New Untype Update

As I write this, I found it a bit annoying dealing with one of the latest features, so I'll need to make some changes right after I'm done. Nonetheless, here are some exciting developments in the Untype article composer:

1. Added inline AI helper! Now you can highlight text and perform all sorts of things like fix grammar, re-write in different styles, and all sorts of other things. This is a bit annoying at the moment because it takes over the other editing functions and I need to fix the UX.

2. Added pushing articles to DMs! This option, when enabled, will send the article to all the subscribers via a NIP-44 DM. (No client has implemented the subscription method yet so technically it won’t work, until one does. I may add this to nrss.app) Also, I have not tested this so it could be broken… will test eventually!

3. Added word counts

4. Added ability to export as markdown, export as PDF, print.

The biggest flaw I have already discovered is how "I" implemented the highlight functionality. Right now when you highlight some text it automatically pops up the AI helper menu and this makes for an annoying time trying to make any changes to text. I wanted to change this to show a floating clickable icon instead, but for some reason the bot is having a difficult time updating the code to this desired UX.

Speaking of difficult times, it's probably a good idea to reflect a bit upon my vibe coding journey.

Vibe Coding Nostr Projects

First, I think it's important to add some context around my recent batch of nostr vibe projects. I am working on them mostly at night and occasionally on weekends in between park runs with kids, grocery shopping and just bumming around the house. People who see buggy code or less than desired UX should understand that I am not spending days coding this stuff. Some apps are literally as simple as typing one prompt!

That said, its pretty clear by now that one prompt cannot produce a highly polished product. This is why I decided to limit my number of project to a handful that I really wish existed, and slowly update them over time - fixing bugs, adding new features in hopes of making them the best tools - not only on nostr but the internet in general. As you can imagine this is not a small task, especially for sporadic vibe coding.

Fighting the bot

One of my biggest challenges so far besides having very limited time is getting the bot to do what I want it to do. I guess if you've done any vibe coding at all you're probably familiar with what I'm trying to say. You prompt one thing and get a hallucinated response, or worse, a complete mess out the other end that undoes most of the progress you've made. Once the initial thing is created, which barely took any time, now you're faced with making it work a certain way. This is where the challenges arise.

Here's a brief list of issues I've faced when vibe-coding with various tools:

1. Runaway expenses - tools like Cline tend to do a better job directly in VSCode, but they can also add up dramatically. Before leaning into v0 (which is where I do most of my vibe coding now), I would often melt through $10 credit purchases faster than I could get a decent feature out. It was not uncommon for me to spend $20-30 on a weekend just trying to debug a handful of issues. Naturally, I did not wish to pay these fees so I searched for alternatives.

2. File duplication - occasionally, seemingly out of nowhere, the bot will duplicate files by creating an entire new copy and attached "-fixed" to the file name. Clearly, I'm not asking for duplicate files, I just want it to fix the existing file, but it does happen and it's super annoying. Then you are left telling it which version to keep and which one to delete, and sometimes you have to be very precise or it'll delete the wrong thing and you have to roll back to a previous working version.

3. Code duplication - similar to file duplication, occasionally the bot will duplicate code and do things in the most unintuitive way imaginable. This often results in loops and crashes that can take many refreshes just to revert back to a working state, and many more prompts to avoid the duplication entirely - something a seasoned dev never has to deal with (or so I imagine).

4. Misinterpreting your request - occasionally the bot will do something you didn't ask for because it took your request quite literally. This tends to happen when I give it very specific prompts that are targeted at fixing one very specific thing. I've noticed the bots tend to do better with vague asks - hence a pretty good result on the initial prompt.

5. Doing things inefficiently, without considering smarter approaches - this one is the most painful of vibe coding issues. As a person who may not be familiar with some of the smarter ways of handling development, you rely on the bot to do the right thing. But, when the bot does something horribly inefficiently and you are non-the-wiser, it can be tough to diagnose the issue. I often fight myself asking the bot "is this really the best way to handle things? Can't we ... / shouldn't we .../ isn't this supposed to..." etc. I guess one of the nice side effects of this annoyance is being able to prompt better. I learn that I should ask the bot to reflect on its own code more often and seek ways to do things more simply.

A combination of the above, or total chaos - this is a category where all hell breaks loose and you're trying to put out one fire after another. Fix one bug, only to see 10 more pop up. Fix those, to see 10 more and so on. I guess this may sound like typical development, but the bot amplifies issues by acting totally irrationally. This is typically when I will revert to a previous save point and just undo everything, often losing a lot of progress.

Lessons Learned

If I had to give my earlier self some tips on how to be a smarter vibe coder, here's how I'd summarize them:

1. Fork often - in v0 I now fork for any new major feature I'd like to add (such as the AI assistant).

2. Use targeting tools - in v0 you can select elements and describe how you wish to edit them.

3. Refactor often - keeping the code more manageable speeds up the process. Since the bot will go through the entire file, even if it only makes one small change, it's best to keep the files small and refactoring achieves that.

