we got plenty of high quality "social media" clients rn. we don't have enough weird clients like alphaama & grimoire. maybe more devs should microdose.
Discussion
I've had plans to build a sticky note style note where the notes are sticky notes, haven't tho.
"sticky note style note where the notes are sticky notes"
I was thinking that we’re probably just trying to imitate what we already do on traditional social media, and Lightning is just an added attribute for now.
It’s like when TV was first invented, people didn’t jump straight to reality shows or modern cinematography; they just imitated the radio. They’d just sit there and talk, or do stage dramatizations. Then eventually, someone realized, 'Wait a minute, if I shoot this small man with the tiny mustache from this specific angle, I can trigger a bunch of normal people to kill millions of jews?' And just like that, we 'invented' modern political propaganda and mass advertisement. We are just now using nostr, and lighting and all this technology training to imitate what we know, because that’s natural… whatever I have just forgotten my thought
This is just a random thought triggered by your comment... but you’re right, we definitely need to get a bit higher (like I am right now) to see the bigger picture.
yep, we've been imitating for 3 years but it's impossible to beat them at their own game. need to shift our perspective and be more creative imho.
"While imitation can be a stepping stone, true innovation often comes from embracing our unique strengths. Let’s focus on what sets us apart and explore new horizons together! 🌟 #Creativity #Innovation"
I really dig this perspective! We are too much caught up in repeating patterns or tools we already know than creating something really new.
But sometimes there is no other way, too. I think it’s the balance between these two worlds!
social media is evolving toward decentralization (like Nostr), and we expected it to just be the 'next step' after traditional social media. But we might be competing in the wrong niche entirely. We think it’s 'social media' only because that’s what our current technological-cultural framework allows us to imagine—but what if this technology becomes something we never even intended?
I’m new to Nostr, so maybe this is a repetitive thought here, but I see AI eventually following the same path as the internet throughout its different phases: military, academic, corporate, then centralized, and finally, decentralized and individualized. It’ll probably happen with these three technologies (Bitcoin, Nostr, and AI) converging into a single protocol that enables the truly digital sovereign individual.
Inspiring! 🧡
what we need is stuff that people will pay for.
these high quality social media clients all run at a loss (sans grants or VC runway)
the weird stuff also runs at a loss.
we need stuff that can enough people will pay enough money to use to cover the salaries of a dev team and maybe also return a small profit to blow on the christmas party
thry are public goods and should run at a loss
you don't want your town public square to be a business, you want it to be public
that doesn't imply it shouldn't be funded by someone (not the state)
also doesn't imply it will have no rules
moreover there can be many different public squares
maybe the square itself, but you certainly want the cafes, bars and bakeries in that square to be real businesses, earning enough from sales to pay their staff, pay the rent, and eek out a small profit.
a town square where every cafe, bar and bakery is free of charge for everyone and being subsidised to the tune of millions by certain benevolent groups sounds a little not-quite-right no?
good analogy
but I maintain that the clients are the square, the cafes are people selling stuff, either goods unrelated to Nostr or extra optional services to improve the Nostr experience
You could argue that I suppose, but then who is doing the subsidising? For a real town square it's still the townspeople paying, it's still their tax contributions. For nostr the current user base is not covering any significant part of the costs of providing what it is consuming, in any way, roundabout or direct. The whole thing is run on a Deus ex machina plot device.
If you're not paying for your use then you are the product, always and forever. At the moment most people on nostr are not paying for their use and therefore ARE the product. The only question is to whom are they selling themselves.
The answer is they are selling themselves to a relatively small group of people looking to make a certain mark on the world, to leave a certain legacy. If enough in this small group give up this quest (this can be a mercurial sphere) then they will be left with nobody to sell themselves to.
in the beginning developers were paying it with their own free time
many still do now, many run relays for free, do all sorts of things for free, because that's humanity, that's how the wonderful universe of open-source software was created in the past 20 years
but opensats and hrf and others have put money on the table too, is there an issue with that?
I agree that having everything funded by grants distorts incentives and ends up attracting some wrong people
but having real corporations running clients for profit is much worse
The problem for me is the scale of the subsidies. As far as I can tell, it's over $1m per month going in, perhaps well over. And for a user based with under 10k daily actives (going by npub.world). That's $100 per daily active per month, or thereabouts.
If it was a little bit of help here and there then I'd be fine with it, but this is something else entirely, these are Saudi Arabia ratios.
I think small businesses running clients for profit is fine and good, just as it's fine and good to have small businesses running bakeries and bars. One good thing about nostr is that it potentially enables small businesses to take part in an industry previously reserved for corporations. But like any small business they still have to function as *actual business* for the whole thing to work. That hasn't been proven out.
you make reasonable points