I just created an account on a new social networking platform today. I did it because I heard about it on the internet, no one I knew invited me. When I joined I was presented with a feed of a bunch of random posts from random people talking about topics that didn't interest me.
Was that platform called "Nostr"?
Or is that the default expected experience of any person who joins a new social network just for experimenting it?
I would guess that even for some Azerbaijani shepherd who just got their first mobile phone / Facebook account, there will be some combination of geolocation, device information and other bits of info that the algorithm will use to at least provide some kind of "starter pack" of posts.
But Facebook is a product... Nostr is a protocol.
My first experience was something like that, boring topics about social stuff.
The second was X and it was great, a lot of bitcoin content but it quickly turned to shit because of the violence and political stuff in the algo.
Nostr is my third, it is getting perfect day by day, the zaps fail most of the time but the content is what I want and follow.
Thanks man.
Yes, it is Nostr. I can from Fedi. I'm most definitely on the experimenting side of it. If the experience is good, I might stay for a little longer but will never commit to staying forever.
It's a free market. People should stay as long as they find value. There have been times when the value has ups and downs for me.
You're too socially inept to build your own community so you sign up for a platform hoping to find one there. What you're getting is a whole bunch of people too socially inept to build their community either.
Probably fair. It isn't easy to build a community in a new place. But nothing worthwhile is in my experience.
I think it's default expected experience
The only thing worse than "automatic follows" is freshly booting up #damus or #primal and finding just "nothing"... just loading content, and nothing loads. This was my entire experience using #nostr during 2024. I literally tried to use Nostr a few times last year and just gave up at this first thing where nothing would load. So given that, I'd much rather be auto-followed to a bunch of BTC maxis who only post "GM'... when the alternative is NO CONTENT!
Also, in the future, people besides BTC maxis will actually use Nostr, so at that point, we can just auto-follow whoever are the best looking and/or most famous people on Nostr, and then we will have created a produce that average morons finally want to use... This might sound like a joke but I think this is actually the goal, right?
I know that the concept of Nostr is different from the central platforms, but let's be more realistic, every Noster client, whether it is an application or a website, needs to be more suitable for new users, as they come from platforms that offer them a lot of customization, and I think this part is missing in the Nostr client
that's why facebook was so obsessed on getting new users to connect with 10 friends in their first week. they discovered an extremely strong correlation between this and long-term retention. classic example of what drives network products
The fact that you had to interact with friends -- and that you would only get into Facebook because you already knew friends who were there (and then they would take data from your email contacts and then your phone contacts) made that onboarding simpler.
seeding the onboarding experience with random content that you fine tune later is better than showing an empty state and is an acceptable default experience IMO
If you joined Usenet, you would need to know what groups to subscribe to
IRC? sift through the list of public channels or get invited to the secret ones
the random feed is lower friction than going through multiple steps asking what your interests are, and even if you that, the content might not be what you’re looking for
Asking for interests has never worked.
Maybe the automatic follows could be customized by topic? A new user could pick the follows in the categories that are of interest to them .
I must know... did you trend? 👀😅
Random is the most common experience that I have seen. Preset follows are not so good because you have to be reactive rather than proactive to make it better.
I remember trying some platform called Vero. It started out mostly blank and it was 10x harder to find anything, than starting new & uninvited with Nostr/Amethyst. That whole app was a beautiful mess.
Looking back, I liked landing in the blank Amethyst follow feed and discovering the noisy "global" feed. It made exploring the app very fun. Maybe the best solution is a mix of both?
I didn't say anything or spent more than 2 minutes there.
I think the most honest thing we can do is a blank follow feed, then some suggested relay feeds to pick from.
The word "global" should never be used.
The most honest thing can also be interesting. Landing in a blank feed isn't negative, as long as finding the other feeds is not difficult. With the example of Amethyst, something like blinking icons on first-open would work well. I don't think there is anything wrong with encouraging people to explore. It's all part of what makes Nostr fun to use. This works differently than people are used to. I believe there is benefit in highlighting that, rather than hiding it. I can't speak for you, but I think we share that view.
I'll try to fix my wording :)
A guy named fiatjaf made it
You just ‘write’ about me
