Most #nostr clients still suck in terms of discoverability. But they don't have to.

They don't have to because we have all the right building blocks already, we just lack courage to steal. Yes, STEAL. I'd encourage everyone to steal—not copy—what other clients did well. In the spirit of "good artists copy, great artists steal."

Let's take a web-based reddit client for example, one that still works (sometimes) despite all the horrible API changes: https://www.popular.pics/

If you visit that site in your browser, you'll be greeted with something like this:
https://image.nostr.build/768d8abba5847b4a619bf66ade8d62f5a98db8adc95b833218d3904d69eab4ef.png

It's a viewer that supports multiple subreddits by default. You open it, and it just works. It has sensible defaults. (Important!) It defaults to multiple subreddits from the get-go. Subreddits that are visual, i.e. subreddits that have users posting visually pleasing images.

You can change these defaults easily, and the URL will update accordingly. This one is for subreddits concerning #nostr #bitcoin and #memes for example: https://www.popular.pics/reddit/subreddits/posts?r=nostr,bitcoin,memes - easy to share & easy to see what's going on. Steal this. Please.

Of course, if this is a nostr client (and if you're logged in) this should default to your personal web. The people and hashtags you follow; the communities and relays you are part of, etc. Bonus points if you implement an "expand" button which will expand your personal web by one degree, i.e. shows "friend of a friend" kind of stuff. Not only people you follow, but people followed by people you follow. Another click and it's two degrees. You get the idea.

Back to the interface, and the problem at hand: discoverability. As you can see, every image card quite prominently shows the subreddit it was posted the as well as the user who posted it.

https://image.nostr.build/b4b39eb8db7a48565ffaced92a83628c702e77b72ef495b5d58e1ae68fab60f4.png

Apart from the beautiful masonry layout (did I already mention that you should steal this too?), that's the one thing I like most about this image interface: it's so fucking easy to discover stuff. You click on a subreddit, and boom, you see all images from this subreddit.

https://image.nostr.build/a459579a73aa7173b8dc2f15d3cdef71d27663eab06ce5c92af36a07430da53d.png

You click on a username, and boom, you see all images from this user.

https://image.nostr.build/5d6aa1655d4a089b07915381d6f906648aba91f99ca694d6efede1b652b795ed.png

You will discover new subreddits via the "user" view (most users post to multiple subreddits) and you will discover new users via the "subreddit" view (most subreddits have posts from multiple users). You can spend DAYS just clicking through stuff, and we could do the same on nostr with #hashtags (or NIP-72 communities) and usernames (yay, we have those).

Even more, you could go from user to NIP-05 provider, which basically gives a list of users under a single domain. Or you could show what kind of actual lists (NIP-51 lists) the user is part of, so you again have a list of users which you could use as a base for your exploration, populating the grid view which is the base of this image client. And again, because this is nostr, we get a "ghost" mode FOR FREE. You can use someone else's npub and look at things through their eyes. Some clients implement this quite well already. Most people have no idea that this is possible (because we suck at discoverability, including discoverability of features).

Pinstr is ALMOST there, but it takes like ~5 clicks to get to a hashtag (and it doesn't always work for me). Slidestr has potential and is also ALMOST there, but again, it takes like ~3 clicks to get to a profile and open it in Slidestr and you have to know exactly what you're doing, which isn't exactly discoverability-friendly. Same for hashtags, which are even more hidden, as as you have to open an almost invisible menu at the bottom of the image view.

Don't get me wrong, I love what we have. But we shouldn't be afraid to steal what other clients did well in the past, especially stuff that has been around for a long time. To me, the popular pics client is near perfect. No pop-ups. No modals. No unnecessary clicks. Everything makes sense and is in the right place. It doesn't waste space and is beautiful to boot.

I think we're very close to greatness on many fronts, and I hope that—with some technical improvements that are around the corner, as well with some help from #nostrdesign—we can finally kick some ass in the discoverability department too.


"It's not where you take things from, it's where you take things to." - Jean-Luc Godard

nostr:note1nj8cvsm538wmkfngzrj0qpjr23x8hxdjvhn00dl96gxrg0m6ws3s5ch6vt


NostrGram was way ahead of its time with its discoverability features, and layout optionality. nostr:npub1t9a59hjk48svr8hz6rx727ta6kx53n5d6fw8x26vsua0zytpl87sa6h4uw is sorely missed for his creativity.

