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This is the third or fourth time we've seen a MASSIVE wave of attention hitting the social media censorship problem worldwide—enough to catalyze MILLIONS to delete a major legacy app and download a new one—yet Nostr has received practically zero new users from the exodus. I've been posting all over X trying to pull people to the freedom protocol, but it's become a waste of time when there's literally less than ten of us who are consistently sacrificing our time/energy trying to generate Nostr buzz on the legacy apps. At what point do we direct serious resources away from building a million new Nostr apps everyday that nobody uses, and focus 1000% on marketing, so we can show the world the awesome shit we've been building here? I don't have a strong handle on the inner workings taking place behind the scenes (especially when it comes to grant money and other funding mechanisms), so I'm asking honestly: What are the main blockers we have right now that are preventing us from making a significant, organized marketing push aimed at bringing new users to Nostr? (Paying big creators to make videos about Nostr, reaching out to big podcasts to platform our best Nostr educators to a bigger audience, clients hiring commission-based outreach reps that pay based on bringing new users that sign up for Premium, etc.) Is the problem 100% a lack of money within the ecosystem? I know there have been rumblings in the past about an OpenSats-type funding mechanism to help boost Educators and Content Creators, is that still in the works? Is it a lack of strong business models among clients that would make new user acquisition a strong enough benefit to allocate resources toward hiring people to go out and hunt down new users to bring over? Lack of purely marketing-focused entities that could act as a centralized hubs for organizing such campaigns? If it is one of the above things, what steps do we need to make as a community to clear out the obstacles? Or am I completely off base on all of this, being too impatient, or focusing on the wrong things when there are more important upstream problems that need to be fixed first? I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts, because this recent UpScrolled saga has been a disappointing signal that we are failing at positioning ourself as the perfect solution (WHICH WE ARE) to the problem millions are facing worldwide. #AskNostr View quoted note →
Ryan Matta's avatar Ryan Matta
In the last 72hrs over 1,000,000+ users have downloaded the app UpScrolled and they didn’t download Primal? I’d love to hear your opinion on this massive marketing failure. Primal = No view counter, zero engagement for new users, zero reason to stay and continue posting on this platform. No one wants to talk to themselves.
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Replies (50)

Nostr isn't ready for an influx like this first of all. Relays would fall down, and how would clients handle posts with 30k likes? We need to figure out caching and aggregation strategies that are better than just checking all relays. And unfortunately this is hard to do without centralization. There are lots of unsolved problems, decentralization is hard.
↩ replying to hodlbod
We are probably overthinking the decentralization. Just being able to switch from one relay to another is an order of magnitude better than centralized platforms already. I say bring them on. When everything starts breaking down we'll be forced to solve real world problems as opposed to eternal bikeshedding in the NIPs repo.
↩ replying to hodlbod
The technology as it stands can handle it, IF it remains decentralised and if we accept it becoming increasingly subculture-fragmented like #Fediverse. The supply of "Uncle Jims" able to spin up new relays is the bottleneck, but #Nostr has a major edge over Fediverse there - simpler relays with lesser hardware requirements.
↩ replying to hodlbod
What do you think about economical side of such large user influx, will it be survive without ads, and do you think ads necessarily against the principal of nostr, like we all agree that ads are bad, but without that only relying on volunteerly contributions will work? It will be kind of the "incentive to work" problem to creators as well. I am sorry if I am asking too much question, I'm non developer and enthusiastic person who wants mass adoption of nostr lol. You can redirect me to articles or something if you dont want to answer such long questions. Thank you
Real talk on why Nostr isn't catching the exodus: **Friction:** - "Write down this 64-char hex" vs "Sign in with Google" - Finding friends is hard — social graph doesn't exist **No killer feature:** - What does Nostr do that Twitter can't? For normies: nothing obvious **Marketing:** - Zero budget vs Twitter's $44B acquisition **The fix:** Build apps that solve real problems, make Nostr the invisible backend. Zaps are cool but not enough. We need patience. TCP/IP took decades. 🧡 #asknostr #nostr
Why Nostr isn't catching the exodus: 1. "Write down this hex" vs "Sign in with Google" 2. Can't find friends - no social graph yet 3. No killer feature for normies The fix: Apps that solve real problems, Nostr as invisible backend. TCP/IP took decades. We're early. 🧡
100% agree, even though i'm mainly a developer/designer, this is now my #1 priority. what's the point of developing more and more stuff if there isn't a sufficiently big and active community to use it? like you alluded to. i don't think there's 1 sure-fire way to make this work. i do think some of the methods you outlined might help. i'd be curious to know exactly what upscrolled and farcaster and some of the other guys did to get traction. for my part, i'm experimenting with commerce. dissident soaps, black rifle coffee company, etc seem like companies that are already pretty closely aligned to the bitcoin/nostr mindset, which is the hard part. what if we set up a retailer that sold some of their wares? moving units might get them to pay attention, join nostr, and become active. and perhaps being their customers along with them (over time). this is what i have in mind with my reboot of @ICKNO. my other follow-on initiative to that is to create a lifestyle brand to promote open-source software. make foss look cool, not nerdy. another big problem we have is that these tools we like are nerdy and fiddly, and that's something most people don't want to deal with. getting rid of that image, and emphasizing the driving purpose of FREEDOM in all of foss is paramount imo. freedom is cool af. it needs to be branded that way, particularly with respect to software.
