Nostr Web Client

Today, I had a conversation with a friend's acquaintance who expressed a desire to "do something about social media, to create something that is ours." She was unfamiliar with Nostr and only vaguely aware of Mastodon, though she had heard of Bluesky and Threads.

She represents the ideal target audience for Nostr. Once I explained our project, her excitement was palpable. Although initially skeptical about Bitcoin, she showed interest in an economic model not reliant on advertising and was open to exploring alternative models.

Several key points emerged from our discussion. Firstly, the ease of joining and locating acquaintances on Nostr is crucial. For instance, the process of installing TestFlight, then navigating back to nos.social to click a link and install Nostr via TestFlight, proved challenging. Her attempt to Google Nostr nearly led her astray. nostr:npub1a8jzweysxa9qmtmht874736aalm0lwdsl306nrys9d05ktlrhw3qcr5pj4 i think, this underscores the need for someone with tech marketing/communications expertise to overhaul nostr.com. The current site should be repositioned as developer.nostr.com.

We must simplify the process of finding and connecting with known contacts on Nostr. It's essential to communicate the value proposition of Nostr to new users, whether they learn about it through friends or media. Our focus shouldn't be on creating more content for Bitcoin enthusiasts, as there's already a plethora of information available for those familiar with wallet operations.

Another aspect that stood out was Nostr's multi-app nature. Nostr isn't just Damus, Nos, Amethyst, or Habla.news. It's a platform where various apps can operate using the same data, contacts, and services, all under the user's control. For those with a developer mindset, the sheer breadth of projects within Nostr demonstrates the vibrancy and scale of our endeavor. Projecting this magnitude is crucial for attracting users who are deciding where to invest their time.

I believe we could benefit from explainer videos that highlight why Nostr is both important and interesting. During our conversation, I showcased various apps: Primal for a web social feed, Habla and Yakihonne for longer-form blogging, Flockstr for events, Wherostr for geolocation, and Highlighter for layering different functionalities. These examples illustrate the diversity and versatility of our platform.

I didn't delve into Nostr nests, marketplaces, Wavlake, Streamstr, and more, but it's clear there's much to explore.

This conversation has led me to believe that we should proactively share the Nostr story, positioning it as the future of social networking. This approach will also help us differentiate from platforms like Threads, Pixelfed, Mastodon, and Bluesky. While these platforms are based on open protocols, they operate as single-app, vertical silos.

Our unique offering is the unified 'login' across diverse apps, granting users not just control over their algorithms but their entire app experience. They can even use multiple apps simultaneously.

The impact of a single Thai TikTok video in attracting a Thai user community to Nostr exemplifies the power of targeted storytelling. We should harness similar strategies to broaden our reach and influence. Talking about how this is a whole new way of social, not just one app.

Julian Figueroa 2y ago 💬 2

by far the worst part of the Nostr experience is trying to find known contacts.

NOSTR fans are doing themselves a massive disservice telling the public "oh it works for me, just try a different client I guess"

we either need a much better solution for identifiers on a protocol level (NIP-05 or whatever is not doing it) or we need an encouraged standard across clients, that, upon download or setup, LINKS twitter/other social media data to your Nostr NPUB and links you up through that. Get community to vote + verify profile connections to add social credibility

I'm not a dev so I don't know the solution/tradeoff but to this day I cannot find the people I want without an NPUB, and that is just not a usable format

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Discussion

goodcharity 2y ago 💬 1

Primal actually has pretty good search (this is from iOS test flight)

Julian Figueroa 2y ago 💬 4

Interesting...

did you have a mutual friend / follower that already had me followed?

Amethyst, Iris, Plebstr, Nostrudel, pretty much all the good android + web options have awful search unless you are a massive account like nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a or nostr:npub1xtscya34g58tk0z605fvr788k263gsu6cy9x0mhnm87echrgufzsevkk5s

that can't be the standard if we want to make a serious push for new users

rabble 2y ago

Primal has a caching server that calculates things like how many followers a person has and they use that to sort the search results. In nos.social we don’t, yet, have that, so we sort by mutual followers. Both do a great job at finding the right nostr:npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6 but overall popularity isn’t as good when you’re looking for your friend Matt. For new users who don’t have anybody then the overall popularity is better than mutual follows.

Coracle calculates and displays a kind of Web of Trust (WoT) score for each person which is nice.

All of which would be improved if we had a good way to say, this is the Matt who you’re following on twitter/mastodon/instagram or have the email / phone number of.

jb55 2y ago

You don’t even need a central server to have good search. The damus profile database gets filled up with not too much use.

Julian Figueroa 2y ago 💬 1

k you have me though already followed?

I had a friend join NOSTR the other day through Damus I believe. She goes by @ RilezKirk

No posts yet

See if you can find the account via search and share the NPUB, I'll tell you if it's the right one

NONE OF the 8 clients I tried could find her

rabble 2y ago

Right now most clients don’t use relays that host and share just contact and profile information. We were using purplepag.es by nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft until we added that functionality in to our own relay.nos.social. I think using those is a stop gap, but we need a better solution to finding people and contacts.

rabble 2y ago

Primal runs its own caching and search relays to make the experience better. It’s written in Julia! That’s not a language I’ve come across since I was hanging out at MIT. We need multiple compatible services like what primal is doing.