Replies (68)
Totally agree!
I agree with you
I am very impressed with Noster but I can't use it daily Noster answers to be easier to use not only on the phone but also on other devices especially desktop I was seeing the project unique but it didn't progress much people want smoothness easy to use
Hm, i barely search on social platforms. I thought social networking is all about connecting with people you know/have heard and wanting to be `connected` if not physically then at least virtually (it's just a `promise`). ToIs, feeds - 👍
¿What is Nostr for me? - like-minded folks.
no there is jumble in desktop
ah ok, and money
debbie downer broh... you need a sovereign solar phone! And who really need FULL SEARCH on socials? Nostr's "maybe-10% search" is more than enough!
If we could agree to just use JPEG XL, clients could choose how much detail they want from an image by not downloading the whole file, thus reducing bandwidth.
What do you think about the security vs convenience aspect?
I have a little nostr project for people who live in London who want to connect to their local communities (nearhood.co.uk), there I just generate nostr keys in a deterministic way using their device passkeys (so you’ll get the same account on your phone and desktop if you sync passkeys - or use a yubikey or something). Users don’t need to know what nostr is and they won’t forget their keys.
Downside of course is that they need to trust the website company not to steal their account by submitting the key to the server.. so there is a “trust” there..
but in theory this could perhaps be seen in the web console if one wanted to investigate it?
I definitely think we need to spread nostr by other means than just advertising the protocol itself. Even better if it’s being used without people having to know what it is!
Clients can do a lot of work on imaging optimization that's for sure.
I think that key management is very hard and we can do a lot of work in this area. Ultimately platforms exist that manage keys for users but hide them away in some fashion. We have similar tools, but more work here needs to be done.
IMO Nostr works too well. I am not a content creator so I don't use it in that manner. I am a casual observer and I post occasionally. I come to Nostr to see what is happening in bitcoin and the world. Sometimes I engage, but usually I just observe and then I put it down. There is no algorithm trying to suck my time and numb my mind. I love it! I can count on both hands the times I have spent on other platforms since coming here. Since coming here I have sent zaps or sats to people in Mexico, Venezuela, and supported an art studio. I would never get that experience on X or Facebook! It's not the platform that isn't attracting more users, it's low dopamine, brain dead people that are stuck in and on other platforms. They don't even realize they are stuck.
Thank you for your comment 🫂🫂
Nostr is one of those double edged swords where it's great that we don't have rage algos to keep most people coming back but this also means that we have no draw to retain most users too.
Welcome on #nostr sir.. teue words, you get it.
Amethyst is awful for the last 2 of those tbh
Please just steal whatever wisp is doing with tag and search
@Vitor Pamplona lol.
All good things take time. Your efforts have helped build a beautiful things here
@Derek Ross . I appreciate it.
Agreed!
It is going to come down to timing. Much like "when the student is ready the teacher appears". This is a powerful tool, a new tool. I don't think any of us really know what it will become. But at the end of the day we all know this tool is needed. As a result of that, when the masses are ready the tool will be available. Like any good entrepreneur we are ahead of the need. We in the meantime need to lower our time preference and stay community minded.
I’ve been trying to onboard human rights organizations that do things like track war crimes and monitor genocides so that they have a permanent record of all their posts in a way that cannot be censored. I’m trying to think of similar groups like that who would have a real need for Nostr. All the best!
The battery problem is real, and a tough nut to crack since most work happens client side.
🤙
We could add app-specific servers, which I think is a decent compromise and an obvious optimization, though would need funding.
Well said! Certainly rhymes true to my experience with Nostr. Took about 10 months to click, but it’s the best.
But what prevents you from opening the "following" tab on X? Or even a custom curated high-value list? I just genuinely want to understand the sentiment.
Working on these things as we speak.
I couldn't tell you. I rarely go on X anymore. When I last went on X, I felt disgusted.
This meme is now 3.5 years old and we haven't fixed it.
Absolutely. Amethyst wrecks my battery and data.
All of them were parts of Oslo conversations. A lot of it relies on caching and architectural design changes.
Don’t need to go to Norway to know what better UX means.
You can go to Norway though to learn about how caching servers that control everything in your app are required just for a search bar 😂
No, you have to go to convince people of the things you've been saying for three years. Don't be butthurt.
Nope. Not what I'm talking about. Sorry you missed this epic conversation.
That VC money won't spend itself.
My focus is on local community adoption. I don’t need to be on the world stage to feel like I’m making a difference.
Hopefully you can do that. Good luck.
💯🥲 Better video handling/compression would go a long way toward reducing data usage.
We are doing one way better. Web of Trust search that is different for each user and truly accounts for the differences between users instead of just returning the same famous accounts over and over again
how about building a hair transplant clinic in your house derek PV #asknostr
its primal. use a real client.
The way Nostr is created, there is no way to save the bandwidth.
In other words my closed system is better than your closed system. Ok.
🫵🥹
🥱
Nah, the point of what we are making is that you choose the system you want, like choosing a relay you want.
Tags suck balls. Can I get a recommender algorithm? Or some kind of custom feed? I want my searches to give me notifications.
Same for me as well most of the time
Im sure this isnt a novel idea, and only started working on my own client just this week, but i have implented user configurable relay polling rates. Im opting to let the user choose the speed of the client with the explicit warning that the hotter you run it, the more power and bandwidth you will consume.
