Profile: f0e5da5e...

Where's the bitchat?

Replying to Avatar jsr

VERY interesting research on how academic twitter migrated to #Bluesky.

Interesting topline takeaways for growing #nostr. No rocket science that's not been said before, but it's nice to have some data:

1- External shocks are key. Capitalize on them. >15% of transitions explained this way. Think geopolitical events, outages, Musk making a big disliked policy change etc.

2- Audiences move from incumbent platforms following influential voices that they follow. Focus on onboarding these influential voices. This is more impactful than just trying to bring the whole audience first.

This dynamic can build contagion. Find ways to more publicly highlight when influential accounts join.

And make it super easy for Nostr users to use clients to reconstruct followees & social graphs from incumbent platform. Trick will be to do this in a privacy respecting way.

(sidenote: that's way the follow packs were such a good idea. But we need much more of this)

(note: influential voices may experience a period of 'where's my audience?' So it's key to find ways to get the transitioning user from that to the reconstruction of their network. )

3- Multiple peers transitioning is key. Having local clusters develop is important (& probably helps with the dry period before an audience is rebuilt.)

Interesting nuance: transition rates to #bluesky were 25-30% in fields like arts/social sciences, but about half that in medical / physical sciences / engineering. Possible predictors include baseline political engagement & political values expressed.

This has an implication for Nostr: focus messaging on Nostr features that may align with people in incumbent platforms. There has to be desire.

Paper "Why Academics Are Leaving Twitter for Bluesky" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.24801

Would love to see the same research done on the Mastodon migration as well.

Reckon it is a better analogue for Nostr (than VC funded, corporate Bluesky) as it is a protocol, algorithm free, open source and entirely volunteer run.

Libertarian? You might need to nail that term down a bit. NZ in the 80s was a leader in the nuclear nonproliferation movt, leading to being bombed by the French and frozen out of ANZUS.

The people-lead nature of this lends itself to an anarchist, or even Social Democratic label.

https://pmcarchive.aut.ac.nz/articles/flashback-nzs-nuclear-free-law-1987-challenging-goliath-4359.html