Nostr is a great technology but when people post stuff that isnât related to bitcoin or nostr itself they struggle to get traction and build an audience.
Other platforms have algorithms or tools to cultivate multiple communities of users and interest. Weâre a bit stuck with just one at the moment. Solving this is essential for Nostrâs future.
nostr:note1tw26j66478fd0m0ar094v0ksg0dxaqgvg86m0nm256gexrwthsfq4k7cjy
Reverse uno. Used to be hard for bitcoin to get any traction anywhere else. Those people who would come in ans shut us down are still out there. When they come, the space will become more diverse. They will need to push the envelope themselves the way we did on reddit, twitter and other platforms as we carved our our own communities within the platforms we wanted to use, they will need to build their communities here in a peaceful way.
yes, Iâve been using for less than a month and find the ubiquitous self-referentialism borderline intolerable. itâs akin to sitting at a dinner table and the ONLY thing you hear is people talking about the table, the cutlery, the food⊠the WHOLE night. what a pleasant dinner. đ
nostr:npub1xehqy6pugnw2vhjqw0a2kr92zw8fmf8g7f9yuuqrnk8tjmvya0zqmefw23 itâs a common problem of early social tech. We used to hear the complaint that all people talked about on Twitter was Twitter itself. The difference is that Twitter was able to eventually grow beyond that.
and look how great theyâre doing! HAHAHAHA
Yes itâll be nice to see the content horizon broaden.
Agreed. We have a lot of work to do in the content discovery realm. It's slowly improving through.
Hasnât nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m posted about communities?
we're just early.. ..i'm looking forward to more linux nerds getting into the mix
Wouldn't it just naturally happen when more normies start using Nostr?
I've been saying this for a bit and the reception to the idea of algos is lukewarm at best.
What people don't grok is that it's not the algos that should be vilified, it's lack of options and choice.
As long as you can choose how you want your content given to you and it's done transparently, it's a huge benefit.
Nostr is quality over quantity for now. Not the place to build big followings, but instead more substantive interactions. Itâs hard to find your people but when you do find them, the reward is bigger.
Bitcoin music is corny as fuck.
Keep doing you. Not a big audience here YET.
And the algos need work.
Keep grinding sir.
Been thinking about relay neighborhoods that filter out âbitcoinâ posts. What if these were the default relays that were set up when a user first downloads a client?
I noticed that my following is engaging well with non bitcoin or nostr related matters. It could be just the hashtags that are making a difference?
I don't think you are thinking this through. Nostr is filled users who are passionate about Bitcoin and Nostr.
Bitcoiners and Nostrichs built this platform, why would the normies be on this platform? Normies don't care about Bitcoin or decentralized platforms.
They will show up eventually but for now it's mostly on Bitcoin and Nostrichs
There is no problem. Everything is operating normally.
Itâs completely natural that the bitcoin community, which embraces decentralized options, took to it first. It is, therefore, the largest community.
Other communities will take to it, as well, unto their own needs. We are seeing this play out in real-time. Their communities will naturally be smaller, at first, versus the more established bitcoin community.
Itâs not an either/or. There isnât a limitation preventing the growth of any community - thatâs what makes part of the nostr protocol great. Itâs just early days.
Early adopters of nostr (from a community) should really be seeing this as a time of opportunity. They get to help build their community, and their influence will play a key role.
It makes me think that the people complaining are those less interested in community and more interested in selling something. And one thing Iâve seen over and over again, from the radio ham community to bitcoiners to homesteaders - its community over shilling products. V4v, sure - but thatâs not whatâs making nostr thrive right now.
Eventually, there will be more robust stores for them to sell their products via nostr directly.
But this is not your typical algo-driven social media. People here talk to others because they like what they have to say - not because itâs rammed down their throat.
nostr:npub1qqqqypnst2u7wdlmexad9gjamstlg7c4ck2w4cadv4j5xd5e8vvsupryz3 itâs not a problem that there is a robust community of bitcoiners on Nostr. The problem is that is very hard for other unrelated communities to form on Nostr and grow.
