People mostly join a network because of who’s already on it. It’s kind of the same reason immigrants tend to congregate in a single neighborhood. You go where you’re people are going.
Bluesky gives users a simple and clear value prop. Install an app, it’s like other apps you’ve used, you need an invite, because it’s so popular You get a username and password, and you can login. You posts, see posts by others, it feels like twitter. When you join, it does a good job of recommending friends to join.
There are lots of distinct communities, you could be a musician, or speak Persian, or a furry, or be a swifty. The minority who sign up and stay, stay because the find content and people they like.
One major issue with Nostr is that it’s only got a single cluster of users, bitcoiners. Another issue is that we’ve got so many apps, we’re confusing people. We don’t do contact / community discovery well. If you’re a bitcoiner you don’t need it, the default global feeds and top folks are your people, you feel at home, and like the content.
Lastly our system of users names with keys, it makes sense to folks who already understand crypto. You can login to the web app using this browser extension, it’s like metamask. Bluesky also uses keys for user identity, but they store those keys on a server, so users don’t need to see it.
I think we can fix these problems, but we need to work on it. We need to find ways for no-coiners to have their spaces. This is why I’m excited about the topical relays, the communities functionality, and the like. We haven’t figured it out, and we need to if we’re not going to end up being a bitcoin only space.