It is very surprising and bewildering to me no one has picked up that baton or taken those ideas and implemented them, it was by far my favorite client at the time, and still would outclass most all of the current clients.

RIP Nostrgram.co you are missed.


Every new idea is just an old idea that has been re-invented 💡


Hashtags are like little countries with german speaking people talking about beer, sauerkraut and sausages. Webs of trust are like beacons. We are like glue

https://youtu.be/iOWvL9-4k4A


This layout is amazing.


オープソース万歳


Like your thoughts here but it feels like it’s completely from the consumer POV and not the creator. With zaps you can create an incentive structure to post on here more than anywhere else. (I don’t have to wait for 10k followers to get real feed back . )
I have a billboard concept . Short version I post a jpeg and some else rents the caption. Most zapped notes of day week month are at the top of feed. This also should provide clearest signal.

I could be completely wrong here but for me posting on here is more of a moral obligation just to support bitcoin the best way I can since I’m non technical


Onward 🫡


Thanks for starting the discussion on this and for the shout out. At first I've created slidestr.net as a tool to see my own photography profile when there were no galleries in nostrudel, snort, etc. yet.

I like the masonry type view and have implemented it multiple times since 2016, when I stole it from Google Photos the first time. That being said, it makes most sense on desktop with more horizontal space.

I'll take some ideas from this right away to implement in slidestr and make it less clunky to use. There are some things that can be easily done but other, i.e. reverse lookup of group memberships would require some backend magic, where someone needs to write a smart DVM 😄

I'm in Madeira from the 26th if you want to take the time to discuss ideas IRL #soveng


Let's fucking go. And yes, there's a DVM for that.


Agree, nostrgram was on the track to greatness. RIP 😔


Haha, well put!


The harder problem is to have beautiful things to discover in the first place.
If I'd bootstrap an app like this, I would:
1. scrape pinterest, dribble etc like mad for high quality pics of things that the early nostriches are sure to like (memes, citadel castles, cars, hardware, user interfaces, regenerative ag builds, stable diffusion pics of ostriches, ...)
2. Create some npubs that post these with proper tagging etc
3. Create DVM filters for these topics and set them as the default


Pinstr has been redesigned but not updated, dev is busy. I also proposed a design to slidestr. It does not have all of the things you mention as I think some of those things are personal preferences and I am not sure I agree with all that you said, but the point is that it has been presented. Devs are just busy? I dunno.


Yep, you have to seed these platforms with content and we have the best tools to do this already. We're just missing the hacker spark.

I would start with a handful of categories and go deep into those before moving into another.


Coracle isn't image focused, but topics, relays, and people all work as described - click and you get info + a feed


Interesting take


The content is there. I've seen many beautiful pictures on nostr, just look for #photography and go from there.

Examples: #マストドン写真部 #noedit


There's also plenty accounts that post beautiful stuff, you just have the discover them (oh, the irony!). Accounts like nostr:npub1tlgqfynfdyup4s4m8ge8yqpkm8ukxtfflv3dcxl4mra3e83x27vqrlj5tp


Discoveracle


Nice one! Yeah I agree discoverability needs a lot of work and much of it is already designed in clients like Snort, but has not been implemented.

I was thinking more about platforms like Pinstr where there doesn't see much of anything there now, or Slidestr which seems full of totally random stuff - like I have no idea why I would go to a website that is random images lol


The trick is to clone yourself 7 times like Pablo.


I follow #photography! But currently on Snort there is no good hashtag exploration implemented. We don't even show top hashtags anywhere as far as I know


🤣 (I wish this emoji response was larger)


Slidestr does an okay job and has some sensible default hashtags, but it could be improved by a lot (with just a few small tweaks, as per my original post).

https://slidestr.net/tags/noedit%2Cphotography


Most #nostr clients still suck in terms of discoverability. But they don't have to.

They don't have to because we have all the right building blocks already, we just lack courage to steal. Yes, STEAL. I'd encourage everyone to steal—not copy—what other clients did well. In the spirit of "good artists copy, great artists steal."

Let's take a web-based reddit client for example, one that still works (sometimes) despite all the horrible API changes: https://www.popular.pics/

If you visit that site in your browser, you'll be greeted with something like this:
https://image.nostr.build/768d8abba5847b4a619bf66ade8d62f5a98db8adc95b833218d3904d69eab4ef.png

It's a viewer that supports multiple subreddits by default. You open it, and it just works. It has sensible defaults. (Important!) It defaults to multiple subreddits from the get-go. Subreddits that are visual, i.e. subreddits that have users posting visually pleasing images.

