Today, I had a conversation with a friend's acquaintance who expressed a desire to "do something about social media, to create something that is ours." She was unfamiliar with Nostr and only vaguely aware of Mastodon, though she had heard of Bluesky and Threads.
She represents the ideal target audience for Nostr. Once I explained our project, her excitement was palpable. Although initially skeptical about Bitcoin, she showed interest in an economic model not reliant on advertising and was open to exploring alternative models.
Several key points emerged from our discussion. Firstly, the ease of joining and locating acquaintances on Nostr is crucial. For instance, the process of installing TestFlight, then navigating back to nos.social to click a link and install Nostr via TestFlight, proved challenging. Her attempt to Google Nostr nearly led her astray. @benarc i think, this underscores the need for someone with tech marketing/communications expertise to overhaul nostr.com. The current site should be repositioned as developer.nostr.com.
We must simplify the process of finding and connecting with known contacts on Nostr. It's essential to communicate the value proposition of Nostr to new users, whether they learn about it through friends or media. Our focus shouldn't be on creating more content for Bitcoin enthusiasts, as there's already a plethora of information available for those familiar with wallet operations.
Another aspect that stood out was Nostr's multi-app nature. Nostr isn't just Damus, Nos, Amethyst, or Habla.news. It's a platform where various apps can operate using the same data, contacts, and services, all under the user's control. For those with a developer mindset, the sheer breadth of projects within Nostr demonstrates the vibrancy and scale of our endeavor. Projecting this magnitude is crucial for attracting users who are deciding where to invest their time.
I believe we could benefit from explainer videos that highlight why Nostr is both important and interesting. During our conversation, I showcased various apps: Primal for a web social feed, Habla and Yakihonne for longer-form blogging, Flockstr for events, Wherostr for geolocation, and Highlighter for layering different functionalities. These examples illustrate the diversity and versatility of our platform.
I didn't delve into Nostr nests, marketplaces, Wavlake, Streamstr, and more, but it's clear there's much to explore.
This conversation has led me to believe that we should proactively share the Nostr story, positioning it as the future of social networking. This approach will also help us differentiate from platforms like Threads, Pixelfed, Mastodon, and Bluesky. While these platforms are based on open protocols, they operate as single-app, vertical silos.
Our unique offering is the unified 'login' across diverse apps, granting users not just control over their algorithms but their entire app experience. They can even use multiple apps simultaneously.
The impact of a single Thai TikTok video in attracting a Thai user community to Nostr exemplifies the power of targeted storytelling. We should harness similar strategies to broaden our reach and influence. Talking about how this is a whole new way of social, not just one app.
👇👇👇Great insights.👇👇👇
👇Talk amongst yourselves!👇
nostr:nevent1qqs29x3jq4q9dh6r4l8flzdukzcw07k7mchsv3qs8he9hccd99wz8dqpzamhxue69uhkummnw3ezuendwsh8w6t69e3xj7szypmvwx4w8fy378v7a3ruhgt7y2wd5sgn5zamde4wzamdwep798905qcyqqqqqqg47ad82
Well said, Rabble.
I also do agree that nostr.com should be redesigned to focus on why Nostr matters, not how to develop on Nostr.
nostr:nevent1qqs29x3jq4q9dh6r4l8flzdukzcw07k7mchsv3qs8he9hccd99wz8dqpzemhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2un9d3shjtnrdakj7q3qwmr34t36fy03m8hvgl96zl3znndyzyaqhwmwdtshwmtkg03fetaqxpqqqqqqz03af4q
Why not both? You could keep the development section as a page.
do you have the link to the Thai TikTok video?
💯 👏
What excites me the most about nostr are the conferences. Namely, that they’re all online.
So much excitement around this platform!
We just need more digital marketing experts!
Maybe next bull run a recession will hit them, they’ll all be fired from their fortune 500s and they’ll flock to us.
Hear, hear! It can be difficult to communicate that each nostr app is a interface onto a single common database, rather than a separate silo.
> It can be difficult to communicate that each nostr app is a interface onto a single common database, rather than a separate silo.
But this isn't the case, is it? Each relay is a separate silo. Nostr's website says: "Clients fetch data from relays of their choice and publish data to relays of their choice. Relays don't talk to one another, only directly to users."
Or have I misunderstood?
Relays can get posts from eachother, how else would the propagation of messages even work otherwise ?
You post to x and y relays. z and a relays can read and repost your post like anyother user client.
There is nothing preventing another relay from reading a JSON file like any other client.
some relays do sync between them. there is a gossip model where you can find what relay a specific user has published to and then read from there.
Exactly - some relays sync between them, but even if you follow me, you might not see my messages if I'm not being synced, or don't post, on the relays you use.
I still fail to really understand how this is decentralised. Mastodon's model is; but Nostr seems to be entirely based on a few relays.
