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Just finished the monthly follower purge. Been noticing something for a while now and curious if long time Nostriches see the same pattern. Nostr seems less like a platform people abandon and more like a builder’s workshop people graduate from. The accounts that go quiet aren’t usually disillusioned. They’re fragmented. Someone builds something real here, it gains traction, then suddenly they need presence across multiple platforms because their project demands broader reach. The Nostr account doesn’t die, it just becomes one of five they’re juggling. What I keep seeing is ideas and tools that eventually make it into broader society tend to incubate here first. Small, high signal, no algorithmic manipulation. The prototype phase happens in this space. Then when it needs scale, builders scatter outward to find their full audience. They’re still here, just diluted across platforms. The community stays tight and niche not because we’re insular, but because we’re perpetually in early stage mode. When projects mature past that point, they have to go multi platform. That’s not abandonment, that’s just how building in public actually works at scale. Maybe what looks like exodus is actually Nostr functioning as designed. Not the destination, but the launchpad. The primordial soup where things start. For those who’ve been here since the early waves, do you see this pattern too? Or am I rationalizing attrition? Genuinely curious what others observe. #asknostr

Replies (15)

💯 most likely for those devs making apps that are taking off I’m sure those who aren’t devs follow a similar pattern diluting it with their existing socials… the reasons for them giving all their attention to nostr aren’t here yet Those reasons are just around the corner… video channels, private group chats, shopping, games, health, education, maps… etc Different bits will stick with different people and then they’ll all get stuck together… and they’ll never leave It’s going to be a big bloody mess
Haven’t noticed that phenomenon too much. Most that I see fade away never caught much traction and didn’t see the point of posting into the void (I’m mainly talking about “smaller” accounts with less than a few hundred follows- but I’m assuming you’re talking about accounts w larger followings?) People that are accustomed to algo driven platforms probably don’t stick around as long here- especially those who post and ghost, and get way less engagement on Nostr
Nostr desperately needs a USENET layer where the community votes on hashtag niches. Additionally it suffers the same mastodon-like federation issues. I’d be much more comfortable with BitTorrent-like DHT propagated relay lists. This would also address the archive issue where shit just doesn’t disappear into the ether like a fart in the wind.
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Here’s my take as a business adding nostr to my “marketing stack” after years of experience building and marketing on other platforms: the motivation to post on here would be hard to find if you were not bitcoin centric, people will give both negative and positive feedback much more openly on here, the distribution of zaps heavily skews to a few legacy npubs (regardless of lower quality and reparative content). My favorite things: lower velocity of content and deeper conversations can start in replies, ability to leave and come back without worrying that the algorithm has forgot about you, and Bitcoin of course.
the time I have spent here, in addition to users hanging out, I also feel that 'nostr' feels like a huge workshop where everyone is doing their own things and proposals to make this grow more, and I already feel fascinated by the things that both client users do and what the bitcoin, monero, linux and other communities are creating.