I guess the biggest lesson someone might point out is just to stop vibe coding. It may be easier to learn proper development and do things right. For me it has been a spare time hobby (one that I will admit is taking more of my extra time than I'd like). I don't really have the time to learn proper development. I feel like I've learned a lot just bossing the bot around and have learned a bunch of things in the process. That's not to say that I never will, but for the moment being my heart is still mostly in design. I haven't shared much of anything I have designed recently - mostly so I can remain speaking more freely without it rubbing off on my work.

I'll go ahead and try to publish this to see if it actually works 😂. Here goes nothing... (oh, I guess I could use the latest feature to export as markdown so I don't lose any progress! Yay!

Testing apps, a tireless quest,
Click and swipe, then poke the rest.
Crashing bugs and broken flows,
Hidden deep where logic goes.

Specs in hand, we watch and trace,
Each edge case in its hiding place.
From flaky taps to loading spins,
The war on regressions slowly wins.

Push the build, review the log,
One more fix, then clear the fog.
For in each test, truth will unfold—
A quiet tale of stable code.

This has been a test. Thanks for tuning in.

• one
• two
• three

Listen a chill

Tranquility

And leisure

Recently I’ve been thinking about ways we could highlight nostr’s unique properties while at the same time attracting creators to the platform.

There’s been a lot of discussion about what might spark nostr’s next wave of growth. I pointed out that people come for either other people, or for content. But, I also failed to realize that people also seek ways to express themselves via new tools that enable easy or unique ways of expressing yourself.

One thing we can say with certainty is that people are not coming to nostr for other people. While generally following influencers is a proven growth strategy - after all, many of us followed Jack, we still have a catch 22 problem of lacking audience and incentives for those creators to come here. Even if we managed to convince some large influencers to try the platform, it is not likely that they would stay. They’d need to be really passionate about nostr’s principles and vision to buckle in for the long term.

Problem: creators and influencers won’t come to nostr unless they can grow their audience, and nostr lacks the audience. We’ve seen this play out with Matt Taibi. He joined nostr but was reluctant to stay because there’s little incentive to share with a small audience when Twitter/X can bring in many more eyeballs.

Possible Solution: Instead of brining creators to the platform, enable some of the current passionate user base to become decent creators themselves. We don’t need influencers with giant audiences, we just need good content that keeps people around. If we apply the 80/20 rule (Pareto’s principle), it turns out we don’t need that many creators to have a great flow of content. Enabling just a handful of people to create great content might just do the trick.

How to get there: focus on creating tools that enable expression of creativity. One such tool is Pinstr, but its value is largely untapped. On its own, pinstr is nothing interesting, it’s practically a clone of Pinterest. But, given the interoperable nature of nostr, it would be interesting to see pinned boards / content surfaced within kind 1 clients. People could then explore the board or that user’s other boards further by making their way to Pinstr.

How do we encourage more people to curate interesting pins? How about a pin extension that makes it easy to do so?

How do we enable people remixing other pins? Allow them to re-pin the content to their own boards. These are all mechanics that made Pinterest interesting, but lack in pinstr (as far as I’m aware).

Other ways that we might encourage content creation:

1. Multi-account support. Can we make it SUPER easy to switch between identities when posting some curated content? Yes we can. (Select a different identity when posting)

2. Surfacing “Other stuff” with a call to action to do that thing. For example, if someone shares a list, a kind 1 client should be able to render that list in a way that’s easy to browse, share and encourages to create your own list. If someone shares a music playlist (hopefully via native nostr kind), a person should be able to see the playlist and be encouraged to create their own. Watch stream? > prompt to start your own

3. Gif / meme discovery with a call to action to create your own. (Plebhy, Memester)

4. Styling tools (more complex) to style media, add soundtracks etc (perhaps via integration with Wavlake or other nost-native music events).

5. Content scheduling - help existing users become power users. Instead of posting everything at once, allow users to schedule it out for even distribution. Tools like Shipyard enable this already, but having this ability in-client might make it more accessible and useful.

6. Content pinning extensions - bring the outside world to Nostr. How can people 1-click pin content to nostr without having to switch tabs constantly?

7. App discovery - I think this is already in the works, but being able to surface other apps within kind 1 clients would be super interesting.

8. Enable surfacing of highlighted content and paid content - with highlights, nudge people to read more of the content if it comes from within one of the nostr clients. With paid content, indicate that it is premium content and encourage creation of premium content “Become a creator” or “Join creator studio”.

9. Encourage people to write long-form opinion content. When reading a long form article, perhaps have a call to action to start your own nostr publication. “Publish on Nostr and earn”

10. Surface and encourage audio creation - we don’t have a nostr podcast client yet, but if there was one, kind 1 clients could surface that content automatically and encourage people to start their own podcasts, audio diaries, audio chats (nostr nests) or audio stories. Kind 1 clients could surface audio clips with waveforms and subtitles built in, or create a framework by which other developers could create this type of interaction with your kind 1 client. Can users create their own clip playlists from audio content fetched from the nostr podcast app? Why not?

The common objection to all of this might be that “you can already do all of this just by copying links”. Yes, and no. Copying links does share content - albeit in a boring preview way. It does not enable interactivity, nor prompt people to create that type of content. I think this is where nostr could shine.