New methods for relay syncing and relay discovery will change everything. This is only the beginning.
nostr:nevent1qqsxczva2fgfqmx4772xatcktvl2n3znmy8xzvs6k74jfpfxr02794cpzemhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejz7q3q08pv4cg5ag52nq082kd5leu9ffrn2gdg6g4xdwatn73y36uzplmqxpqqqqqqzzhd7j2
That's a very bad drawing that makes my point. It shows Nostr clients posting to separate relays, none of which talk to each other. In order to read a post, you have to connect to a relay that carries that post. But unlike ActivityPub's instance-based infrastructure, it isn't immediately obvious how to find out what relays this post is on, or where I post on Nostr.
Every time I come here it's clear that Nostriches are wilfully ignoring how poor this system is, and how the entire power of the platform is hanging off a few big, censorable, relays.
You mostly seem bent on dissing nostr. But you do have a point. Only the strfry relays have a sync protocol to gossip messages between relays similar to scuttlebutt. We also do have a discovery problem mapping which npubs have content on which relays. Some relays have bots attached to them which look up profiles and relay lists, this is how purplepag.es, relay.nos.social, and primal do it. I think some sort of DHT to map users to relay is needed to prevent centralization of relays.
That said, it’s a hell of a lot better than ActivityPub which puts all power for identity, content, privacy, and connections in to the hands of single instances. What’s more AP claims it’s interoperable but it’s not really. I can’t use my mastodon.social account to manage my events on a mobilizon events server. If i want to use peertube, again i’ll need a new account, followers, content, etc…. Sure they’re all ActivityPub and part of the fediverse, but it’s kind of like parallel universes, they don’t benefit from each other.
This is the benefit of signing identity, vs hosted identity infra. The user controling their identity by signing messages has always been a goal, having recoginized the weakness of walled garden identity managers like google or facebook auth. I understood, but i'm not sure they will, that you can use your nsec to sign messages and user rights accross any future environment.
I see what you mean. I used to think that too. What client are you using ? For me on Amethyst, seeing and adding what relays you are posting to is as easy as sidescrolling on your profile and clicking "Relays" . There is nothing preventing relays from speaking to eachother and it has already been pointed out that some do, through mirroring.
As a simple open protocol, if a relay begins censoring or if a 100x scale up in users occurs, both relay diversity costs and spam prevention through zaps and and subscriber relays, has been part of the design from early on (and tor).
From a user perspective or relay provider Nostr is just KISS. No email signup, host lock in, version compliance/updates. Just nsec/npub , json parse and go. If you don't see the elegance, i'm not quite sure how to describe the beauty any better.
You like ActivityPub. Do activitypub ! It does not need to be either/or. For me AP is an overdesigned make-work program for specialist, like Lighting Network or Kungfu. Nostr is the Brazialian Jiu Jitsu of social protocols. If you like larping at decentralization, do activity pub! If you are trying to survive an uncooperative street fight, Do nostr.
https://image.nostr.build/f073e407c4f792a491adc199a32a63ce86c508ed713a71329c7ac7ca91f2264f.jpg#m=image%2Fjpeg&dim=587x945&blurhash=%5E99ZNTOf%3FKV%3FISoQF%3A%3FJjCohS5Im%25OX0xwayNFWG%3DfR%23%252s%3AaeR-JN%24-W9X8bJV%3FNFW%3FS2smo3NaMwsYn%25S1s%3AsA9rsZNFjFt8j%3DIms%3FNFR*t8bY&x=bb7d897bec6171b0c5dce204d8e252000ca09f0feb3e8d4cb33e8856aa0aa407
Ideally clients will know in which relays you publish and connect automatically to these to fetch your notes specifically. There are many clients that do this already, but Damus and Amethyst don't.
"can" isn't the same as "do".
nostr is best explained on Desktop and not mobile in my personal experience. That needs to change to hit a larger audience. Social nostr apps really need to focus on a mobile first approach. Just adding my thoughts.
nostr:nevent1qqs29x3jq4q9dh6r4l8flzdukzcw07k7mchsv3qs8he9hccd99wz8dqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzqak8r2hr5jglrk0wc37t59lz98x6gyf6pwaku6hpwakhvslznjh6qvzqqqqqqy4nq5yr
Yeah, that would be useful for the many sides/clients of Nostr. I also think adoption is inevitable.
I’m my case the use case that I’m very very excited is a replacement to Reddit and LinkedIn. I can’t wait for the end of Reddit moderation. And a cheaper LinkedIn.
I think Reddit like clients are still too infant but when they really start to improve, it’s going to be huge. And then it’s just a matter of cross posting. Once you have a few cross posters, people that post in both, then it’s a matter of time.
Imagine having the content of Reddit and the flexibility of Nostr. Different ways to access content. Open AI analysis. Sky is the limit.
Another use case I’m very excited about is a LinkedIn alternative.
And the real beauty is going to be mixing both.