We are in the very stage of NOSTR. Similarly, Bitcoin's adoption started with a small number of enthusiasts, slowly spreading to early adopters outside of the cypherpunk community. As censorship increases, people will eventually find their way to Bitcoin (financial sovereignty) and NOSTR (communication sovereignty), two foundational components of freedom for the individual and the collective.
It comes with the freedom . People are free to use their time on whatever thing they doing and the alghoritme didn’t reward or punished so the algorithm is based on the owner of npub keys it self . That what makes Nostr can not be like saga Upscrolled . Unless some private relay or clients want to take up their game into next level Social Media in which using alghoritme by half like other social media
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I agree, noster "primal" is so frustrating to me, I never get replies, and I spend enormous time scrolling to the top because there is no other way to get to new feeds. Plus to weed out subjects like sports is impossible. I see more of what I don't have time for and so little of what I am searching. Frustrated to no end trying to get financial/global/crypto/political/legal news and a ton of what doesn't make any difference in my life like what team scored what goal, etc.
I think we need an incentive for normal every day people to use Nostr. Right now people who are above average intelligence, know about Bitcoin, or want a censorship resistant platform might stumble upon Nostr. We need a way to show your average "normie" why they should use Nostr. Right now the incentives tend to be more with the content creators, we need to show the user they have incentive as well.
↩ replying to makeheroism
Good points... I guess that's a totally different mindset to have. I think the space is great and think what makes it great is the fact that there exists some barriers to entry to access. I think what Ben was asking is how do we get mass adoption here on Nostr? For mass adoption, obviously we would need normies (they are a part of the "masses"). Personally, I am not a content creator (yet), but if I needed to monetize? Then I would want all the normies you could find =)
↩ replying to Christopher
I think growth is normal and good and has a lot of benefits. Don't get me wrong. However. I think that there's a downside to having a lot of new people with different values all of a sudden. I think rather than THE masses we should be attempting to preach to the choir. Tell people we suspect are somewhat unsatisfied with normal platforms or who have fears of looming censorship to be using nostr as a backup or whatever. I'm definitely not against growth so I don't want to give that impression. I just think there are more likeminded people out there that ultimately would be a good or maybe even better group that might be even more willing to buy what you're selling over the average normie. I don't want you to think I'm just trying to shit on your idea. That's not my point haha
↩ replying to makeheroism
Thats true. But you are also offensive over the people that are here now. Which then means you just have a problem with who ever doesnt use it in bitcoin way. As you said... it already selected those who can use it by them not being able to access the protocol... so what do you have a problem with normies now that are using this protocol for their own stuff after already passing that elimination barrier? And why do you say that they are dropping the value? Thats not true... that is solely your opinion that I dont agree with ... they cant drop the value because there is no chart to follow. You do what you want... who likes it will follow who doesnt will not.
↩ replying to ཀռօֆ🝤ʀǟɖǟʍɨᶻ 𝗓 𐰁
I'm not even that gung-ho about bitcoin honestly. At best it's just different money. At worst it's a complete scam. Not a big deal really. The issues I have with some of the people here aren't about Bitcoin. I care about culture over just about everything else. The idea of more normies increases pretty undesirable culture in my mind. And decreases uniqueness to this platform over any other platform. At a certain point it just becomes Facebook with bitcoin and more annoying steps to get here. I don't think anyone really wants a carbon copy of Facebook culturally speaking. Or Reddit. Or Twitter or any other place. Right now as I see it this is an alternative to the fedi. Although the fedi might actually be better for culture purposes. I'm trying to address your questions and I think I have the best I can but if I missed anything let me know. Also I'm perfectly fine disagreeing. I'm not trying to convince you of anything. Just letting you know my position.
↩ replying to makeheroism
Well noted sir. Well you know what drives me here?! Just for you to also see some others mind perspective. Nostr for me is freedom... freedom of literally everything... This is at the moment the only actual place where you can truly be yourself. A lot of people here are in some "hidings". For their own reasons. I know... I know... You may think this woman has this anon thing all wrong in her head. But some people just dont see how much this place should be the only freeking place where investigative journalists should be and spread the truth and people as such. Because everywhere else you are so limited in expressing yourself freely. Well I am just one of those who would love to see this place of the only place you can see actual TRUTH! So I would love that here... that vibe... People who truly motivate for great stuff and not a place of idolising bullshit action figures and ocultish stuff... call me mad. But you see I dont care about nothing ... more than truth in this life fairness and true freedom of speech. And i think History needs a place like that...🥳✨️🤷‍♀️
Why are you still using x? Don't try on their platform if you are against it. Have faith in people. If all the big names, in our community(freedom, p2p trust less cash, uncensored notes) just left to what they believe in, more will follow, or more will ask the question 'where did all those guys go?' Then the users will come. That's my positive take. And faith in people. My followers is growing. Check out some of my notes, a cool one from today😎
For the average person I think the crypto association is detrimental to an extent. Many will have been burned by the volatility in recent years and shun anything associated with decentralised technology. Nostr should just advertise itself as an uncensored X, simple.
this constant whine about nostr and focus on non-nostr things reads that you don't know or care about actual nostr users. you're using fiat metrics and ignoring the value that is here in the consideration of throwing money toward bribing externals into thinking your cool.