Thought 2: Interoperability

One of the greatest strengths of nostr is the ability to display events across clients. I think of kind 1 clients as the glue that holds together the “other stuff”. The other stuff apps can be used to create the stuff, and kind 1 can enable discovery of said stuff, while encouraging to visit those tools to create their own.

Traditional social media platforms are encourage to put up walls and discourage leaking of users to other places. The more time a user spends on a website or app, the better for that company. But, with nostr, there’s a virtuous positive loop that does not punish leaking of attention, but instead, rewards it. The more content people create, the more interesting your kind 1 discovery client becomes.

How to get there: It’s going to take a lot of work to integrate the other stuff, but it’s already under way. As a client developer, partner up with other stuff clients to figure out how to best support them. Open up nostrapps.com to see what exists, and how your client can accommodate the surfacing of that stuff with minimal effort (since our resources are so scarce). Tap into product designers to help conceptualize and visualize interactions and growth loops. #nostrdesign is ready to help with this.

Type of content kind 1 clients could surface and create loops for:

1. Playlists
2. Pin boards (pinstr)
3. Audio chats (nost nests, corny chat)
4. Highlights (highlighter)
5. Payments
6. Fundraisers (Heya, Geyser)
7. Communities
8. Events (Flockstr)
9. Streams (zapstream)
10. Long form content
11. Job posts / boards
12. Recipes (zap cooking)
13. Lists
14. Torrents (Stan)
15. News feeds
16. Calling functionality
17. DMVs
18. Podcast clips, playlists
19. Audio clips
20. Marketplace items (Shopstr, Creatstr, Plebeian Market)
21. Paid content (highlighter)

Recap

1. Build tools to aid content creation
2. Surface “other stuff” in kind 1 clients
3. Prompt people to create their own stuff

I’m probably missing a ton, or not thinking of unique experiences that are just under the nose. What am I missing? What other cool interactions could be enabled by nostr’s interoperabilit

The other reason for running this review is to hopefully improve the overall nostr retention rate across clients. As it stands, according to nostr.band, retention of trusted users 30 days after signups trends to 0 for recent cohorts. This seems to be supported by the lack of growth in daily active users, with the average remaining in the 10,000-12,000 range for “trusted” pub keys.

The following report consists of several criteria which I felt were essential to basic first-time social media experience:

1. Ease of signup
2. Ease of logging in
3. Ability to understand what you are looking at (sufficient explanations)
4. Seeing a good initial feed
5. Ability to follow something of interest
6. Minimizing technical /dev lingo
7. A fast scrolling experience
8. Ability to easily upload media
9. A good search experience overall
10. Good keyword searching
11. Hashtag searching
12. Ability to follow hashtags
13. Easily accessing followed hashtags
14. Good experience reacting to notes

In total there are 140 points, 10 for each category. This is by far not the most comprehensive score card, but I felt it did a decent job covering most things you’d want to do in a social client.

Some notes of caution:

1. This report and score card are meant to be a general quick glance at where your client may stand in overall UX. It does not differentiate between the intended target audiences.
2. The criteria that I deem important may not be important to you as the founder / developer, so take it for what it’s worth. Adding your desired criteria may increase your score significantly. For example, I did not evaluate the zap experience, or thoroughly test nested replies.
3. This report is not a substitute for proper user testing. It’s just one person’s observations. While we have done some user testing in the past, I highly recommend doing your own. You can do so by approaching and interviewing new users (if you are able to distinguish if they came from your client), or via other user testing software. Talk to me (@karnage) if you need some help getting set up.
4. People’s reported experience regarding usability may vary greatly depending on their familiarity with cryptographic concepts, their background, and technical experience. What I may deem as a great score of 10, may not be a 10 for others. I have seen user tests where “obvious” things were not obvious to testers.
5. This report only looks at the English language version of the client. The actual user experience for someone on a different language version of the app could be totally different from what is graded here. It’s worth considering geographies of where users are coming from and how they experience your client.
6. I did not test re-activation of new users. Meaning, once they close the app, I did not test if they are pulled back by some notification or other means. This is a crucial aspect of any new app usage that should be considered carefully.

Tested Clients: Damus, Amethyst, Primal iOS, Snort (web), Iris (sort of), Coracle, Nostur.

I also tested Instagram and X/Twitter for comparison.

Results, highest points to lowest:
Primal iOS: 136
Twitter: 125
Instagram: 109
Nostur: 108
Coracle: 99
Amethyst: 93
Snort: 90
Damus: 87
Iris: N/A
Facebook: could not test.

My main takeaway was that among all apps (including Twitter and Instagram), the traditional apps win simply by having much better content selection. You get to see a variety of interesting things that Nostr simply can’t match. Going forward, this is an area I would probably recommend focusing on - how to engage people to post more interesting content, onboard creators etc… Nostr is lacking in content and I believe this could be the primary reason people are not sticking around after trying it.