I’m grateful for your updates and perspective. You are uniquely gifted at communicating. I appreciate it because most of the time I’m lost but I almost always able understand your updates.
I like how you are able to zoom in and zoom out.
> This conversation has led me to believe that we should proactively share the Nostr story, positioning it as the future of social networking.
It's the future of social networking if the only thing you want to talk about is Bitcoin or Nostr. The technology isn't the problem: it's the lack of any discussion here about anything other than these two topics. This needs fixing before anything else.
> This approach will also help us differentiate from platforms like Threads, Pixelfed, Mastodon, and Bluesky. While these platforms are based on open protocols, they operate as single-app, vertical silos.
Mastodon is not single-app, nor is it a vertical silo. The interop with Pixelfed is excellent - it's the same underlying protocol - and there are hundreds of apps out there for it and thousands of servers running ActivityPub. What's the deal with pretending otherwise?
mastodon is nice in theory- i would not consider it open- its been manipulated to be controlled by a few- anyone can cancel ur instance from the "fediverse" through a centralized block list- its total bs imho- worse than a company adhering to a TOS🤔😉✌️
There isn't a centralised blocklist. Each instance can choose whatever it wants to block. The closest to a centralised blocklist is that admins can choose to share a blocklist with others if they wish.
I'm an admin of a Mastodon server. There's the option to "import" a blocklist as a CSV, but no more defined method of blocking instances exists in Mastodon.
Agreed. Hoping to make more short-form nostr 101 content in the new year 🤞
I started making nostr content on rumble and YouTube, but there's so many options and I suck at marketing.
rabbleThe lesson for all of us is to keep thinking about how to make Nostr better.
while I agree it would be good to have more content to explain nostr, it won't really matter given the current onboarding and product experience. it's way too confusing for folks, and generally not satisfying instantly. people will and do churn out.
if there's one thing to focus on (for the social media use case) it's search. both for people, but more importantly, topics. Twitter won because of search. it wasn't a social network. it was an information network, and it excelled at real-time because of real-time search. that's a base requirement now.
what nostr adds, and what will make it sticky, is the multi-app/use-case ecosystem. but each use case is going to have different needs for attracting people to it. search is table stakes for the social media one. it won't matter how good the tutorial content is until this is done right.
nostr has the benefit right now of having a completely open and wild API. that matters as every other service is closing down. it's perfectly OK that we mostly have devs and bitcoin-obsessives at the moment. we have time to get all the kinks out and make something that's truly hard to replicate. where the only way to compete will be to join.
nostr:note152dryp2q2m058t7wn7ymev9suladah30qezpq00jt03s622uyw6qu4g79w
I’m a pretty good #Nostr search engine, but I’m not very scalable.
I love twitter’s advance search and lists. Best experience for me on nostr for search is on snort.social, you can search several words and the results are the last. But I miss the use of OR from Twitter, and I’d love to use * 😊 that doesn’t exist on Twitter but google.
For any help my ‘bitcoin’ art stuff can be used freely 🤙 (don’t know of this helps just mention it)
Thats great man! What is the name if this system…Open Rights?
I don’t understand the obsession with getting my grandma on nostr.
Products need to start with a very specific and clear target audience. Then build out after we satisfy the needs of that group. If the target is just people who want to do social media, we will most probably fail.
Nostr was born from Bitcoiners, I personally believe we need to continue to serve that group. No shame in that, and nothing is wrong with this goal.
Bitcoiners are people too, and trust me they have interests and hobbies beyond Bitcoin just like everyone else. Continue to serve them, give Bitcoin an application, build tools for Bitcoiners to sell their work.
Others will join.
I second this. Serve the priority users first. The rest will gradually comes.
A huge tranche of VC funding gets unlocked once we reach a critical mass of grandmas.
I don't even know your grandma, much less am I obsessed with her. But ok, fine. Send a pic. 😉
Plus everyone knows that once the grandmas join a social app, the kids are ready move on to the next thing. We don’t even have the kids here yet 😂
Make nostr for Young Bitcoiners.
Oh wait that’s ZBD 😅😅
Nvm.
Time to get grandma involved in bitcoin…
granny’s a core developer.
It’s just a metaphor for making the UI easy and lifting bitcoin and nostr up from a nerd only tool. Most people don’t give a shit about decentralization
Absolutely, search is the best way for users to find their interests and communities. Solving the search problem may require all relays to support text retrieval by default. Currently, only relay.nostr.band has text structured data retrieval support. Most relays only support public key and post ID retrieval. Our just-launched #Freerse is powered by nostr.band, which allows users to discover posts, users, and communities through text search, so that all users can find their communities and stay. But the data connection is not very stable.
