I find it ridiculous when developers complain about people not paying attention to their product, when they've been given so much feedback, but chose to ignore all of it, and instead ship some feature nobody asked for ALL WHILE MOCKING the people for being interested in things they are not building.
Discussion
I feel like this is a subnote
IMO the grants culture of Nostr enables this
Get paid grant money for technical delivery without needing to focus on what users want to use
Yes I suspect you are correct. Sad part is when their grants are over, the thing becomes abandonware and the dev more often than not disappears.
Grant-surfing
When I was much younger I worked on an eco tourism project in Laos. The only westerners in the town were this ecotourism co, and NGOs.
Every year a new NGO would get some funding and turn up to do something, buy a bunch of cars, fund a bunch of office workers, deliver something like lay a road or teach about sanitation or STDs or whatever, then run out of money, pack up and leave.
Every year the ecotourism project made a profit, reinvested in the community, and just kept plugging along as the NGOs came and went.
The founder was very straightforward about it. If you want to add value long term, you must have a profitable business. There is no other way to do it."
Lesson in there.
Good story. Good lesson.
Steady and sustainable is best.
What are you willing to pay for on Nostr? What services and features do you pay for today and which do you wish existed?
My view is that every thing on the internet is better on Nostr, and every internet business model will work just as well, or better with Nostr.
With what I am building with Shosho, building on Nostr has increased dev speed, solved chicken and egg problem, given me a platform-like ecosystem of interoperable and pluggable apps, and also the initial go to market channel, WoM, and early adopter users.
Build any fast-follower of any existing internet company and get all those things free? There's no better place to build IMO.
Thanks! This is all true, but you didn't answer the question, what on Nostr are you willing to depart your hard earned money for?
To give you a favor back, I used ShoSho one time (first time streaming on Nostr) and I would be willing to pay a small zap with satoshis for VOD (video on demand) storage. So depending on how much I pay, it's saved for e.g. 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, with ability to extend.
I'm not willing to pay a monthly fee for the app. I am willing to pay some kind of subscription, and donate subscriptions, to streamers, similar to Twitch. I've supported many Twitch streamers before.
Your profile inspired me to add parsing to the bio on nostr:nprofile1qqsdr0fnxvmn8hxyz8cwazfm8zu9yt7qmc38ll69nkvsgn8dnej4sxckxm0xe, so thanks again.
Before:
https://mibo.eu.nostria.app/f003775d154f1a305ea65d06f2c29d1a610f2c6e46221048e7139dc2c2236e85.webp
After:
https://mibo.eu.nostria.app/5db11e49b1ac11cdd75dc3d430236de145eb017234a0d3c6db99689105fef6c6.webp
Great feedback thanks.
I have been working the last two weeks on a server which does DVR for stream recording and VOD for playback 😎
Ok for me so far I have spent money on Nostr for
- testing (paid for initial app users)
- feedback/learning (zaps on asknostr)
- advertising (zappadd)
- social promotion (aqstr)
- goods (buying NIP-99 stuff)
- streaming ("good" and "best" on zapstream)
For Shosho I intend to sell
- e-commerce marketplace (% of sale)
- or perhaps Shopify model ($/mo)
- some premium streaming server ($/use)
Going forward as a business I could probably use and would pay for
- some Slack/Google work alternatives
- some metrics/analytics product
I'll just leave this here.
Most of the UX challenges are because of the decentralized nature and require serious engineering and capital to play along with existing systems. The existing systems sabotage our UX. It’s not like we can bring a UX designer and magically solve things. Anyone in UX on bitcoin knows this. 5th engineer is 10 engineers short of what you likely need to make the UX actually work.
Nowhere do I make claims of magic bullets. But you started this thread with the same essential assertion: pay attention to what users need to get done.
I've worked alongside great product and UX people who know how to get it done. It does get done. It's never easy, but it's easier when it's a priority.
My point is that behind major UX improvements is a major engineering undertaking. Some people don’t realize this and think we can wave magic wands to just make things happen.
Absolutely. It's the reason I loudly advocate for fewer features, higher quality. Feature creep is a company-killer.
I mean when you complain about stuff and you just want someone to care you did this?
Customer perception is reality.
Best times is when users give feedback and I can react on it. When users are complacent and quiet, it's also opportunity to innovate where it's not always obvious.
Building tools, apps, services that you use yourself, what you want and need, is the ultimate driving force for innovation. When the product is a result of an employment at a corporation, this driving force is reduced or lost. Open source projects run by corporations shows this issue, the Bitpay wallet is good example of this. Maintained primarily by employees who change over time.