Other Nostr Notes:

There seemed to be little of interesting topics to follow or stick around for. The experience of joining nostr doesn't feel special or different in any way opposed to X for example. Twitter has interesting accounts, TikTok has interesting videos, what does Nostr have? The lack of "popular" conent due to the generally low number of users is probably to blame. In a way we suffer from the chicken / egg problem where new users are needed to generate more content, and more content is needed to retain new users. Going forward, I think clients should think about ways to encourage users to share content (whether that be their own, or posted from other platforms). Nostr also does not seem to have any external growth loops. For example, there is no way to invite people to the platform by email with a single click (by accessing the address book). Even if a friend does manage to join and you can find them, they are in no way notified when tagged (as far as I know). People have to have a habit of opening the app to know if something is happening. The habit formation of using a new app is important in the early usage phase and nostr seems to have a weak spot here.

You can find all of the detailed scoring, notes for each client and other thoughts in this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14w8-aQ1sHfGBSuNpqvOA9i7PHNSfhn6lUOV6H293caw/edit?usp=sharing

First, none of this would be possible without support from OpenSats and for that I am very grateful! Being able to do work on Nostr is one of the best thing I could hope for! Thank you!

TLDR;

1. Launched nostrdesign.org and updated it with content, reference designs.
2. Reviewed a bunch of client UI/UX and provided suggestions
3. Worked on designs - snort, zap stream, and redesigned some clients, while providing visual feedback where I could.
4. “Started” #nostrdesign hashtag to encourage design discussions, questions, comments, and feedback from anyone wishing to participate.

Hashtag

Since creating the #nostrdesign hashtag, we’ve seen a good amount of participation from the community. I am very pleased to see that people are using it to share design progress, ask for feedback, jumpstart ideas and propose improvements to existing clients.

The best part is that people who are not designers are able to chime in (and do so frequently) under discussions originated by designers / developers!

This is exactly what I was hoping to see happen. Instead of establishing yet an other closed group, I wanted the general user base to engage with nostr developers, express their thoughts and ideas. After all, designers don’t have all the answers, all the time.

People are asking great, and very important questions that could impact a large number of people coming into the space.

Designers are providing useful feedback to improve popular clients. I hope to see more designers get involved and chime in with their ideas!

Going forward, I would like to continue using the hashtag to encourage more participation.

Ask:

Developers - don’t hesitate to ask for feedback often. Just add #nostrdesign to your notes.

Designers - your UX ideas and design expertise are needed to make the best experiences possible. Please drop in and chime in with your feedback when possible.

Everyone - you all use the apps and your feedback is priceless! Complain as much as necessary, this is how we learn. Just tag #nostrdesign so we can come up with better solutions to existing issues.

Client Reviews & Feedback

The following is a list of clients I have provided feedback for, designed parts of, or put forth major design proposals during the first quarter (I am currently uploading recordings to a YouTube channel to make them accessible to everyone):

1. Lume - onboarding review and some minor design mockups. Reya (Lume developer) said he implemented the recommendations, but I need to review again (on my to-do list). Video recording.
2. Damus - home page design idea
3. Stargazr - full client review, recommendations and the start of a re-designed client.
4. Pinstr - provided actionable feedback for @Sepehr.
5. Listr - @JeffG asked for feedback several times and I reviewed the client before and after feedback, providing further recommendations. (Round 1, Round 2 feedback)
6. Slidestr - provided feedback and designed what I would consider to be the ideal experience.
7. Swarmstr - @pitunited asked for feedback and I reviewed the entire client.
8. Current (iOS) - egge asked for feedback and I created an issue in their GitHub, along with a video.
9. 0xChat - water asked for feedback. I reviewed the client on video and made recommendations.
10. Nostree - provided feedback and design ideas
11. Primal - some design ideas which may or may not make it into production, we’ll see!
12. noStrudel - minor feedback and designing some ideas for @hzrd149
13. Habla (work in progress). I have provided some styling and UX feedback and I’m currently working on designing the changes.
14. Spring - Artur approached me about the idea behind Spring and needed some help shaping his vision. I designed the product experience (Figma file) and he implemented it on Android, perhaps with his own ideas mixed in.
15. Yana - Yana asked for a full review and I provided a recording of my initial experience and recommendations.
16. Nosta - Christoph asked me to review the client, and I did so in full, providing my experience, ideas and recommendations. Christoph is now implementing some of the ideas / recommendations!
17. Vendata - Pablo asked me to look at the current state of the (proposed?) redesign and I chimed in with my thoughts.
18. NostrNet.work - I really liked the project and pitched an unsolicited design idea.
19. PlebeianMarket - @Chiefmonkey asked for feedback on PM. I provided a recording of my thoughts.
20. Snort - snort has seen many improvements in features. Kieran and I are working closely to shape the client. I redesigned Snort for version 2 that he managed to ship not long ago. This was a major project. I also updated Snort’s CSS, both dark and light mode and improved some of the UX directly through a pull request.
21. Zap.stream - I am also working with Kieran on a continuous basis to improve zap.stream. Due to Snort V2 being in the works at that time, we didn’t have as much time to work on zap.stream but we managed to add a new onboarding flow which I designed. Roland did a lot of the work on development side. I am currently engaging Kieran to see what needs to be done next.