Damn, another nostr app to try out. ;-D
https://freerse.com/
Following along @Freerse
That’s crazy, thanks for the feedback bro 🫂💜
@Freerse is cool, when I installed it on my Mac it wouldn’t let me resize the window, it didn’t seem to pay attention to my mute lists, and I found some small bugs. But it’s early days. So I’m excited to see what you come up with. The Alby NWC worked.
rabble 🫂Thank you for your feedback. We have only made Android and iPhone versions for the time being, and have not made the adaptation of iPad and mac systems. For the time being, we have only done the shielding of users, and have not yet done the shielding of keywords. There is no list of blocked users yet, but you can find the user to unblock. If you still want to find him😄. These features will be planned later.
Looking forward to your further feedback🤙
Its not only nostr.band that supports search. Its noswhere.com, nos.today and saltivka.org at least
Great, I haven't used these two Relay before, can you tell me their address, I will try
wss://relay.nos.today
wss://relay.noswhere.com
wss://saltivka.org
If Nostr has a shot of going mainstream it’s because you’re pouring out advice shaped by all your hard-won experience at Twitter.
in your opinion, what made onboarding on twitter so good, and what specific parts of onboarding in existing nostr clients (take Damus for example play the biggest role in people having second thoughts and drop off?
is it complexity in language, are there too many steps to join, too little, or something missing completely?
I’m not obsessive, I’m focused.
guess which way do hundreds of millions Chinese youngests search?
not Baidu apparently, nor Weibo (twitter alternative)
Answer is Xiaohongshu, where real active young plebs sharing their daily loves or struggles! where there's a real active user base, it's the de facto search engine.
Let's hope nostr would be the decentralized optimization.
No, no one around me uses "Little Red Book"（小红书）
It’s just “brainwashing” junk social video software.
Chinese people only use WeChat, which has video accounts and search functions. All materials are available, and many live teaching courses are on WeChat. https://image.nostr.build/b22aa8fe9c96aac61f80bfd1b3f1a10012d9c25012b3267ba509b0f1c00eec66.jpg
Damus, can be used normally in China. Many CCP official media have settled in Damus to publish news. CC P also knows that Damus is secretly used by ordinary Chinese people.😝😝😝
👀
can you quote some official ccp nostr notes?
The level of censorship in China is weird, anyway. You would need a youth bulge for a revolting population.
In China, Internet platforms must undergo CCP review and filing. Otherwise, it will not be listed in the mobile phone store. All social software platforms must be staffed by NSA computer technicians. Many Chinese engineers who write code are NSA agents.
The same goes for Xiaohongshu. All social software must "politically moderate content".
Xiaohongshu and TikTok are even more rubbish and shameless.
you don't know Chinese internet users at all darling, but it's ok.
point is ppl search content about everything in where their favorite circles are and mostly in their damn phone.
in a nutshell, nostr mass adoption= mobility + content discovery
WeChat has 1.2 billion users. Massive user data makes it easy to test products.
The WeChat company relies on the WeChat payment method to survive, charging merchants a 0.2% handling fee.
Ordinary users will be charged a 1% handling fee if they withdraw change from WeChat.
The personal code does not charge any fees, but it only supports change payment and red envelope issuance.
It does not support credit card binding payment methods, but the merchant code does support credit card payment methods and charges a 0.2% service fee.
WeChat companies survive by collecting fees from WeChat Pay. Handling fees are charged 24 hours a day.
A very profitable mobile payment platform.
Little Red Book is a copy of garbage Tiktok.（抖音）
Mobile payment and social media payment methods are the best models and future trends.
If #Bitcoin can be used globally to better promote mobile payment methods on social platforms, then #Nostr's mission is to realize this great goal.
小红书(Xiaohongshu) is just a closed social media platform, no different from Twitter today. It cannot even be searched using traditional search engines such as Baidu (China's Google equivalent) to retrieve its content. It also lacks the strong interoperability and protocol-level openness of platforms like Fediverse and Nostr (just as Twitter and Reddit are becoming less open today). Since its inception, Xiaohongshu has never intended to easily share its internal user data with others. This user data is its most valuable asset, known as "私域流量(private domain traffic)".
Its success in China is undeniable. Even if Chinese young people do not use Xiaohongshu, they know what it is because it is as popular in China as TikTok, Reddit and Twitter. Of course, the Little Red Book is criticised by just as many people for being "brainwashing", in the same way that most people treat TikTok, depending on how you use it.
By the way, Chinese young people don't like 微信(WeChat). Most young people only use it because they "have to", as because it's everywhere in real life, whether it's for socialising or mobile payments. Just because they don't have a choice doesn't mean they like it.
and plus, Xiaohongshu has a similar growth path as nostr initially as a beauty enthusiasm circle, gradually every young girl and many boys log in to search everything in daily lives and most probably they'll get the right answers.
which echoes jack's point that it's ok for nostr to be Bitcoin echo chamber and all we need is focus on the UX and make it accessible to massive mobile users who know nothing about technical aspects. https://i.nostrimg.com/6887624b385b42ceaca3194242fca1cf8dace16f05509d17a323475a09d09e10/file.jpeg
Xiaohongshu （小红书）is an illiterate group of users.
