Diversifying Content to Magnify Exposure - Importance of Short-form Content on Hive and LeoFinance

Broken value attribution

By handing out monetary rewards for written pieces of content, we've created ourselves a little bubble here where the content we believe to be more valuable than the other, isn't necessarily better but is rather comforting to our biased and unsound principles for determining value. In turn, this leads some Hivers to oftentimes wrongly equate post value to word count just as most consumers wrongly equate value to price tag.

This couldn't be further from the truth and if continued, this backward-thinking mentality could be detrimental to the long-term success of Hive's social aspect.

While long and extremely long-form content can sometimes be more valuable than its shorter counterparts, it doesn't necessarily mean that the latter is less valuable. It's just a broken mental pathway we humans subconsciously take in order to attribute value to something intangible we don't really know how to properly value.

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Social content

Currently popular social media platforms like Twitter, FB, Instagram and Reddit, have shown us what social content looks like. They serve as an example as to what kind of content people engage with the most and as it turns out, it's not 5000-word essays about the marine-life biodiversity of Madagascar.

While educating and entertaining, essays aren't the most social kind of content.

Average users tend to consume and engage the most with short-form content like tweets, images, and short to medium-length posts/articles. No surprise here as we are going through the age of constantly deteriorating attention span and personal free time. Nowadays, people rarely have the time/motivation to write or read a well-thought-out 4-page article about the meaning of life, but most of them can/will post a 240 letter tweet, a single picture, or a short status update.

People like playing status games but they won't spend too much time on them.

That's why platforms encouraging content a broader scope of users can create like tweets and images, have become so popular. Lowering the bar for entry while providing bite-sized chunks of content users can enjoy on the go, proven to be the key element boosting social interactions on these platforms.

King of social

Just look at Twitter for example and the entire empire it built around short tidbits of highly social and attention-captivating, content. I don't know about you but I often find more value in a single tweet than in an entire article, especially if the value I'm looking for is entertainment.

By capping max length, Twitter is unintentionally training users ability to relay complex concepts in a short format, resulting in very information-dense content. Short, but extremely high bandwidth and high information throughput tweets. If mastered, this ability makes one a wordsmith extraordinaire who can communicate an entire book's worth of information in less than 240 letters.

Such powers shouldn't be underestimated.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I present to you two of my all-time favorite tweets.

Let's start with CryptoCobain

For reference, this tweet was published straight after the entire world took a 60% plunge during the March Corona scare, bitcoin and the entire crypto market included.

As you can see, Cobie is a master wordsmith.

This legendary tweet was a vital piece of information in exactly the right time that might have literally saved the lives of traders who after reading it decided to roll the dice and not sell into a -60% dip. It sure did give me a morale boost during those testing times after I lost more than half of what was my largest investment in crypto so far.

Next up, ser Naval Ravikant

If you still don't know who Naval is, you are missing out on a wealth of information. I suggest you start with his most popular tweet-storm how to get rich without getting lucky and a full 3-hour-long video explaining it, how to get rich. You'll find Naval to be a very interesting and highly intellectual man with a lot of knowledge and wisdom to share, and a rather peculiar ability to distill complex topics into the shortest format possible.

The above tweet is a good example.

Like Cobie and Naval, other outspoken and tech-social wordsmiths have managed to build their kingdoms on Twitter. I've yet to see someone with such refined writing skills to be underappreciated on Twitter. Most wordsmiths I've come across have at least a few tens of thousands of followers and the content that made them so popular simultaneously made Twitter what it is today, a 3.6 billion dollars yearly revenue social media giant buzzing with engagement.

Solidifying my case that short-form content is extremely valuable (when well-written) and underestimating it could suppress the social aspect of our social blockchain.

Why are Hivers running away from short-form content like it's the bubonic plague?

Why do we have to repeatedly discourage short content? Why can't we embrace it? Why can't we encourage Hivers to become short-form-wordsmiths?

We know that

• Essays aren't the most social kind of content

• Tweets, snaps, stories and Tiktok's, are extremely social

• We are missing out on a wealth of eyeballs by demonizing and scrutinizing short-form content creators

• Now could be a do or die moment for Hive to diversify content and start producing short tidbits like mentioned tweets

Each one of these points is up for discussion down in the comment section if you disagree.

If we can start diversifying content and publishing some shorter pieces, Hive's social aspect could flourish. Putting this idea aside and continuing to promote only long-form content will steer many potential new users away. That's something we can't afford during the times we are trying to acquire critical a mass of users.

I'll be on the lookout for shorter content and will try to encourage more of it.

If you know any authors that write in this form, please let me know.