You can change these defaults easily, and the URL will update accordingly. This one is for subreddits concerning #nostr #bitcoin and #memes for example: https://www.popular.pics/reddit/subreddits/posts?r=nostr,bitcoin,memes - easy to share & easy to see what's going on. Steal this. Please.

Of course, if this is a nostr client (and if you're logged in) this should default to your personal web. The people and hashtags you follow; the communities and relays you are part of, etc. Bonus points if you implement an "expand" button which will expand your personal web by one degree, i.e. shows "friend of a friend" kind of stuff. Not only people you follow, but people followed by people you follow. Another click and it's two degrees. You get the idea.

Back to the interface, and the problem at hand: discoverability. As you can see, every image card quite prominently shows the subreddit it was posted the as well as the user who posted it.

https://image.nostr.build/b4b39eb8db7a48565ffaced92a83628c702e77b72ef495b5d58e1ae68fab60f4.png

Apart from the beautiful masonry layout (did I already mention that you should steal this too?), that's the one thing I like most about this image interface: it's so fucking easy to discover stuff. You click on a subreddit, and boom, you see all images from this subreddit.

https://image.nostr.build/a459579a73aa7173b8dc2f15d3cdef71d27663eab06ce5c92af36a07430da53d.png

You click on a username, and boom, you see all images from this user.

https://image.nostr.build/5d6aa1655d4a089b07915381d6f906648aba91f99ca694d6efede1b652b795ed.png

You will discover new subreddits via the "user" view (most users post to multiple subreddits) and you will discover new users via the "subreddit" view (most subreddits have posts from multiple users). You can spend DAYS just clicking through stuff, and we could do the same on nostr with #hashtags (or NIP-72 communities) and usernames (yay, we have those).

Even more, you could go from user to NIP-05 provider, which basically gives a list of users under a single domain. Or you could show what kind of actual lists (NIP-51 lists) the user is part of, so you again have a list of users which you could use as a base for your exploration, populating the grid view which is the base of this image client. And again, because this is nostr, we get a "ghost" mode FOR FREE. You can use someone else's npub and look at things through their eyes. Some clients implement this quite well already. Most people have no idea that this is possible (because we suck at discoverability, including discoverability of features).

Pinstr is ALMOST there, but it takes like ~5 clicks to get to a hashtag (and it doesn't always work for me). Slidestr has potential and is also ALMOST there, but again, it takes like ~3 clicks to get to a profile and open it in Slidestr and you have to know exactly what you're doing, which isn't exactly discoverability-friendly. Same for hashtags, which are even more hidden, as as you have to open an almost invisible menu at the bottom of the image view.

Don't get me wrong, I love what we have. But we shouldn't be afraid to steal what other clients did well in the past, especially stuff that has been around for a long time. To me, the popular pics client is near perfect. No pop-ups. No modals. No unnecessary clicks. Everything makes sense and is in the right place. It doesn't waste space and is beautiful to boot.

I think we're very close to greatness on many fronts, and I hope that—with some technical improvements that are around the corner, as well with some help from #nostrdesign—we can finally kick some ass in the discoverability department too.


the masonry layout when coupled with visible tags felt too distracting for me. That's the part I was referring to - personal preference. I would rather see a column view if you keep the tags, or no tags visible but have a nice category selection somewhere, and prominent search. But show tags on individual items (especially on mobile)

https://void.cat/d/4AKYouoKi9e91131pszBwT.webp
https://void.cat/d/TPgdZnokkpYqCLqpP6N377.webp


Have you tried slidestr ? I mean https://cornstr.lol/


Have you tried cumstr sexy?


I love masonry for its density, especially on very large screens. Still love it on mobile though (2 columns). It's the default for Pinterest too.
https://image.nostr.build/6cd0663b96d0db9961d06592802b04708f6adb1c3bc5e1043c6dfdff5731b531.jpg


Sorry just waking up and must have skimmed over that part.

