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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. @npub1a8jz...5pj4 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.

Replies (34)

"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.
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
↩ replying to npub14j7y...antz
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.
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) View quoted note β†’ 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? View quoted note β†’
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
Three.js Journey
Three.js Journey β€” Learn WebGL with Three.js
The ultimate Three.js course whether you are a beginner or a more advanced developer
.