Design Help

The following is a list of clients I was involved with, ranging from major contributions to minor enhancement proposals:

• Snort (major)
• zap.stream (major)
• Damus (minor)
• Spring (major)
• NostrNet.work (somewhere in between)
• Primal (minor)
• Habla (major initially, now minor)
• Nostree (none initially, major design mockups currently)
• Pinstr (design ideas mockups)
• Slidstr (design ideas mockups)
• Stargazr (none initially, major design mockups currently)

Nostr Design Guide

In Q1 https://nostrdesign.org/ was born! There were some technical challenges (for me personally), but thanks to help from Gigi and Daniele, the resource is live.

I’ve made substantial progress in content, including reference designs. The bulk of the time on the guide is in reference designs.

The guide still needs additional examples, and some of the content is missing (like Accessibility). This is a work in progress.

The reference components are ongoing endeavor. I’d like to cover all the basic use cases, desktop and mobile and provide guidance on any new questions that come up (such as mute words).

Since the launch of the guide I have seen a lot of positive feedback with people frequently referencing the website (even on live streams). I am humbled by this and hope to make the resource even more useful.

Next Quarter Plan

In the following quarter, I plan on allocating my time as follows:

• Rounding out the nostr design guide with examples.
• Reference components for nostr design guide - especially the crucial parts that are asked about the most.
• Following up on the feedback I have provided for various clients and devs to see if they are acting on it, why not if not, and if there’s anything I can do to help them make progress.
• Providing Quality Assurance reviews on the work that was implemented.
• Improving existing clients with better UX ideas.
• Engaging with the nostr community to find better ways of doing things, learning about what’s working and what’s not working.
• Exploring UI / UX improvements on new ideas put forward by developers and the general nostr community.
• Helping clients think about growth and monetization strategies. I have already outlined some ideas for Snort (informal ideas) and Zap.stream

Got feedback?

Clients, designs, business ideas, personal, any feedback you have, I am all ears! You can leave comments right on this note, DM me, or email karnage@opensats.org. I take note of all the feedback and consider individually, so you’ll always be heard. Thank you!

Offer curated feeds to users in the UI or part of onboarding:

nostr:note19yvypkcsprn53939rzkf2yqku6xullcyhm4v60fn0sghah7mqe6syvtxuw

Label relays

nostr:note1eu9e739yms2msahuuclxpf95mcc786cjrtp9m6y73eg8h7xjxx5q60gx85

Better default (image / video) feeds for logged out users

nostr:note1hr3es5h5m0keuavzumsls8qcw86cd9s36lpc9ukxd47z7zq4wgesk9zvas

Self-paced profile completion and badge earning to discover nostr

[Figma File]https://www.figma.com/file/ThUW7QxTYT0BUxcH48uelG/Luna?type=design&node-id=0%3A1&t=emttAVmvjztFk9QO-1()
nostr:note12vtxkka5zvgudv534dlsuzuld84tdyd474jgct6j5e9uv6ch0vcs7f9060
nostr:note1e24gz3spmszly7cpa9ds9ju7ccyctxdvv5jj3usl6gk8ueckdkmsgkq4fr
nostr:note19rdyf9jpqg04rwqmkqnjcncjfrrqs9e5dp8evzqztpusdzxa8ejqhxkuyf

Introduction post prompt in onboarding

nostr:note13xrv039h8nexf4jaa2r4g8js28mr7evq7aakftr5q67e97e08pfqcvf5g0
Current (the client) already does an #introductions post in onboarding, and that's a great idea!

Allow nostr long form users to build email lists

nostr:note1ewrk0at4fexr7n3wdauah4kw0c8nategc403gqwvxccntky60rcqlxynaz

Promote nostr content outside on other platforms

nostr:note1um8s8w05rutzg245m058gl3kvzwqwepudkx9xj3fepeuf52r49cs9ruv3f

A tool to help people migrate their content to nostr (nicely designed, user friendly):

nostr:note1q546zcuxgwjqp6vpgh8v3hk0dw2vp0ml6phtxh223kkg8h8fudjq5qe5f2

Signup

nostr:note17fe7vmvuk6jpw7h55f3g0s5m2ex4apuhu92mzmn3n9x6p98zkyqscv9hd0

Feedback Mega Note

nostr:note1jsj0c4xvt26p0ap9mtkygfuej776ad0960e5r3n33m5hz7lm7rwsdzpe0g

Smart bootstrapped founders know that one of the best ways to garner attention is by building in public.

By posting on Nostr, you are in essence building in public. This has many benefits:

1. Free marketing for your project
2. Recruit other designers. If they see that there are others, they are more likely to join your cause.
3. Attract talent (people who are interested in the project will likely want to work on it). Find development help.
4. Attract funding (even sats from plebs, bounties on your behalf, etc…)
5. Help nostr grow. By getting outside the siloed communication channels, you help add activity to Nostr. When people see that it’s busy, they are more likely to participate. Nobody wants to use a dead social network (even though nostr is so much more than a social network).

How to organize on Nostr without channels or groups

A common objective is “but there is not a good client for group chat”.

Nostr IS the group chat. It's just a much larger group. All you need is a way of organizing conversations.

Enter hashtags.

Hashtags allow people to track conversations so you can see if someone is discussing #nostrdesign for example.

