introduce themselves and get their first crypto but at the same time going through the dense process of verification that some platforms require such as voice is also not great because there are a lot of people who either value their anonymity when posting online or just want a platform they can speak their mind without it being tied to their real identity, I see this happen on Reddit quite a lot where people would simple create throwaway accounts but end up using said accounts for a long time. Those who don't mind verifying themselves can of course and are incentivized to link their other socials (with @poshtoken we'll be able to incentivize this activity more in the near future once it has a real value) or to their real name directly but we are not a platform that is going to force it and shun anyone not doing so because that freedom of not having to do so is one of our strengths.
We have been seeing some good results either way, a lot of legit newcomers coming in, diving into the platform and its diverse and many communities and connecting with others. As an example just yesterday I happened to spot a fellow Gods Unchained player who has mentioned many weeks ago that he was going to check Hive out for his art content and I happened to vote on him through lovesniper and reblog once I noticed who it was! As we improve over time and become better at detecting and avoiding the fake ones and Hive gets more recognition through marketing and word of mouth we hope to see the numbers improve even more and be able to see concrete evidence of it on the daily active users stats.
Talking about word of mouth, something we've been working on now for our next project will be an onboarding program through OCD which we're hoping will yield a lot better results than the usual random new signups and what we've been accomplishing with lovesniper. This one will work through hiveonboard and make use of our account token credits we've been collecting over the years. Thanks to @lemony-cricket this will all go through our discord where onboarders with a certain role will be able to generate a VIP hive onboard link so that the users signing up won't need to use their phone numbers as that's something many don't like understandably, quickly receive an account and then be introduced to Hive and all it has to offer. We realize that many members here today have been wanting to invite folks but have felt that they're not ready to properly welcome them with their stake, although this will get easier with the linear curve coming up in the next hardfork, we want to make it even better with this program. The onboarders will have their own dedicated channels in our Discord where they can freely receive account creation invites and drop nominations for curation of the users they've invited until they've settled in nicely in communities where then the community incubation program will be continuing to take care of them. We're hoping that incentives such as the beneficiary rewards of invited users and compilation highlights of onboarded users introduction posts will incentivize people to go out there and invite content creators, show them the ropes about Hive (or guide them towards our discord so they can ask questions there) and be able to curate them so they get comfortable with Hive and understand what it's about. A mix of guaranteed early curation (depending on the quality and effort of the content) for the beneficiary rewards and knowing that these new content creators have a guarantee that they are real as we'll be handpicking who can onboard based on trust and reputation on the chain I think we will be able to aim for new highs of retention and onboarding. Over time we'll be able to let more and more content creators invite others and it will hopefully create an avalanche of newcomers and a higher price to be able to curate all of them with decent rewards.
We've worked hard on making sure that this program won't be abusable or that at least onboarders are linked to who they invited if some turn out to attempt to cheat curation to somewhat hold them accountable.
Make sure to keep your eyes open for an official announcement post of the onboarding program as we will be looking for applicants who are interested in inviting new users and content creators and get that ball rolling! We will also look to generate statistics of onboarded users along with special prizes for things like most onboarded through us, highest retention rate of onboarded users and fun gamification stuff like that. We're looking forward to working together with reputable Hive users to bring in more amazing content creators and we have a lot more things planned for 2021! For now let's do a few things at a time. :)
If you like what OCD is doing, we'd appreciate a witness vote on our @ocd-witness account and if you want some of your stake to help us curate and grow these initiatives and projects we're doing, you can delegate directly to @ocdb and receive daily returns in Hive the next day and then daily!
Thanks for reading and all of the support the OCD team have received over the years as we'll continue our best to keep Hive one of the best platforms on the internet!
