I’m kinda surprised so many people have a hard time figuring out nostr …
It doesn’t seem all that difficult 🤷♂️
I guess people are really thrown off by the concept of key pairs and relays?
Seems like an easily fixable issue if we use old terminology along side new one?
Npub = username
Nsec = password
Relay = server
Then as they ease into nostr, educate them?
What am I missing?
For education - even a simple tab with some text would be a good start..
It’s not really difficult. I’ve found most ppl are turned off by the homogenous bitcoin culture.
People expect every app should behave the same. If an app/ecosystem/ideology etc. comes with a different approach, than peoe start to complain. Thats about habits and habits are the hardest things to be broken.
Yeah but on the surface nostr is not that much different. You still have logins and servers.
Yes I agree but people are waiting for the same refistration and/or signin experience. But with pioneers like experienced users, developers, and ordinary people like us, #nostr style authentication will be more popular!
The encrypted key pair has thrown a lot of people off I’ve tried to show #nostr to. I’m not sure why.
“It’s a username and password that’s generated for you”. … then later explain how it actually works.
I feel the long strings are a little intimidating at first to a user who has never worked with encrypted key pairs before. Explaining as a user name and password may be a good approach.
Off the top of my head:
Uses way too much data and/or is slow
They're not shown something engaging within 2 seconds
Engagement is a good point..
The clients are not hard to use. It just takes a few extra steps to get everything set up. It’s part of the freedom Nostr allows, but it’s not something people have experienced with traditional social media.
What are the extra things to set up?
Once it becomes more than entering an email address and password, most people will give up
At least on iOS even installing TestFlight to get access to Damus is a hurdle too high
Nothing too hard, but just things like downloading a wallet to send/receive zaps, not being able to upload images directly to Damus, etc. These are things that you don’t have to worry about when you use other social media platforms. It’s not bad just different.
npub may be your "username" but it's not your handle. it's not what you want to be referred to as on the network. there's the extra step of setting that up.
setting up an account and making it yours is a hurdle.
Even setting up a profile pic was a pain cuz I had to upload my image somewhere else first. I haven't even bothered with my banner.
nostr is easy to use once you know how to use it but getting there is still clunky.
This has to be solved on the popular clients and all other features postponed until it is imo.
Yeah! That’s a great way of introducing the new product. A great marketing mind.
Yeah, I think it's really just a short 60 sec youtube video away tbh -- Like: 'Hi! This is a client - you can generate key pairs with this! One you can post in public places! One you keep private. Private lets you access your account/profile/id from many different clients and apps to come. Think social media/podcasts/youtube/Web3-5/(TBA) -- You can expand the network of content you share to and see by adding friends and relays. Play with that. Be kind and have fun!' -- If you need to restart. Go ahead. Learning is good too. Kinda thing. -- With a brief mention of lightning wallet extension integration and options.
I think understanding relays is a unique challenge because users don't normally think about servers.
And even if they are familiar with servers, they aren't used to having options on that side of the stack.
Would prefer:
Nip05 = your shorturl
Username = user tag
Npub = user id
Nsec = secret access code
#[2] 
I think it’s different, not your usual sign up process and requires education.
Having many steps to get familiarise tens to drop users - same like how from eyeball view to sales conversion can be <1% and the CTA has to be as simple and seamless. Perhaps not a Nostr thing but just common user behaviour.
I think it also helps to capture as many early adopters know instead of worrying abt mainstream users as the latter will follow suit.
And one way to capture early adopters to get more market segment users. For example :
1. Pablo mentioned how the highlighter tool is helping his wife while she authors a book, so more writers can try it out ? How do we reach out to more writers ?
2. Amethyst released tik tok version and once its NIP is friendly across Nostr users, maybe can create many marketing campaigns and competitions to attract new users.
3. Iris has photo tiles while would make it a photography haven, various social media influencers and can be users as commerce with zaps.
4. Small businesses can start taping into selling on Nostr - To be fair I don’t know how many market places are there on Nostr and how it onboards sellers.
In short, I think what we need now are users of this tools, marketing campaigns - ie competitions, introductory videos etc - even campaigns like find the most creative ways to apply these tools to your day to day lifestyle - these are the early adopters who will bring in their mainstream followers
Damn those typos! Sorry about it.
I also thinking finding a simpler way to put up all these tools would help users.
If you see it like an iPhone app, I think
- tools will take up the main space.
- clients will be at the bottom.
- relays will be utility / tool as the functions vary
Hence reframing what users see and use on directories will also be important
I think all these apps releasing mega features is not ideal. The tiktok all should have been it’s own client.
Early adopters are in part going to bluesky because they don’t get the basic things we’re used to already.
Yea, tik tok would do well as separate client. Btw what do you mean by they don’t get the basic things we are used to ? I noticed more journalist signing onto bluesky and was wondering what makes this different
They are intimidated by keys and relays
Yea probably. You know, before iPhones took over, or generally the smart phone concept, they penetrated to the working group - made it the ‘it’ thing for a classy exec to have. Globally it spread that way.
Then they started selling to local telco companies and distributors, and mainstream market went viral.
The education of smart phone usage is a long process, easier for many groups and harder for smaller groups. It took time.
But if you go back the flip phone era or the Motorola phones that looked like a brick, nobody would believe smart phone penetration would be possible.
I do think having specific use cases will attract users. For bluesky, their use case is Twitter replica ie most gov’ts and media (and a number of celebrities) use it as an official comms channel.
In our case we have many use cases - and it might help if we targets several target markets we want to penetrate that can help with mainstream adoptions
I say we skip straight to the iPhone. Why wait? :)
Well, would that leave us with a Twitter replica and that alone? I think we can do so much more - this platform is brilliant - but like smart phones, it’s not something Ppl are going to see. So have to attract the specific and various target market that would use it first.
Was reading abt Chrissy Tiegan joining bluesky - and imagining how it would be like for a busy celebrity mom who manages their own social media using Nostr.
The process flow from start
- login - the sign up process,
- the relay options,
- the profile updates (add interest here)
- searching for who to follow based on interest, topics and popularity
you're right, this process has to be simple and quick - and keeping this in mind, some things can be improved
- short reminders like that i sign (info) where they can click to learn more
- video tutorials
- tips and tricks to have better reach - ie hashtags, topic of interest etc
- assuming everything else is a no-brainer process.
Additional development client devs can implement
- add "topic of interest" for users - can use hashtags users have created and add along the way
- partner up with tool devs such as nostr.band to add trending stuff
we can time this and see how quick people sign up. And also attrition based on posts. And revisit this every couple of months to see what to add and delete and improve the onboarding process
When you sign-up with IG, Snap, Twitter etc. you don't need to concern yourself with servers 😁
The irreversible nature of being responsible of your password irrevocably scares some people.
I think an issue is that people handle passwords in ways that you wouldn’t want to handle an Nsec. It’s an analogy that sorta works, but also can cause security nightmares for users when taken too literally. Nuance isn’t easily & widely conferred.
I am new on Nostr and have no clue what I am doing but I’m all into decentralized apps. Relays? Dunno. I’m a standard Web3 kinda person so these newer medias are something I can learn. On Lens and DeSo and learning about them too. Still on some older apps too like Entre and Geneva, some Twitter but seem to not go there that much. One TikTok for funneling to other sites and one Tiktok account for business. I’m a senior citizen hoping to help other old peeps learning and navigating new technologies 😎
