Someone once noted that participation on Publish0x tends to drop off after a little while. This happens for two reasons -- one lies in the lack of engagement for users who have mastered their writing schedule, and the other lies in the nature of crypto itself.
Let's take me as an example of the first reason. I'm satisfied with how my articles do and the amount of crypto I am making. Once or two articles a week is enough for me to say what I want to say, because that allows me to get a longer perspective on the issues. So I check in occasionally, like and tip the people I follow, and publish an article. After that, there's nothing else to do.
The other reason arises from an unfortunate reality about crypto investing itself -- it consists of short periods of manic activity followed by long periods of HODLing. What do you do in those periods of HODLing? Not much related to crypto, usually.
Again, take me an example of the second reason. Week after week of seeing my coin prices plummet just drained me of all interest in writing about crypto. I didn't bother to come to Publish0x at all, because I knew that anything I did write either be a sob story or doomsaying, not helpful to anyone. As a result, Publish0x had no impact on my life, because the only way it interacted with me was me visiting the site (yes, I turned off notifications).
That's a real problem and a real opportunity.
Publish0x could disrupt this cycle and keep folks engaged. Forums, badges, feeds, earning tiers -- all of these would help make the site more "sticky". Contests could work too, but they'd have to happen on more of a frequent basis. None of this is a slam. I've run sites before and it's a lot of work; however, hiring someone full-time for user engagement would be money well-spent.
How did the social media titans like FB, Twitter, and so on become places where people wanted to hang out? They offered a rich interactive experience with people you cared about -- your friends -- as well as the freedom to express yourself. Torum is going this way, but it still feels like a city of empty streets with people occasionally ducking out of windows. The crypto-social space still hasn't assembled the elements to create a killer app.
Perhaps some of these user engagement ideas are in the works, and if so, great. However, nobody outside the dev circle knows about them. How about sharing the development roadmap? It'd be great to allow people to provide feedback or vote on ideas, with the most popular ideas becoming incorporated into the roadmap and implemented.
Publish0x could become something great, but is the interest and drive there on the development side?
(Image found through search for dystopia + some font magic)
