The website should be a bit snappier now and manage relays slightly more intelligently (which still is not very intelligent, but progress is progress).

Nosta profiles now show Pinstr boards (http://pinstr.app).

Example profile:

https://nosta.me/npub1vjl6n2llukcc6pe3am2hkwqh8twzh2ymlp7pdrdfq5tlqg08y26sd7ygzx?t=gold

Boards are only rendered from the nos.lol relay, because that's the only one Pinstr currently checks, and Nosta links out to the site for board details. No dead links this way. That will be updated when Pinstr updates relay handling (already discussed it).

Nosta now renders about 20 different kinds. People can be active in so many different ways, so hopefully everyone can have a unique and personal profile that reflects their interests.

Nosta now renders calendars and events.

Not many profiles use this feature yet. Here's an example:

https://nosta.me/17717ad4d20e2a425cda0a2195624a0a4a73c4f6975f16b1593fc87fa46f2d58

As with other content, Nosta is just showing the info. Interacting with calendar and events, scheduling your own, etc, is left up to dedicated third-party clients (micro apps). These events link out to Flockstr at the moment, but hopefully there will be more adoption of recommended handlers, and then users are linked out to the service of their choice.

Makes sense. Nosta is currently designed as a general entry point into the Nostr ecosystem, not as a replacement flow for other clients. This is something I'd like to explore further and have a to-do here: https://github.com/GBKS/nosta-me/issues/64

There were some discussions months ago around building an onboarding kit that would allow devs to easily set up customized profile creation based on their unique client needs. I don't think much happened with that though.

To your point 3, that definitely needs to improve. Users need to be much better set up to log in to other clients after profile creation. Need to prioritize that.

For point 4, do you imagine following hashtags? Or having categories of people and then pick who to follow? I looked around recently and there just didn't seem enough content out there to make that work. But things change quickly...

Appreciate the input. Which clients are you working on mostly?

Curious to hear how Nosta is not working out for you and how that could be improved.

nostr:note13mddt5zmchc5yh80zd4np7km7jknfx4nax6v6zvyzr5vz2jdklcsgrkpcd Congrats to all the semi-finalists, as well as all the other teams in the hackathon.

Profiles now show your latest 2 posts (short-form notes), and your latest article (long-form note). Lots of people don't do anything else on Nostr, so they look pretty empty without these notes. So this addition should make it easier to learn about people and what they care about.

An example:

https://nosta.me/nprofile1qqsph3c2q9yt8uckmgelu0yf7glruudvfluesqn7cuftjpwdynm2gygpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfducms3fc?t=black

Did you see the "Who is bitcoin" video?

http://herecomesbitcoin.org

If you enjoy this grumpy puppet who just wants to make money better, there's now a new Nosta theme for you. Check it out.

https://nosta.me/nprofile1qqspwh6k34mlkr9hgq8smhv2a5tn3ntew5etx980q5apv6w5mwn5xwspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdu5a03m0?t=bitcoin

Not sure what to do on Nostr? When you're logged in, your Nosta profile now shows a small box at the bottom that looks like this:

Click it, and you see something like this:

The tips are of course based on what events the site found for your profile (or more accurately, what it didn't find). You can click each tip to get redirected to nostrapp.link to a list of apps that support this specific activity.

This should help especially new users to find stuff to do. It's not perfect though. Apart from some usual testing and tweaking that is always needed on a new feature, not enough apps are listed on nostrapp.link.

If you are an app developer, please post the required NIP-89 events to make your service discoverable. And make sure the description is really clear for newcomers.

kthxbye

A small update to the follow recommendations during profile creation. They are now dynamic (via the nostr.band trending profiles API).

This is part of the nostr:npub1nstrcu63lzpjkz94djajuz2evrgu2psd66cwgc0gz0c0qazezx0q9urg5l hackathon work. Shout-out to nostr:npub1xdtducdnjerex88gkg2qk2atsdlqsyxqaag4h05jmcpyspqt30wscmntxy for the API.