WeChat is used by all Chinese people. Have their own characteristics.
But WeChat is still a bit more powerful. objective comment.
stop replying to me please...your words are with high entropy and pre-set world views which looks hard to calibrate
I just discuss Chinese social software objectively, fairly, and openly.
I don't have a preference for any product,
I just tell the truth.
A few Chinese people know Xiaohongshu,（小红书）but at least 1 billion people know WeChat.
This is a fact.
What made you have the hallucination that "Xiaohongshu users are all illiterate"? Have you personally used it? Why do you compare WeChat and Xiaohongshu? They are completely different products, targeting different user groups. If you think WeChat has only developed to its current state through mobile payments alone, then you are completely mistaken.
I suggest that you abandon your belief in WeChat and instead listen to the thoughts of young people in China. Young individuals tend to dislike clichés and platitudes.
I can tell you if you are doing the promotion work of "Little Red Book".
Every software in China has "backdoors".
The National Security Bureau of CCP must censor the content of speech.
The same is true for Xiaohongshu. This kind of product has no room to survive in China.
You're actually the one shifting the topic. It seems like you enjoy arrogantly expressing political views and ideologies. If that's how you treat others, then I'm sorry. Goodbye! 👋
PS: Stop fxxking replying to me, I feel disgusted.
In China, I would never pay attention to people like you.
Ahh, there's that charming Chinese culture
Xiaohongshu is also a rubbish product like TikTok. There's no point in your defense. Not many people use it.
I said WeChat relies on WeChat Pay to make money. I didn’t say WeChat is just a mobile payment method. WeChat is a mobile tool used by Chinese government agencies to monitor Chinese people.
WeChat can bind social security cards and medical insurance cards. Little Red Book doesn’t work.
Xiaohongshu does not have any advantageous products.
What do you think is the difference between Xiaohongshu and TikTok?
WeChat is headquartered in Guangzhou. WeChat also enhances Guangzhou’s influence in the international community. Many foreign-funded enterprises are headquartered in Guangzhou.
I heard that Xiaohongshu (小红书）is used by rural people. No one in the city uses Little Red Book.（小红书）
Rural people don’t have much entertainment.
that group of users will be worthless.😝
WeChat’s product design is simple and easy to use.
Only Twitter can compete with WeChat.
A good product is simple.
Now, it’s lunch time in China, and WeChat payment is earning fees every second. Pretty good way to pay compound interest.
China took the lead in promoting the “QR code” payment method. The mobile payment method has been in use since 2015 and could be promoted at the earliest because small merchants that accept cash receive too much fake money.
Merchants only want to use "QR codes" to collect payments to avoid receiving fake money.
The cash register system of American Wal-Mart supermarkets in China must be connected to WeChat Pay and Alipay payment methods, and Wal-Mart Supermarkets must pay a 0.2% channel fee to WeChat and Alipay.
WeChat and Alipay payment charges are as follows: a handling fee will be charged for a single payment of more than 2 yuan, and no handling fee will be charged for a single payment of less than 1.9 yuan.
WeChat is learning from YouTube. Include chat, circle of friends, video account, WeChat payment, and live broadcast channel. Blended together.
In fact, after actual use, I think the search function of Xiaohongshu is quite excellent.
If an individual has enough knowledge and the ability to filter out junk information, then Xiaohongshu can be used as an excellent person-to-person search engine.
(Of course, most people around me don’t have that kind of screening ability)
I probably talk about the bitcoiner content too much, the problem is not at all that we’ve got tons of bitcoiners or that they’re talking about bitcoin too much. More it’s that it’s hard to discover the other people and conversations.
The UX experience is where we need to do work. It’s not so much fun, but it’s what will make the difference.
So when it comes to contact discovery, I’ve always wanted to do something Private Set Intersection. Anybody interested in working on getting PSI for privacy preserving contact discovery that we could use with Nostr?
There’s code which does the first 90% of the work: https://github.com/OpenMined/PSI
Regarding search, my initial thought is throw elastic search at the problem. But then I’m wondering what LLM’s could do to make search better. I think we’d want to have multiple search providers with a common api, the way that Damus and others support plugging in to translation engines. I think the needs of search and indexing are different than a normal relay, and we probably need those broken out in to a separate service or an add-on which only some relays provide.
Partially agree with both statements, but not convinced about the priorities. I think there is a bit of a state of operational blindness reached.
At the very least, other questions should be asked like how do you guarantee equality and equal opportunities here, especially because Nostr could be more than social media.
Also, external input should be considered relevant, and there should be the courage to incorporate it here. Right now, Nostr is a men's club, you can ignore that and continue to code into the void or start with a fresh infusion of healthy vitamins to heal and close this gap.