“But, I forget to use hashtags!”

Ok, make a SUPER simple client that automatically inserts the hashtag into the message. Hardcode if if you need to for the time being.

Clients like Snort already let you follow hashtags so it’s a matter of bookmarking it and just checking it whenever you’re online.

Don’t want a bloated client? No problem. Clone Snort, remove everything but the posting and reading functionality. Use the client only for posting and for reading that specific hashtag. Congrats, you just created your own public channel! The best part? Everyone can see it without signing up for any siloed platforms.

Act

Do it now. Close the group and let everyone know you’re using nostr from now on. No excuses, no waiting. Just do it.
It may be hard and painful at first, but you'll get used to it. Who knows, it may be enough motivation to build great clients that do one thing very well.
Let’s go!

Well, today I want to talk about making social media healthier, if not for ourselves, but for our kids.

We have a once in a lifetime opportunity with Nostr to reshape social media clients from scratch. Let us not blindly copy existing social media behavior. After all, the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Let’s not be stupid and make social media just as, if not more addicting than before.

The big TLDR; is that social media addictive mechanisms harm self image in kids. At the time where they should be building confidence, the mechanics of social media make them feel insecure. I can only imagine the downstream effects into adulthood, but on society level it can’t be good.

Some organizations even exist to supposedly move this subject forward, but after reviewing their content, I see nothing substantial put forward. One such organization “Center for Human Technology” seems to say the right things but puts no effort into offering any actual solutions.

Strategies to make social media healthier

Let’s brainstorm some actual things we can do to limit social media addictiveness, reduce social influence and manipulation.

Boost self-esteem

Vanity metrics can play a positive role but the wrong kind of metric is more harmful than not. Follower count immediately comes to mind. You see people obsessing with their follower count, and even those not realizing they are obsessed are constantly comparing themselves to one another. You are probably one of those people. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and close down your account right now, and create a fresh one to start over. I’ll wait.

Still here? I thought so. Short of constantly deleting our accounts, we can do something else - not showing a follower metric at all.

Remove followers metrics

As drastic as this sounds, removing followers is a huge step forward to better mental health. We don’t need to see how many people follow us. As long as you can see who you follow, it shouldn’t matter who is following you.

This goes beyond Twitter-like apps. Subscriber counts on YouTube channels, on email lists, none of these things need to exist. The number of people you send something to should be irrelevant. Think about it - how does it impact the content of your message whether you have 100 followers or 10,000? It doesn’t.

Avoid algorithms at all costs

Algos are excellent at hijacking attention. They know what you like and keep feeding off you to keep you hooked. Let’s end this stupidity once and for all and say no to algorithms.

I also came to a realization that “algorithmic choice” is an illusion. The “best” algorithm will by definition be the winner and the most popular. Clients will implement the thing that people crave most until “better” algorithms get more users hooked on a client. Who doesn’t want that for their platform? Everyone. Attention is money. Attention is harm.

If we want to create a better future for our children, we’ll say no to algorithms. This means we have to accept that people will gravitate towards “cheaters” who do include “useful” algorithms in their clients. It also means we have to be willing to forgo larger profits.

Perhaps well-thought out policy can be introduced in the future that limits the harm of algorithms, but in the meantime we can take matters into our own hands and simply say no.

Improve happiness levels

Avoid news feeds

Thanks to nostr we can create clients that only handle news feeds, so we don’t really need to include them in social clients.

News keeps people down because negative news gets most clicks. We can avoid this whole issue just by not including news feeds in social applications. Less clickbaity headlines, less rage, more productive conversations.

If you still crave news, go ahead and use that nostr client designed specifically for news consumption.

Of course, we can’t stop people from sharing the news, but we can avoid algos that surface it, and avoid creating feeds specifically designed for news consumption.

News also consumed a lot of time and spreads misinformation. You get scenarios where neither of the arguers read the article in full and are arguing about something that’s not even reported. It’s painful to watch.

Then you have situations where the news is actually a narrative spun by some organization or individual who wants to influence social behavior. They may report correct information or completely misrepresent facts.

News is “bad news”. Just don’t build it into social clients intentionally.

Create happiness clients

One thing I have not seen any social media do is ask whether a piece of content makes you feel positive, neutral or negative.

In theory, we should be able to create clients that prioritize positive content. I know I said avoid algorithms at all costs, but if you wanted to create a happiness portal, you could cheat a little and ask people to market content as positive, neutral or negative, and then surface only the positive.

In my opinion this is not an ideal way to go about it, because you’re creating a different type of bubble, one where people ignore the reality of things. Yet, it is a possibility if we want to alter our mood by putting algos to work for us. At the very least it would be a fun experiment!

Reduce addiction / Save time

Disable notifications by default

You hear countless stories of people feeling better in their lives after disabling notifications. Why not make this the default behavior? “But, people won’t know if the app works!” Yeah.. it has to start some place. If we want change, we need to make tough decisions. If you want to be less extreme about it, you could disable most notifications by default, while not touching the “critical” ones. Personally, I don’t think any notification is critical, you should be completely in control over your attention and that any notification is a major intrusion into your consciousness.

