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Building user habits takes time — and a lot of patience. Someone who’s used to eating noodles with chopsticks won’t suddenly switch to a fork, even if the pasta tastes amazing. And the same goes the other way around. But it’s not hopeless. The key is to keep delivering a consistent and genuinely good experience, over and over again. The hardest part is for those building the products. You can’t really predict when that turning point will happen — when people’s habits will finally start to shift. You don’t know when it’ll come, or what feature will trigger it. That’s why so many great projects fall right before dawn — not because they failed, but because they lost balance between belief and resources. Nostr’s account system gives a small edge here. It helps projects reach that inflection point faster by making user migration easier and connection smoother. Still, the challenge remains: can you last long enough to see it happen? Because staying alive during the long wait — that’s the real battle. Every project has to find its own way to survive. Survival comes first. As long as your users haven’t completely forgotten you, there’s still a chance for that breakthrough moment to arrive. Keep going.🤙
Derek Ross's avatar Derek Ross
I’ve been using Signal for about ten years. In the beginning, it was just my wife and me. Then I added a few Android tech friends. Eventually, I convinced a few more friends to join, but most of them left after a while. Later, I got some family members to try it, though they barely used it. Over time, I added more tech-savvy friends, then more local friends and family. Eventually, I started connecting with tons of online friends from Bitcoin Twitter and then Nostr. Even the friends and family who had left before came back. Now, Signal has become my main way of communicating with my family, several friend groups, and just about everyone except a few outlier RCS text chats. My point is: it takes time for people to migrate from one app to another. It can take years before adoption really takes hold. Apps like White Noise and others will have the same journey. Keep using them. Don’t stop. You’re on the right path.
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The cheat code is to provide a product with less incremental more substantial value. This will either make immediate converts out of them or provide enough incentive that the user will easily be willing to persist despite their discomforts and unfamiliarities. PS. Too many concern themselves with “what incremental improvement can we make” than with “what significant improvement can we make” This is largely due to the overly deliver-centric mentality of the deck community and the lack of discovery-mindedness. The belief that delivery precedes discovery stems from a lack of vision and prototype creation. Those who don’t lack these things and place discovery prior to delivery develop far more rapid iteration rates and far surpass the ROI and advancement than other teams.