I should probably also mention that this client isnt currently intended to be an onboarding client for new users, but a highly configurable client for me.
Pretty much my exact use case(s) as well
They don’t care about what makes Nostr special. I can’t blame them, sometimes I wish I could be as blind as they are.
They need escapism, they need news, they need to keep in touch with their special interests and friends. That is all they need.
Retention is the metric that tracks alignment between what they seek and what they found. They passed the technical hurdles of setting up, finding a client, a relay, posting notes…
Content is king, always has always will be. Nostr lacks escapism, lacks news, lacks diversity of special interests.
Content creators should be hunted, kidnapped and put to work. Who’s in?
Sign-in, Search, Tag — agreed, these are the trifecta. But I'd add a fourth that's often overlooked: language localization. Nostr's onboarding problem isn't just technical, it's linguistic. The entire UX stack assumes English fluency. For the next billion users — many in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa — that's the real bounce point. Fix search and tag all you want, but if my interface is in a language I barely navigate, I'm gone in 10 seconds. The client that cracks i18n-first onboarding wins the next wave.
Oh yeah, and cache the shit out of everything
Do you have an android device?
for onboarding i suggest to keep the secret key not even mentioned until the user is really engaged. and maybe even fake screens for email and password but email and password just unlocks the secret key saved in the device. after user is engaged now remind her to back up the secret key because email and password is nothing, secret key is everything. now she is more confused but engaged and confused 😉 just an idea!
for battery and bandwidth do we have to skip the outbox model?
for discovery i suggest AI runners:
nevent1qqsd4u59enly6uu5e0p3gwdpct8ur7u4awag8kgler0ku5wmp3a83mqsvgdvw
no, outbox can be done on self-hosted relays.. no need to skip for savings. it's what makes nostr work.
Nostr needs less childporn videos.
New users come on here and look up the hashtags and see videos of children being sexually abused.
That's why nostr has such a problem retaining users.
None of the clients have any moderation for hashtags
"i don't understand why nostr has such poor user retention"
-people who have never looked up a hashtag on nostr
"nostr needs better onboarding guys, the user retention being so poor has absolutely nothing to do with every hashtag being fun of spam, scams and csam"
Maybe address the problem for what it actually is?
@Derek Ross if you continue ignoring me I will log in with ditto and i guarantee I'll be able to find all the same accounts sharing the same illegal media.
No, user retention isn't about onboarding.
People join nostr, they look up some hashtag they are interested in, they get traumatised and leave.
Noatr works well if you're some pervert with illegal media you want to host, or if you wanna spam hashtags with telegram links
**signin:** I usually lead them to: Amber is top on android (use f-droid appstore). On PC I had Keys.Band working (a extension for the browser) and right now the Plebeian Signer both excellent, stay away from nos2x (from the designer of nostr): it works too, but it is klonky. On IOS use nostash. I cannot recommend Aegis.
**tagging:** Whatever Nostr Client I used, It's almost always klonky. One might expect, that it can handle whether you add a hashtag or not in front, when the field is named hashtags, and also multiple tags. I still have a tab in ditto.pub (which I consider a better client than most I've seen now) which I cannot delete (with two hashtags).
**Backtracing original message.** Before the ability to search through the history - I'd like Apps to be able to always show the original message, that led to a reply. Sometimes I just read a message and think, odd way to contribute in this endless stream of random messages.
**work as a social platform:** I am new to this 'twitter' style (is it communication or is it just sending into the ether) and I think to myself, why do ppl spend time on it, nothing is ever built on it, discourse is rare, a back and forth of arguments, It's like you are shouting in the stadium. As long as we nostr does not more reddit style, interest based and giving hosts streamlined ability to mute people and pass those mutelists on to its content subscribers, Nostr stays what it is - a kakophony, an endless logorrhoe. If i cannot have a decent conversation, what's the point logging into a something that calls itself social? Why should I spend my time muting all those picture posting ppl, why should I spend my time finding out whether this song is another A.I. blurb. My time is precious, I value myself - so for now nostr consists of one good site for me:
Substr
Substr is a community-first social app on Nostr where topics become spaces. Explore communities, discover fresh posts, and shape a home feed around...
There also needs to be inventory depth for the key demographics you're targeting. I.e. if I care about cooking I have to not get bored.
The good news on the tagging front is gpt-4o-mini is actually really cheap and can probably do the job. Maybe the community can even crowdsource a bot that puts out good tags.
Yes, these three things I've focused on in Nostria. Sign-in is smooth and easy, Search works OK, but I had a plan to build a custom search relay that extend the protocol with backwards compatibility, though I don't have money to run infrastructure for it yet.
Tags is important, supports both search and filter, combined with interests sets users get a great specialized feed that is topic-focused.
Amethyst afaik supports a whole range of languages, not good enough?
@Nostria which I develop supports some extra languages, though everything is not translated yet. Is there anything specifically you're looking for other than translated labels and texts? Auto-pick language based upon device/browser language is important I believe.
There is, Amethyst will connect to all the relays specified, some user have 20-30-40 relays, that means Amethyst connects to all of them and retrieves each event the user posts that amount of times.
Nostria will by default connect to 3-4, is user-configured, and it optimized selection if a user is using a common relay.
Setting it to 1, would save even more bandwidth.
Plenty of ways to optimize bandwidth usage, though it will never be as good as centralized services.