There are both other needs these days from ppl outside and more similarities than you might think with the Bubblers. Building bridges, creating a healthy base for thinking and participation first?
I'm still here with ideas for a broader focus on conferences to do that and also for clever PR and film, which can arise from it. Freedom here is real. But creating a healthy base should not be optional.
🤙🏻
Possible to keep nimble or flexible?
I don’t know tech too much, just learnt from knitting which is a process with Cost and Time consumption are manageable.
Search and open API is great. Unfortunate though that most of nostr community view evil servers as centralizing and are just going to find out search and open api data traversal is not viable client-side
Twitter is my #1 search engine because I know that the information is coming directly from the people I am following or will follow, and they are all on Twitter right now, and the data goes back more than a decade. The ability to mute anything or anyone I want for filtering is extremely important for improving the quality of the search results.
On Nostr information is free, as in bird. And so, whatever platform you are on in 10 years, you can still search decade old Nostr notes. On X/Twitter information is not so free atm, so the faster your friends migrate to Nostr the better.
same for anything bitcoin related at least
I find muting to be essential for peace of mind when there’s harassment.
Right now Nostr is what Gravatar AND Trust Pilot should have been.
You don't need search to connect with content / people you love when you can find and follow them in any app/website (if that app chooses to integrated Nostr - which they should!)
That following / timeline is then portable.
"Oh I just saw a post from that guy I found on Walmart dotcom.. that comment he made about the weed whacker was hilarious.. oh! I better order more beans.. *navigates to Walmart dotcom*"
People and communities sell products.. Advertising is still dying and dying faster and faster.
Nostr should be marketed to brands.
People can start discussions around products or a specific website and connect with each other.
Nostr turns every piece of online real estate into a trusted open discussion with cryptographically proven identity.
Welcome to Nike dotcom - log in with Nostr to see what people are saying about this products.
•They can run a node on the site and add support to select third-party nodes for trust/backup/failsafes. •They can monitor comments and feedback in real time ON THE SITE with the MAJOR added value of people taking those social connections away from the site.
•They turn EVERY customer into an influencer
Sure clients can work on onboarding and search improvements but every social site is doing that 24/7.
Agree. Nostr can be the open super app platform we deserve. It needs a few things:
- great on boarding experience
- great content discovery
- competitive infrastructure for growth
- non-technical on ramps, servers may start holding keys, then transition users to self sovereign
- great messaging, show the potential, inspiring stories
Definitely agree that ben's site should improve, ive been saying this for a while. Move the JSON stuff to a dev site, make a clean landing page (please without spyware), that inspires new users, makes them enthusiastic, makes them feel that nostr is something different that we all own, and with unlimited potential.
Also if any one nostr app goes viral, the whole of nostr goes viral, however we do need the infrastructure to hand that. This is something bluesky did well, and we should be open to learning.
It's not lack of understanding what's needed for nostr dot com, it's time/resources. We'll get to it. Dedicating more resources to an overhaul and making the site more useful is why I put it under the official management of LNbits Inc. Once LNbits Inc's seed raise is complete, its a priority.
Yeah, I hope I didn’t imply that you weren’t aware of what needed to get done. More we need to build a team around the nostr.com and work on it’s content for normies. :-D
by far the worst part of the Nostr experience is trying to find known contacts.
NOSTR fans are doing themselves a massive disservice telling the public "oh it works for me, just try a different client I guess"
we either need a much better solution for identifiers on a protocol level (NIP-05 or whatever is not doing it) or we need an encouraged standard across clients, that, upon download or setup, LINKS twitter/other social media data to your Nostr NPUB and links you up through that. Get community to vote + verify profile connections to add social credibility
I'm not a dev so I don't know the solution/tradeoff but to this day I cannot find the people I want without an NPUB, and that is just not a usable format
Primal actually has pretty good search (this is from iOS test flight) https://image.nostr.build/5ab069838b2630e5b981cee3e123b9f1a6e405834897e202c9e0b8a3cb5781d7.jpg
Interesting...
did you have a mutual friend / follower that already had me followed?
Amethyst, Iris, Plebstr, Nostrudel, pretty much all the good android + web options have awful search unless you are a massive account like @LynAlden or @jb55
that can't be the standard if we want to make a serious push for new users
Primal has a caching server that calculates things like how many followers a person has and they use that to sort the search results. In nos.social we don’t, yet, have that, so we sort by mutual followers. Both do a great job at finding the right @fiatjaf but overall popularity isn’t as good when you’re looking for your friend Matt. For new users who don’t have anybody then the overall popularity is better than mutual follows.
Coracle calculates and displays a kind of Web of Trust (WoT) score for each person which is nice.
All of which would be improved if we had a good way to say, this is the Matt who you’re following on twitter/mastodon/instagram or have the email / phone number of.