Nostr as it currently works tends to push people in to the one big tightly connected conversation. Itâs why mostly Nostr is in English with a smaller community in Chinese, Japanese, and Thai. With languages that are closer to English theyâve had a harder time creating the space and connection to develop.
As long as itâs hard to find these other communities then people will join and say, oh I donât care about bitcoin so much, this place isnât for me. Or âmierda, mi gusta bitcoin pero no se ni pomo como hablar en inglĂ©s, entonces nostr no es para mi, tampoco.â
We can solve this but we need to listen to the folks who join but donât stick around.
Ah. I have seen this as a be-your-own-algo problem. I am always tweaking my own feed based on the content people post. My thinking is that people are used to - and maybe addicted to - being force-fed content without having to think much. Indeed, there is an entire âinfluencerâ economy built around this.
Maybe more support is needed for something like kind-34550. As there is more demand, opportunity will grow and the demand will be met.
I am not suggesting we donât listen, but I am suggesting the complaints donât hold a lot of water. The ability to build a community *is* there, tho itâs very primitive. Again, look at the ham radio community as an example. Much smaller, more niche than most cultures. Difficult to find much on any social media. But they found themselves here. Itâs doable.
Nostr doesnât owe anyone anything. Relay runners, protocol devs, app devs, and users running (QA) it all - they are either building for themselves or for opportunity.
If the people complaining really want to be helped, we should push them to contribute to dev work and get involved. My $0.02.
I get a little irritated by people whining about how it doesnât fit their needs the exact way they want. Tells me thereâs a good chance theyâre missing the point or the great opportunity.
If theyâre not interested in the opportunity or helping nostr to grow - cool! Donât complain. Go elsewhere for a while. If nostr succeeds at its decentralized mission, theyâll be back. Itâs inevitable. Itâs why bitcoiners are here en masse.
Sadly, this is correct. The masses get turned off when everything that trends is Bitcoin-related. I even hesitate to tell my normie friends about Nostr yet, because you usually only get one shot to get someone to stick to a new app. At the start, I didn't because the apps were not good enough. They are pretty good now. The main reason I hesitate currently is because they will say this is a Bitcoin cult app đđđ. I dont mind that for now but for the sake of #growstr we need something that fixes that so other communities can flourish. Nostr is for all.
Exactly! Very well put đ§Ą
If we want our IRL communities, people we care about, and newcomers in general to embrace something so new to them as nostr likely is, those of us actively building here (which is pretty much all of us at this point simply by using the protocol) can benefit from a welcoming and inclusive mindset
I think it may be just because Bitcoin people brought part of their audiences and contacts from X, so they still get interactions even when they post non-Bitcoin stuff.
Completely new people are alone and they probably wouldn't get traction in any other platform either, no matter how good their content is. That was always my experience and is the experience of most people, and also the experience of many Bitcoiners here on Nostr that for whatever reason do not have many "followers".
I heard TikTok has this magic algorithm that enables anyone to be seen, but I have no experience with that, and honestly it's very hard to believe we are not just suffering from survivorship bias: "oh, this person came from nowhere and got traction thanks to the algorithm!" -- meanwhile thousands of others were "better" but didn't gain any traction even with the algorithm (or because of it).
I'm not saying there aren't things we can do to improve on this, but I don't think there is any straightforward thing everybody is doing that we are refusing to do because we're dumb or even because Nostr is limited.
Primal sidebar is the worst example of what is going on here, and it reinforces the situation. Bitcointwitter 'celebs' are basically the tone and taste setters on here atm.
New users are sort of forced to pay their rent in bitcoin posts if they want to get reach, whether they want to or not.
I'd quite like to see the nostr meta totally change. It's been like this for ages.
For starters you could have a client with a sidebar which downgrades or totally ignores bitcoin 'content' (usually an unfunny meme or slogan). Perhaps taking into account the follower numbers for what is deemed 'trending' ie a post with 70 likes from an account with 30k followers would not be 'trending'. This is why you have banal 'trending' posts on primal, these are read-receipts ( and zaps).