While testing, it became clear that the transition from creating a profile to then viewing it is not smooth, so that will be the next thing to improve.

Profiles now show statuses (if set), so you can share what you're doing or listening to right now. It's pretty basic at the moment.

Use a service like https://nostatus.vercel.app to actually set your status. The NIP (38) is still new, do you already use this? If so, how?

You can now pull up a nice QR code for each profile.

Also, petnames are show in follow lists, and nostr: links (npub, nprofile) are properly rendered in about text.

Nosta profiles now also show classifieds you posted.

An example:

https://nosta.me/npub1jknfxfjynyc6mk3juls0vf6mas8rs747ae9m26e7jn6x56kyqt3quttcvj

Via nostr:npub1jknfxfjynyc6mk3juls0vf6mas8rs747ae9m26e7jn6x56kyqt3quttcvj and pinging nostr:npub1zuuajd7u3sx8xu92yav9jwxpr839cs0kc3q6t56vd5u9q033xmhsk6c2uc

Clicking one takes you to https://ostrich.work/ . The NIP is not merged yet, so things might change and break.

Nosta now shows external identities (NIP-39). You can see an example here, where someone has linked their Twitter account.

https://nosta.me/npub1nm9mpe60ve0zd2qjcs2j2ruhrq44sqdjvz9zat80wucgyp4t0sys0dmsfn

Have you linked GitHub, Mastodon, or Telegram accounts or know someone who did? Would love to know for testing.

You can now zap profiles on Nosta (only via browser extension right now and of course only profiles that have lightning addresses).

Nosta profiles now show live activities (via the work-in-progress NIP-53).

Example:

https://nosta.me/npub12hcytyr8fumy3axde8wgeced523gyp6v6zczqktwuqeaztfc2xzsz3rdp4

One click and you're off to view the stream on http://zap.stream.

Some more tweaks to come, like highlighting when the user is currently live. If you have more ideas to improve this, add them here: https://github.com/GBKS/nosta-me/issues/39

Nice discussion around Nostr onboarding with a shout-out to Nosta at around 1 hour 6 minutes:

nostr:note1qf6q2kk60wp2xl7x6x7ulefcu2gu5uyuz3c2zckhjtzg8htjvkxqnntw89

And here's a new issue to act on the recommendation of offering topical follow recommendations at the end of the profile setup flow: https://github.com/GBKS/nosta-me/issues/36

Would be great to find a solution for this that goes far beyond recommending the same "influencers" over and over as many other social networks do. What would you personally find helpful and interesting?

This list could then also be used to recommend relays and clients. Important to consider that this should be just an initial list for users to start with, and that clients help them personalize who they follow over time.

nostr:npub1kuy0wwf0tzzqvgfv8zpw0vaupkds3430jhapwrgfjyn7ecnhpe0qj9kdj8, nostr:npub1zuuajd7u3sx8xu92yav9jwxpr839cs0kc3q6t56vd5u9q033xmhsk6c2uc

The data overlay just got a revision.

Now it shows all the data loaded for your profile, with a convenient nav. Before it was just a long dump of parts of the profile info.

What's missing is a health check. For example, it can point out when you have outdated profile info floating around. Or when your relay list could be optimized. It should be dead simple to keep your profile in good shape. However, this data overlay is a bit more for devs than for users and the health check may live elsewhere. Still, it's nice to have this transparent view behind the scenes.

Hear, hear, announcement of a groundbreaking update to Nosta - there's now a loader on profile pages. 🥁

Sometimes it just takes a moment or two. The longer you have to wait, the more intense the emoji gets.

But what should happen if a profile cannot be found at all? Offer to search more relays? Link out to some other service (if there is one) that indexes profiles and might have something? What do you think?

Yes, that sounds right. And these touch points may vary based on what the use case is. If you set up an online shop, there's a good chance you want people to know how to view it. And apps need to track if the user has already recommended them so they don't bother them unnecessarily.