You don’t even need a central server to have good search. The damus profile database gets filled up with not too much use. https://i.nostr.build/oxgw.jpg
k you have me though already followed?
I had a friend join NOSTR the other day through Damus I believe. She goes by @ RilezKirk
No posts yet
See if you can find the account via search and share the NPUB, I'll tell you if it's the right one
NONE OF the 8 clients I tried could find her
Right now most clients don’t use relays that host and share just contact and profile information. We were using purplepag.es by @PABLOF7z until we added that functionality in to our own relay.nos.social. I think using those is a stop gap, but we need a better solution to finding people and contacts.
Primal runs its own caching and search relays to make the experience better. It’s written in Julia! That’s not a language I’ve come across since I was hanging out at MIT. We need multiple compatible services like what primal is doing.
I like this kind of challenge
Totally agree. I've been thinking about making some social media content (In Spanish) about Nostr, remarking how could be useful for teachers and students. I've put it off too long, it's time to get started.
"How to bring the eternal september, to nostr." The post.
To prevent what happened to so many other protocols like XMPP we must learn from the past and how nostr is different, and already set up to succeed.
Nostr is not a Platform. It's a protocol
The nature of Nostr's simplicity and use of zaps by the community means direct support for relays and content. Able to bypass future attacks. Which will inevitably come. Some of the venture capital, startup language you're using, strikes me as misplaced in the context of opensouce network design. This language is more at home in compliant environments with very different constraints.
If i view your post as a suggestion for improving existing apps, its great. If i view it as an onboarding experience to nostr itself, i'm left confused. I have not felt the friction you mention, and i'm a coastline flying avian without thumbs !
Like Bitcoin, Nostr has one value proposition. Freedom. Otherwise it has nothing to offer. There is no other reason to use it besides being a pure expression of the internet viewing censorship as damage, and routing around it. It's a rather simple concept to explain in a few minutes and you either get it or you don't, because you are already familiar with or concerned about censorship.
In the context of FOSS and activist protocols, a call for funding a specific marketing strategy or effort would have made more sense to me. There is no CEO or board or shareholder to appeal to for changes you want to see.
Appreciate you, and appreciate you on nostr, and your energy, but i have to point out this use of language or we will waste time and energy by not being clear about specific implementations ON nostr versus imrovements TO nostr.
Best note.
#plebchain
nostr:nevent1qqs29x3jq4q9dh6r4l8flzdukzcw07k7mchsv3qs8he9hccd99wz8dqppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgs8d3c64cayj8canmky0jap0c3fekjpzwsthdhx4cthd4my8c5u47srqsqqqqqpcx4cly
The Everything Protocol ™
nostr:nevent1qqs29x3jq4q9dh6r4l8flzdukzcw07k7mchsv3qs8he9hccd99wz8dqppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgs8d3c64cayj8canmky0jap0c3fekjpzwsthdhx4cthd4my8c5u47srqsqqqqqpcx4cly
My experience as a decentralizion enthusiast who is fairly tech savvy and was excited about the possibilities of nostr: it has boomer energy, difficult discoverability (of people, topics, and all the awesome "apps"), it puts too much on the user. No ability to protect yourself from bad actors.
Boomer energy: stuck on ideology in a faith without works kind of way. This comes from the Bitcoin mentality ie "this is the future, it's the way and the light" ...but it hasn't solved peer to peer completely after 15 years.
Discover: search and community is lacking, reliant on hashtags you have to stumble on.
User ask: average user is retarded, I'm retarded most days, just let me click around I don't want to write a program myself to do basic tasks.
Good things: vibe is friendly, builders ship a lot and fast, zaps are cool, ui is better than blue sky, minds, mastodon, urbit etc
I'll add these examples from farcaster, which I think is getting a lot of these things right. Channels and the client list on their website are two huge advantages.
Channels shown here, easy to search and one click join and pin the top and for each post you can specify a channel. It's slick.
https://image.nostr.build/8d120ca730c8946e09ceb351e90a6f2160789f87a4461a200176bea63c99bf48.jpg
These are app specific sore points, and not nostr.
Ive said elsewhere, apps/clients are nostr, just like warpcast is farcaster. How people use your protocol is everything. Social clients are the intro for most end users, if they aren't useable neither its all useless.
I believe if the ecosystem of apps just gets one viral app made from left field, an omeagle, reddit, 4chan or other app that was ahead of its time and not existing elsewhere then this will highlight the power and bring people to nostr. Normies won't come because of principles, they will come for $$ or attention. Neitherorf these exist on nostr like they do on other parts of the interwebs.
Facebook and gmail is not the internet, no.
Okay have a useless protocol with nothing on it and no people then
To the end user that distinction is absolutely meaningless.
Are you talking about Nostr or some client?
