I posted last week about how fast the number of users on Nostr was growing and had a bunch of clarifications to the number I pulled from Primal, essential saying the number was too high.
Been thinking about this problem/opportunity all week.
1) I understand that it is really hard to get accurate numbers in a protocol like this - similar to how lightning growth is difficult to accurately gauge. (But are we making the problem worse by fighting over the number - that we can’t know?)
2) We all know and take for granted that the other bird app wildly overstates their users because it leads to more users. We know this from the court docs on a) Elon transaction, b) Elon constant drumbeat on “how fast it’s growing” c) our own user experience - ie - engagement per # connections (followers) is much higher here d) All of the bots and scams needed the reply to posts on x.
And here’s the thing - it is going to get far worse on X. I still pop in on X to see what’s going on (even though I rarely post) and besides all of the bots and noise, now most of what you see is AI driven clickbait to “win” more followers, drowning out some of the great voices I used to find there. Searching for real content is becoming increasingly difficult.
3) I suspect many of the early users here are early adopters in other areas of their lives. They could see the risks of the other centralized services and/or they wanted to be on the leading edge of something far better.
That being said, a core driver for the majority is that they feel comfort in “what everyone else is doing” meaning that a) if they think Nostr is stagnant (because people here are more honest/critical with real #’s) while b) X is growing (because of “marketing” - I wanted to use a different name for it but stopped short) then c) they will stay for longer on X, because they won’t investigate what you already know…….this is a far better experience, that is getting better every day. (While the competitor(s) are getting worse)
Users and Developers are much more likely to move their valuable time and content here if they think there is a growing community of engagement (there is) versus a stagnant one.
What restaurant are you attracted to? the one with a line of people or the empty one?
Our natural biases are hard to break and for all of Elon’s faults, he sure knows how to use these triggers to drive people to do what he wants them to do.
