You might think Hive lacks marketing. Sure, we have (had?) a DHF to "do marketing." And sure, the last hardfork had no press release. You might jump to the conclusion that @lordbutterfly failed to do a press release about HF25. But that's not the case.
It wasn't @lordbutterly's job to write that press release. Whoever wanted to do it could have submitted it and as such, would have been released.
Nobody did.
That's not on @lordbutterfly.
For now, Hive's main marketing strength is being under the radar. Of course, I'm being tongue-in-cheek. It's not a strength to suck at marketing. But I still think it's good to recontextualize the failure as a strength, if possible.
So here's the question. Was it on @blocktrades to write the press release? Well, maybe not him personally. But it was his team behind most of the changes, right?
I would contend that strictly speaking, it wasn't on @blocktrades, as such. It wasn't on anyone.
That's the point. This is a decentralized project. Even in a centralized structure, the development team is not in charge of writing press releases.
In a centralized structure, whoever is in charge might request copy from the development team. But they wouldn't expect that the development team originates the press release. Developers are nerds. They lack these skills.
In fact, let's go around the horn to see who should have written the press release. Let's start with the top 10, by stake:
- @freedom - Last I checked, we don't know who this is.
- @blocktrades - Busy with development team.
- @darthknight - Hardly ever posts.
- @theycallmedan - Busy with 3speak.
- @mottler - Never posts.
- @alpha - Never posts (probably @blocktrades).
- @encrypt3dbr0k3r - Busy streaming; see: @odbc
- @adm - Hardly ever posts.
- @jamesc - Hardly ever posts.
- @newsflash - Hardly ever posts.
Not those nerds, I guess.
So we're left with being under the radar again. It has its advantages. Steem was under the radar for a while, then it wasn't. That's what lead to Hive. Hopefully, that doesn't have to happen again, next time.
While we're under the radar again, we can gather up the true believers in this space. We can strengthen our defenses. Maybe it'll take another four years until someone realizes what Hive is really doing.
When you're under the radar, it's too easy for folks to take sides and fight over stuff. We have enough drama right now. But what are "they" going to write about? "Oh, custom_json isn't there yet, there's no error handling." Or. "Hive code names are stupid!" Really? Who cares about all that? No one cares.
The only way to get on the radar when you don't otherwise have the "rank" is to attack. We don't need that kind of notoriety. And at rank #188 or so, we don't deserve to claim that anyway.
On the other hand, do you really think Hive is going to fail?
No, for the moment, we're staying under the radar and that's good.