I agree with what you wrote, but this is not inherent to Nostr itself. All that critique mostly addresses client side of things here, except user base I guess. When you write about UI it doesn't make sense, since Nostr has no UI on it;s own
Most of them. The ui in the ecosystem is overall good. Yes these are client side issues because the clients are how people use the protocol. Clients are nostr.
Agree. The clients are Nostr. They represent the ecosystem.
I love you so much. “Boomer energy” killed me. 💅🏻
Still has me in stitches 😂
Well said! Plurality will only grow if the Nostr experience (and possibilities) gets good enough so users that dissent with the current dominant tendencies and ideologies find enough value. Nostr is currently great for Bitcoin/Privacy/Self-sovereignty enthusiasts but has yet a long path to evolve to attract other and more voices. We will perceive Nostr success when it’s hard to find any dominant tendency, basically when it becomes an interesting mess.
"It has boomer energy" 😂👌
But u can say "retard" freely. :)
This is a key feature as I lost my first Twitter account to that word
That's what I think, and it'll still happening unless we overcome sectarianism and elitism.
A lot of very smart ppl are hashing this out because it's a hard problem with many moving parts and unknowns.
I only have questions.
Growing nostr is three things
1) generate interest
2) onboarding
3) retention
The landing page / nostr.com discussion is about 1) and 2)
@jack is mostly talking about 3)
nostr:nevent1qqsvez84speppvzkjucw4wyf5pmgtteqtygv8aq20sjug0uexq8m0fspp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqzyzprg8ug9dh2hnft5lc7ly92m9su7p6279deaaz2p8ua928ml0n2yqcyqqqqqqgcd60d2
As a product Nostr is an ecosystem with single sign-on not an app
That is hugely beneficial for 1)
Not so much for 2)
Questions
Are 1) and 2) the same website / landing page?
If no is it better to have a separate website / landing page for 2) or push onboarding onto the clients?
If yes is it more beneficial at this moment to optimize 2) for mainstream adoption or niche target audiences?
And is it better for nostr.com to expose the ecosystem or guide toward the standard social media type applications (where ppl can get more help)?
And should nostr.com handle account creation / point to an app that does?
nostr:nevent1qqs29x3jq4q9dh6r4l8flzdukzcw07k7mchsv3qs8he9hccd99wz8dqpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqzypmvwx4w8fy378v7a3ruhgt7y2wd5sgn5zamde4wzamdwep798905qcyqqqqqqgn0f8pu
Hopefully StudyNostr.com will help bring more people into the fold, by leveraging non-technical explanation and storytelling as you said! 🙏
Thoughts on making Nostr.com something more like this, i.e. a compilation of the best non-technical educational resources for newer users to learn?
Would be happy to help with this @rabble @benarc
StudyNostr.com fixes this.
nostr:nevent1qqs29x3jq4q9dh6r4l8flzdukzcw07k7mchsv3qs8he9hccd99wz8dqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygrkcud2uwjfruweamz8ewshug5umfq38g9mkmn2u9mk6ajru2w2lgpsgqqqqqqs3wp3lg
Greetings from El Salvador, I can help, the people who explain how NOSTR works have many doubts, for example there are clients that work very well on IOS but not on Android and vice versa, I would like to know if there is documentation on NOSTR but since the point of view of the user, not the developer, since it is easier for me to explain the advantages of NOSTR without having to explain in depth the technical part, I remind you that countries like Salvador are not yet technically very developed and the majority of people use low-medium range phones, so some applications of the protocol simply do not work, this is my humble opinion, greetings
To be honest, it’s not easy to explain to someone that comes across Nostr how it works because it’s something new that people are not used to.
If you need to make a video to explain a social network, it probably needs more refinement.
Perhaps less focus on the nostr protocol element, and more on the experiences it can offer.
We need to make the apps usable for normal people before we do a big marketing push. If we bring millions of people and they get a bad first impression, it will be hard to bring them back when the experience gets fixed. Even worse, they will spread the bad word across the internet.
But yeah, nostr.com should definitely target average users in time. I would love to help with that project's design and UX. In my backlog, I have a project to visualize nostr, core protocol, and every nip. I was thinking of an interactive, engaging, and fun experience like this 3D journey https://threejs-journey.com/#.
I think X is much better than Nostr now that Musk is at the stearing wheel. It will take years for Nostr to become a true competitor to the centralized alternatives. (I’ve been here everyday for 11 months and my initial enthusiasm has waned).
Agreed.
Enthusiasm is still here, but will take a long time for Nostr adoption.
Jack's 💯 right here. Nostr is perfect for us bitcoiners, and tech focused. The masses need an easy-button to truth. It would be best if we dominate the, "Then they fight you stage."
nostr:nevent1qqs29x3jq4q9dh6r4l8flzdukzcw07k7mchsv3qs8he9hccd99wz8dqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzqak8r2hr5jglrk0wc37t59lz98x6gyf6pwaku6hpwakhvslznjh6qvzqqqqqqy4nq5yr
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