With notifications disabled, we can regain time and attention. Society as a whole might think more clearly and be in the moment. I think it would be a huge step forward.

Delay notifications

Nothing sucks more time than notifications. That tiny red dot begging to be tapped. One solution to make notification less addicting short of turning them off is to delay them. We can purposely set a timer to show notifications in a delayed fashion rather than right away. This way people or kids don’t need to constantly check to see who replied or messaged you. Something as simple as a 3 minute notification delay may be sufficient to curb the constant checking behavior.

Delay reactions

Dopamine is fun, but constant dopamine in real time is unhealthy. Real time reactions force us to stare at our screens waiting for the next reaction.

We can lessen this addictive behavior by introducing delayed reactions to notes. Instead of reactions coming in real time, introduce a delay of 1-5 minutes. If you know that you won’t see any responses to your post for at least 5 minutes, it makes it easier to put down the phone and not have to constantly look to see who liked your note.

Improve Transparency

Once media organizations get on nostr, I think there’s a lot we can do to make them more transparent, accountable, and less manipulative.

One thing we can do is to create meta data for media accounts to indicate their funding sources. Everyone should be able to see who funds a certain organization (as discovered by anyone in the community and voted on by the community in terms of accuracy).

The idea is that someone could dig up funding sources for an organization and add them as meta notes to the account. The community can then collectively decide if this is accurate or inaccurate, giving others an idea if there is a certain bias involved.

Think about the Greenpeace ordeal currently happening. A meta note to indicate that Ripple, a “competing” cryptocurrency is funding them would add a lot of transparency to their claims. I think people would be less likely to believe the nonsense they are spewing.

Create a record of accuracy

Fueled entirely by the community, people could verify the accuracy of claims and indicate that in meta data. Other members can then review those claims and vote on them as well. With enough people involved, you could see if there is a sufficient sample size to indicate whether a media organization has been accurate or inaccurate in the past.

One thing we’d need to watch out here is bot manipulation. Said organizations could hire out malicious services to make it seem they are more accurate than they are typically. We’d have to think of some ways of preventing that.

The sheer lack of ratings on a claim should raise an eyebrow and whether something is to be believed or not.

The right to be forgotten

I know I will catch a lot of heat for this one. “The internet never forgets!” This is what the vast majority of people will say right away. That’s fine… but hear me out…

As builders and developers, we can form a consensus that social media data should be forgotten after x amount of time. Yes, anyone can screenshot it, mirror, put it on their own relay, rebroadcast it, yada yada yada… I get it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t create a consensus by which many builders, relay operators can voluntarily abide. It may not be a bulletproof solution, but it’s an effort that counts.

When we speak in the real world, unless recorded, our words are forgotten. A person should not be judged by a stupid thing they said yesterday, a week ago, a year ago. We can’t be in the right all the time - all people make mistakes and say and do stupid things. However, online, your word remains forever. Various servers cache, duplicate, at zero cost. I totally get that. Yet, we can still design an experience where that information disappears from our feeds, unless actively surfaced with some specific intent to surface it. I think this is a worthwhile effort that developers should consider today.

In cases where information should be saved for good reasons, someone will save it. Entire clients can and will exist to index everything, but that doesn’t mean every single client should surface every single note. People have a right to be wrong and to not be constantly harassed for what they said or did if they no longer feel or act that way.

Let’s have this conversation because no one else will

This article is meant to be a conversation starter. I really think we should weave it into the Nostr conferences as a crucial segment worth exploring and discussing. If we don’t do this, no one will. The world will continue to get gamified, attention hijacked and kids will continue suffering, depressed, lacking confidence and the tools needed to create a better world for their own kids. Let’s not fall sleep at the wheel and actually do something about it.

What other ideas do you have? Share the article and attach your own ideas.

To increase conversion rates (people sticking around to keep using your product, and ultimately paying), get people to their “aha!” moment as quickly as possible.

The “aha!” moment is where it clicks for the user exactly why this product is awesome. It's the shortest path to awesome. Once the user sees the value in the product, they are more likely to stick around.

Product designers and developers who are aware of this, know that the name of the game is providing value, and hopefully overdelivering, as quickly as possible. This means setting aside their own desires to showcase the product in its full glory, and focusing on the essentials - minimizing the number of steps required to get to the aha moment.

Design by omission becomes important. What to not include becomes equally, if not more important as what to include. So does reducing friction. The fewer, less painful steps involved in getting insane value out of a product, the better.

This concept is a great rule of thumb for every product founder.
Instead of thinking “what feature should I add to make people love this product?”, founders should be thinking “what features do I absolutely need for people to love this product?” Then de-emphasize everything else.

Nostr clients are no different from a typical startup - they should be trying to figure out the “aha!” moment, and how to get the user to it as quickly as possible.

A useful exercise I often perform is to reverse the process and start at the end - the action the user needs to take to have their minds blown. Once you figure out what that action is, work backwards to the steps where they first land on the product page, or install the app, whatever that may be. The goal is to cut out as many steps in-between as possible.

I’ll demonstrate with a hypothetical, but practical example.

