juraj on Nostr: It's extremely difficult to start a new network and it helps quite a bit if you can ...
It's extremely difficult to start a new network and it helps quite a bit if you can piggyback on the pre-existing networks.
Example 1: iCal/vCal invitations
They go out by email. Everyone has email and everyone knows everyone's email (they have it in their contact list and the client auto-completes it for them). When calendar apps weren't popular yet, it had a "text fallback". Invite just came by email, where it normally said "Peter Horvath has invited you to a meeting on 1/7/2025 at 2:30pm". If someone had the calendar app, it showed up straight on their calendar when they clicked accept and it emailed back. There was no need to build a new network.
Example 2: Signal (WhatsApp)
Uses phone numbers as an identifier. All the people you want to talk to have a phone number and you have it in your contact list already. You just open Signal and text someone to their number only to find out they already have Signal. If not, you can invite them with one click.
The problem is not "who has signal", but "how do I write them once they have it". The matching problem is as big as growth problem. Network needs to be useful.
Example 3: Facebook
While Facebook didn't have phone numbers or any other simple identifier, it had a dense network. If you put in a name search, it would find the person for you because you have mutual friends. By the way, they used email to keep your attention. When Facebook started blowing up in our country, the number of emails more than doubled - half of all emails came from Facebook's servers. Every "liked a post", "replied to a comment" came via email. So even though people weren't in the habit of going there yet, they were getting notifications and wanting to check in.
Example 4: Unit of account
If I'm selling something, I want to show the buyer the price in a currency they understand. If the customer is from Poland, ideally I'll show the price to them in PLN, even if I end up charging them in euros. PLN they understands, euros they don't.
Good documentation of this problem: Andrew Chen: Cold start problem.
The Nostr problem - identity is the key, which is good from the point of view of security and message authenticity (if I have the right key, I know the person wrote it), but pretty bad from the point of view of network effects. Also, nothing "compels" me to go back to Nostr, if I install it and forget it exists a week later, there's nothing to suck me back. I personally consider that a feature, heroin social networks are what we're running away from.
Example 1: iCal/vCal invitations
They go out by email. Everyone has email and everyone knows everyone's email (they have it in their contact list and the client auto-completes it for them). When calendar apps weren't popular yet, it had a "text fallback". Invite just came by email, where it normally said "Peter Horvath has invited you to a meeting on 1/7/2025 at 2:30pm". If someone had the calendar app, it showed up straight on their calendar when they clicked accept and it emailed back. There was no need to build a new network.
Example 2: Signal (WhatsApp)
Uses phone numbers as an identifier. All the people you want to talk to have a phone number and you have it in your contact list already. You just open Signal and text someone to their number only to find out they already have Signal. If not, you can invite them with one click.
The problem is not "who has signal", but "how do I write them once they have it". The matching problem is as big as growth problem. Network needs to be useful.
Example 3: Facebook
While Facebook didn't have phone numbers or any other simple identifier, it had a dense network. If you put in a name search, it would find the person for you because you have mutual friends. By the way, they used email to keep your attention. When Facebook started blowing up in our country, the number of emails more than doubled - half of all emails came from Facebook's servers. Every "liked a post", "replied to a comment" came via email. So even though people weren't in the habit of going there yet, they were getting notifications and wanting to check in.
Example 4: Unit of account
If I'm selling something, I want to show the buyer the price in a currency they understand. If the customer is from Poland, ideally I'll show the price to them in PLN, even if I end up charging them in euros. PLN they understands, euros they don't.
Good documentation of this problem: Andrew Chen: Cold start problem.
The Nostr problem - identity is the key, which is good from the point of view of security and message authenticity (if I have the right key, I know the person wrote it), but pretty bad from the point of view of network effects. Also, nothing "compels" me to go back to Nostr, if I install it and forget it exists a week later, there's nothing to suck me back. I personally consider that a feature, heroin social networks are what we're running away from.