However plebs can build off of slidestr by just checking which hashtags and people to follow and create a iframe/webpage with those predefined hashtags like I did with cornstr. I just wish slidestr would remove the warning ‼ message


And I'm not a fan of text bleeding into images, as you need vignetting or darkening to make it always readable. But yes, personal preference I guess.


yep, 2 col is great on mobile and I like that the most


Yes, it's from a consumer perspective. I think we should have purpose-built clients for consumption (and, more importantly: discovery).

Also:
https://image.nostr.build/e6377cc5e06117fef83c6e57f7f1cad1c38b13775901a659c577e78a7552575f.jpg


Yeah you do on light images. It depends on how users browse. Do they go into a category first and devour everything there? (maybe they dont care to see the text so much). Or do they click hashtag to hashtag and spend a bit of time in each (then it probably matters more). I think it could go either way.


That's why I'm saying STEAL FROM THE BEST. Don't copy. Don't try to re-invent.

Pinterest has been doing it for a long time, they've figured the out how to do presentation (and discovery) best.

We can do zaps and other stuff they can't do, but we have to get the basic stuff right too. Copy the basic stuff from them.


As a photographer I despise any edit of the original image, no matter how slight.


Not sry 🤙 https://image.nostr.build/435df911af2216a5cba4ee7e39a9bd5ceae4411b85e65ddb3a725bc38bd80f9f.jpg


🤣 I think it would be hard to find someone on nostr that hasn’t read 21 lessons.

My point was, most people come to the platform for the content first (i think Elon posted something like 80-90% of people never post anything) I hate to know how many times I’ve seen this jpeg

Twitter pays creators, nostr can do it better than Twitter. Once the incentive for the best content is here the rest falls into place.

The Reddit layout is great just secondary imo. https://image.nostr.build/83b77ff2cf76eab6712012de3a72868e61bdf66ba44d50b7a9790d260495116c.jpg


Now that im thinking about it maybe Reddit is not the best format for “ai” assuming ai will be needed to weed though the mountains of content in the future 🤔 perhaps nostr should be built for whats best for ai


I've mentioned our collab in my recent report to OpenSats 👀 I'll do my best to update it this month 👀
I've been busy with #Osty, nostr-tools, ndk, and nostr-hooks 😂


Pablo is a genius 🤦🏻♂💜


90% are lurkers. Always.
https://media.nngroup.com/media/editor/alertbox/community-participation-pyramid.gif
https://media.nngroup.com/media/editor/alertbox/imbalanced-contributions-pyramid.gif
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule


That's why building for consumers is important.


Bitcoin wallets have this problem too that they don’t build for consumers.


From: nostr:npub1yu25lwrnht0knsl2swsd5mn966s4p54l3aejplpnzsjg6aryt3jq9t9xxs


This is interesting. Next week nostr:npub1ey39gym4zlppcsvquqhv0cujnsn6uwuu9z9f4sxkzp5vjy8gfa9sprdq23 and nostr:npub1uaajg6r8hfgh9c3vpzm2m5w8mcgynh5e0tf0um4q5dfpx8u6p6dqmj87z6 are running a design sprint focused on discoverability of users and content for nos.social.


Some great ideas. Especially the seeing follows of my follows.

nostr:nevent1qqsferuxgd6gnhdmye5ppe8sqep4gnrmnxextehhkljayrp58aa8ggcpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsygrwg6zz9hahfftnsup23q3mnv5pdz46hpj4l2ktdpfu6rhpthhwjvpsgqqqqqqs388mrg


Most #nostr clients still suck in terms of discoverability. But they don't have to.

They don't have to because we have all the right building blocks already, we just lack courage to steal. Yes, STEAL. I'd encourage everyone to steal—not copy—what other clients did well. In the spirit of "good artists copy, great artists steal."

Let's take a web-based reddit client for example, one that still works (sometimes) despite all the horrible API changes: https://www.popular.pics/

If you visit that site in your browser, you'll be greeted with something like this:
https://image.nostr.build/768d8abba5847b4a619bf66ade8d62f5a98db8adc95b833218d3904d69eab4ef.png

It's a viewer that supports multiple subreddits by default. You open it, and it just works. It has sensible defaults. (Important!) It defaults to multiple subreddits from the get-go. Subreddits that are visual, i.e. subreddits that have users posting visually pleasing images.

You can change these defaults easily, and the URL will update accordingly. This one is for subreddits concerning #nostr #bitcoin and #memes for example: https://www.popular.pics/reddit/subreddits/posts?r=nostr,bitcoin,memes - easy to share & easy to see what's going on. Steal this. Please.

