What is Nostr?
haldane / Matt Haldane
npub1dec…9ggh
2023-10-15 12:05:52

haldane on Nostr: I don't think tech needs to choose between being friendly towards average users and ...

I don't think tech needs to choose between being friendly towards average users and tinkerers. You can strike a happy medium. fiatjaf (npub180c…h6w6)'s post makes me think of the recent Fast Company article on Obsidian: https://www.fastcompany.com/90960653/why-people-are-obsessed-with-obsidian-the-indie-darling-of-notetaking-apps

The crux of the piece is basically that the note-taking app Obsidian has grown to 1 million users despite not being very user-friendly because it requires knowledge of Markdown. I don't think Markdown is the major barrier here. Most of the things a user might want to do with text notes (bullet points, bold and italics, headers) can be easily toggled with UI buttons in Obsidian. I think most digital natives have at least a passing familiarity with markup languages or can easily adapt.

Obsidian is actually good example of how software can be both user- and programmer-friendly. Nostr still has a lot of hurdles in the way of mass adoption, but being able to peek under the hood isn't one of them.

Nostr cannot compete against the big platforms on the same field. If you try to make Nostr apps exactly like Twitter they will just be an inferior copycat. Nostr's competitive advantage is the fact that it is an open protocol, trying to hide that from users is the asking for defeat.
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