Yep. NOSTR is hopelessly boring.đ”âđ« (But I still havenât lost all hope after 2 yearsđ€·đŒââïž)
Discovery is hard.
But I'll say, I'm not a fan of follower count chasers. I don't have a ton and I don't need a ton. I understand most of them are bots or dead accounts. I don't want people to follow me unless they care about what I have to say.
I've found, the only way to have a good, meaningful experience on any social media is to poke around for a while, find some people that you really like what they have to say and would like to talk to them, start doing that, then follow the social graph a little and continue to do that. If you also have interesting things to say people will follow you, and eventually it snowballs. I think, out of all social media I've tried, nostr-as-mocroblogging has been the most rewarding. Meaningful conversations, consequential ones, thoughtful ones that I learn something from, genuine people, an all round great place.
The TikTok algorithm is indeed magical (which I can say from experience). It is by far the most user interest-aligned platform of any I have ever experienced and I say that as someone who was in high school when facebook was created and has used every social media app since then enough to understand its strengths and weaknesses as a platform.
That said, most of these platforms are designed to be addictive to users to feed the ad-based revenue model so while there is a lot to learn with respect to creating a more engaging and welcoming user experience, itâs important to keep lessons learned in mind and not make similar mistakes at the expense of users
There is definitely room for improvement here on nostr, but as long as we are having these conversations and continuously building in response I think we are headed in the right direction đ§Ą
Tiktok algo wasnât too magic from what I heard.
Used a sampling and boosting mechanism: test a post with 10 viewers, scores well then tests with 100 users, scores well then 1000 users etc etc. Good scoring in sample size x gets you a new sample 10x until you fail.
Much harder to do decentralized, but probably worth exploring a similar model.
Maybe newcomers don't understand in nostr you get what you follow. đ€
Nothing is stopping them from doing their own thing. I'd say get off your lazy ass and build it yourself and stop bitching.
We all need to support freedom whatever we find it and stop supporting stuff that doesn't.
I think providing feedback about how we can improve something important to us is far from âbitchingâ
Itâs a signal for change, and as the signal is amplified it can reach those with a passion and skill set to implement said change
In my opinion we shouldnât discourage sharing these signals on the protocol
Thank you for communicating this! I think this is exactly what we should be talking about and how we could contribute to growing the platform
Iâm quite new to software development, but the most amazing part about open source software to me is that anyone CAN manifest ideas like this into reality
Even for those of us still learning or whoâs skills donât lie in engineering, having and promoting conversations like this is important work
Agree a gazillion percent
Ah, the For You algorithm. Could you imagine if TikTok just turned into a Nostr client? Because they couldn't make it work in the US?
Totally agree. I've no interest in crypto, and haven't found any other topics other than Nostr itself
Last year I even tried a coding projects to see if I could find some subsets of relays that had interesting posts, but what I discovered was that all relays (or at least all ones that were reasonably responsive) had more or less the same posts
the comments and discussions on this are great.
I definitely agree with all of it, even the original poster, but some of explanations below are true.
This is a platform made for bitcoiners by bitcoiners.
AND THATS OK, it's obvious that is going to be the dominant topics.
Once more people try it and love it for the tech more then anything, you will see other communities grow and with that different posts and content
My take:
#nostr Needs to find their own method of how these communities intercect and discover each other.
Yea that seems to be a hurdle for most crypto/blockchain social or communication platforms. If the conversation is only ever about blockchain or related cryptocurrencies, then it will be harder to get more widespread adoption as the target demo never expands beyond those already versed in these topics.
Diversity of topics should be a goal.
Iâve been trying to gather and expand the climbing community on here, but it seems like the most effective right now is just using hashtags. Anything Iâm missing?
Could hashtags help with that, if well supported and exposed in the interface of clients?
Would require an easy way to discover and follow #tags