Of course, if this is a nostr client (and if you're logged in) this should default to your personal web. The people and hashtags you follow; the communities and relays you are part of, etc. Bonus points if you implement an "expand" button which will expand your personal web by one degree, i.e. shows "friend of a friend" kind of stuff. Not only people you follow, but people followed by people you follow. Another click and it's two degrees. You get the idea.

Back to the interface, and the problem at hand: discoverability. As you can see, every image card quite prominently shows the subreddit it was posted the as well as the user who posted it.

https://image.nostr.build/b4b39eb8db7a48565ffaced92a83628c702e77b72ef495b5d58e1ae68fab60f4.png

Apart from the beautiful masonry layout (did I already mention that you should steal this too?), that's the one thing I like most about this image interface: it's so fucking easy to discover stuff. You click on a subreddit, and boom, you see all images from this subreddit.

https://image.nostr.build/a459579a73aa7173b8dc2f15d3cdef71d27663eab06ce5c92af36a07430da53d.png

You click on a username, and boom, you see all images from this user.

https://image.nostr.build/5d6aa1655d4a089b07915381d6f906648aba91f99ca694d6efede1b652b795ed.png

You will discover new subreddits via the "user" view (most users post to multiple subreddits) and you will discover new users via the "subreddit" view (most subreddits have posts from multiple users). You can spend DAYS just clicking through stuff, and we could do the same on nostr with #hashtags (or NIP-72 communities) and usernames (yay, we have those).

Even more, you could go from user to NIP-05 provider, which basically gives a list of users under a single domain. Or you could show what kind of actual lists (NIP-51 lists) the user is part of, so you again have a list of users which you could use as a base for your exploration, populating the grid view which is the base of this image client. And again, because this is nostr, we get a "ghost" mode FOR FREE. You can use someone else's npub and look at things through their eyes. Some clients implement this quite well already. Most people have no idea that this is possible (because we suck at discoverability, including discoverability of features).

Pinstr is ALMOST there, but it takes like ~5 clicks to get to a hashtag (and it doesn't always work for me). Slidestr has potential and is also ALMOST there, but again, it takes like ~3 clicks to get to a profile and open it in Slidestr and you have to know exactly what you're doing, which isn't exactly discoverability-friendly. Same for hashtags, which are even more hidden, as as you have to open an almost invisible menu at the bottom of the image view.

Don't get me wrong, I love what we have. But we shouldn't be afraid to steal what other clients did well in the past, especially stuff that has been around for a long time. To me, the popular pics client is near perfect. No pop-ups. No modals. No unnecessary clicks. Everything makes sense and is in the right place. It doesn't waste space and is beautiful to boot.

I think we're very close to greatness on many fronts, and I hope that—with some technical improvements that are around the corner, as well with some help from #nostrdesign—we can finally kick some ass in the discoverability department too.


No worries. You can remove it yourself if you know what you're doing

nostr:nevent1qqsdp23hvaq0fh6vpnzm8zvt3y9zqgex08c2430vxt7vdt575uzj6ycpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzpd7x76g4e756vtlldg0syczdazxz83kxcmgm3a3v0nqswj0nql5pqvzqqqqqqysmz0kr


I see your point building for the most users makes sense.
Kinda a chicken or egg problem. What’s the point of high quality content if you can’t find it and store it and what’s the point of great organization of 💩

Bounties should be set up for both


Just talk to me, I can add an url parameter to skip the warning.

Wasn’t aware of the usecase of running a separate website with a specific set of tags.


Awesome sauce!

Yeah I was just playing around (still learning how to code) and threw it together.

I actually had an idea to have a bunch of different sets of tags and then have a single site to switch between the predefined tags (if that makes any sense)

The url I’m using rn is cornstr.lol

🙏


Today I saw two presentations of e2ee messages for Nostr (direct and group messages).
None of them based on the industry's standard - OMEMO.
I suggest we steal from mov.im folks their web implementation of OMEMO, no need to reinvent the wheel.


This is very interesting. Stealing


nostr:npub1sy70twa0vadtk8hjs6wt2hmfszduj04tw78ccs3ktmr9u99mfmqsj62srx nostr:npub149p5act9a5qm9p47elp8w8h3wpwn2d7s2xecw2ygnrxqp4wgsklq9g722q