Let us assume we are building a music app where people can earn sats when others listen to their tracks.

Nostr has several layers and steps that most people typically go through, for example:

1. Generate key pair
2. Save keys warning
3. Pick a username
4. Import follows (perhaps)
5. In some cases add relays
6. Navigate to some sort of a feed, either from follows or general
7. You typically need to set up your profile if you want people to take you seriously
8. Have to figure out what sats are, why anyone should care? What are these play tokens?
9. If care enough, find settings to connect a wallet
10. Learn about wallets (now you leave the platform to do a bunch of reading), chances are you are gone for good.
11. Connect a wallet, test a payment.
12. Do something for someone to find your action worthy of a zap / perhaps upload a track?
13. Aha moment! You can get paid easily and fast just for interacting with people.

Perhaps you’ll also have a realization that your comments are showing cross-platforms which supercharges your content distribution, but for now we don’t need to worry about this.

Of course, some of these steps may be optional, but if we are talking about someone who knows nothing about nostr, sats, zaps, key pairs, that’s 12 steps to get to some realization of what is possible.

12 steps!

The barrier to seeing value is very steep unless you already understand the benefits of decentralized social platforms, know about bitcoin and understand the possibilities.

Sadly, this is not what an average user looks like.

In fact, if you look on Nostr.band, the stats show that the number of profiles with an LN address has remained largely flat for a long time. It’s likely that these people are mostly bitcoiners who already understand the value proposition of a lightning payment.

Now, let’s work backwards and just think through which steps could potentially be eliminated. Keep in mind, we are talking about a music client.

Let us assume that the aha! moment is someone getting paid for their creative work (music). I think this is a safe assumption.

Final step: Pay bills with your creative work

This is going a bit beyond the aha moment, but we’ll roll with it.

Let’s ask some questions…

• What’s the fastest way to demonstrate that a user can collect payments for uploading tracks? How about a web client that is visible without logging in? Perhaps you can see some songs right away and notice that they are earning money? It’s not a personal aha moment, but it’s a preview.
• Can we get the user to skip signup entirely?
• Can the user upload a track as step 1?
• Can they see their local currency as a payout option?
• Can they collect payment in their local currency?
• Do they need to know what sats are? At least initially?
• Do they need to care about relays and everything that this entails?
• Do they really need to connect a wallet to get paid?
• Do they really need to follow anyone to see a feed?
• Are usernames even important to see the value in this product?
• Do they need to learn about cryptographic key pairs? How can we delay this step?

Having asked all of these questions, we can draft an ideal scenario. It may not be realistic, far from it, but at least we know what an ideal and amazing journey would look like.

1. Land on a website and see that people are getting paid in your local currency for the same work you offer. Hey, maybe I should try this? 🤔
2. What’s this.. a button to upload music? Ok, I have a file sitting on my drive, or have a link handy, let’s do it! Go ahead and add the track (as few steps as possible). Holy shit, I can add splits? Sounds crazy.. ok, let’s keep going.
3. Now that I’ve made progress in adding some information, it seems I need to sign up to finish. Makes sense. One or two clicks, I’m in and my track is added.
4. Aha moment: I go eat dinner, come back an hour later and see that I’ve just earned $5. It ain’t that much, but it didn’t take long! Turns out new tracks go into the new tab and people can stream them which goes directly to your wallet.
5. Final step: I click a button to cash out, in my local currency. The funds arrive in my bank account. Now I can pay my bills.

It may not be a feasible flow, or even a desirable one, but at least we can see that an amazing journey might only take 3-4 steps. It is still using the old money rails for some parts of the app, but the artist can get paid for their work fast and can come to a realization that there might be something to this.

We don’t need to create this specific journey and outcome, but we can use it as a baseline.

As a technical founder / developer you will have a better idea of what is possible. Perhaps new services need to be created to get to our end state? This exercise gives us a lot to think about.

In our example, we might be able to:

• Let users preview the product without signing up
• Have built-in wallets that require no additional setup (with the ability to customize your experience later in the options)
• Display earrings in local currencies while slowly introducing sats, zaps (surely there is an API that can handle sats to local currency conversion in real time? If not, maybe it has to be created?)
• Allow users to cash out into local currency. Why do we need to keep them in sats? Why not let them make their own option? If this is not possible to do - Why? What service needs to exist to allow lightning-enabled apps to tap into easy, plug and play fiat conversion?
• Let users discover relays later on instead of right away to keep them from being overwhelmed.

Even if some of these things are not technically feasible, at least we are now thinking about the flow from a user’s perspective and empathize with them. We start thinking about their time, their needs, their existing frustrations and how we might be able to brighten their day.

This user-centric approach helps founders skip the fluffy parts and focus on the guts that truly matter.

New founders specifically tend to enjoy adding features, thinking the next one will do the trick, only to be disappointed.

I encourage Nostr client developers to start thinking about their users as customers who are looking to solve their own problems.

• How might you make that journey as effortless as possible?
• What is your customer truly seeking? Is it distribution? Is it attention? Is it money?
• Are you delivering it in as few steps as possible?
• Can the “customer” take a more familiar path to get to the same decentralized destination that we all love?