Social media has become the internet gateway for billions; it’s where they find their news, connect with their friends, update others on their lives and simply have public discussions. It’s become so entrenched as a behaviour it’s hard to remember a time before we had these platforms.
Despite breaking new ground in the early days, social media has become corporatised; it is no longer new media, its traditional media and with that, saw a lot of what made it so special get diluted or removed completely.
Today it’s a breeding ground for marketers, brands, news outlets and influencers and has lost the social aspect while embracing the media component. Many of us have grown disheartened with the state of social media but use it because there simply wasn’t another option.
Making social media social again
Nostr is not an app nor a “platform” (like Twitter, Facebook, etc.), but a method of communication that many applications can be built on top of and speak to these communication hubs called relays. This simple relationship between users (and their keys), relays (the servers hosting the data) and clients (the website or app displaying the data) lays the foundation for a new social media experience.
Unlike traditional social media, Nostr is decentralised; there are no central servers or corporations that control what you can post and curate what others can see. Nostr puts users back in control over their account, their content, and the distribution of that content and with that comes a whole new playground for content creators.
I know you’re probably thinking it’s simply another replica of what we already have, and you’re better off sticking with what you know, and that’s fine; no one is forcing you to use it.
However, let me explain why Nostr is different and what you can get out of it as a content creator.
1. No algorithmic curation
There was a time when social media services were bootstrapping and because the amount of content added to their servers wasn’t at the furious pace it is today, they offered you a basic chronological feed of all the pages and people you followed. When you log in, you will see close to, if not all, the posts created by the accounts you followed.
That gradually changed as social media sites looked to continue to gamify their feeds to drive engagement and strategically insert ads into your feed. Today most of what you see on your social media feeds are not controlled by you; they are carefully curated based on your comments, likes and dwell time on certain posts. You are constantly being poked and prodded, and profiled, and that data is sent to big data storage to be crunched by algorithms looking for ways to feed you more content.
As a result, you don’t get to choose what you see, and if you don’t play by the rules, your followers won’t get to see what you post. In Nostr, you are back in control over your feed; there is no algorithmic curation; you see what your followers post and reply that’s it.
It cuts out the drama, the noise and the rage bait and puts the onus back on you to curate your feed and makes it easier to find the content you like and limit the content you don’t like simply by clicking follow or unfollow.
When there is no algorithmic curation, you live and die by the merit of your content and not by trying to ride a new algo update.
2. Access to multiple front ends
When you create a social media account, you’re bound to the content format and audience within that platform. As a content creator, you’ll quickly realise that managing multiple platforms can be far less fruitful than you think; your Instagram content would not translate well to Twitter and vice versa. So you’re encouraged to pick one platform and commit to it.
If you don’t, you’ll spread yourself too thin, and as a result, the quality of your content will suffer. In addition, you’re also competing with other content creators who focus on one platform and hone their content delivery to the whims of that specific platform and, in doing so, secure more of the daily organic impression share.
In Nostr land, it’s a completely different ball game, you can create all your content from one interface using one account, and it can be distributed to different clients and audiences. This allows your followers to pick the interface they prefer and engage with the content that resonates with them.
In practice, you could post one piece of content that could be formatted differently on each front end and would not impact the user experience.
3. Native tipping
Apart from YouTube streams, traditional social media doesn’t really offer you a way to monetise your content without involving additional custody providers and third parties, and when you do, you have a limited selection to choose from; PayPal and Patreon have become popular options for those looking to generate an income from their followers.
When it comes to converting users into paying, you’re asking them to use a specific service; you’re expecting them to sign up and then add their credit card or load a balance, or sign up for a subscription which isn’t a great user experience. Adding these barriers makes it harder for content creators to monetise their content. In addition, these payment methods often cater only to certain regions leaving certain creators out in the cold when it comes to monetising their content.
Since the user experience for tipping is so bad, the content often suffers as creators either have to constantly remind followers or sell their followers out to advertisers instead.
In Nostr, many clients embrace bitcoin, and we’re seeing certain Nostr clients starting to integrate payment options like the Lightning networks and eCash mints directly into profiles. These are merely early iterations of the service, and it will only get easier with time.
Clients are already allowing you to connect your Lightning address to your account, and there is no reason why we couldn’t see more integrations. In future, we could see services like BTCpay Server or PayNyms added as additional options for tipping with the option of using a non-custodial wallet directly talking to your node.
4. Secure your connections
Part of the appeal of social media is building an audience and making connections with like-minded people, an aspect of social media that has very much been diluted over the years. Those who have built up followings on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram can attest to the fact that the percentage of followers who see their posts has dwindled over the years.
While you can encourage your followers to opt into notifications, this is not a popular user action. Social media platforms rely on that fact so that your reach remains limited, with the intent to get you to plug in your credit card and promote your content.
Sure, you can cross-post across different sites, but even if you have grown your following across multiple platforms, you can be sure that many of your followers will not see your content as regularly as you would hope.
When you switch over to Nostr and start getting people to follow your account, it doesn’t matter what client they use; they will see your content. If ever there was a case where you’ve been removed from a client, you could always encourage your followers to use a different client instead.
Unlike traditional social media, you’re not locked into one platform; you now have a consolidated list of followers you can take to any platform making your account even more valuable. Clients will want to have their site be your preferred provider because you would bring with it an active audience and engaging content.
With traditional social media, the platform had all the bargaining power because they held all the data; in the case of Nostr, the roles are reversed, and you, the creator, have far more control and say in where your content is displayed and who can engage with it.
5. Failsafe for your content
When you post your content on centralised platforms like social media sites or blogging platforms like Substack and Medium, it’s on the condition that you abide by their terms of service, which are rules that can change at any time. While these platforms do give you access to an easy user interface and access to their audience, there is no guarantee that your presence on these platforms will remain in the future.
Many people spend years building up their blogs or social media accounts through hours of work, and that can all be lost in an instant should the platform declare you persona non grata. Once you’re banned or removed from a platform, all your content could be lost if you have not backed it up to a local drive that you can control, something very few people do, and as a result, all that work is not gone for good.
By using Nostr, you can keep a local copy of your content as well as have copies of your content hosted on several relays hosted around the world. Should you get banned from social media, you will still have a place where all your content is still available, as well as all the comments and interactions.
Even if a Nostr client or relay comes under pressure to have you removed, you can still have a copy of your content on another relay and feed it to a client that is all too happy to support you.
6. Community syndication
When you post to the various Nostr relays you’re connected to, your content will be displayed on any client that has a connection with that relay, which means your posts are automatically syndicated to several client interfaces, be that mobile apps, desktop apps or websites.
Your content will be available not only to clients that are available today but any client that supports Nostr in the future and is willing to connect to the relays you host your content on; this makes posting using Nostr a powerful syndication tool since you can reach users on a range of services.
Since you can reach people regardless of the interface they use, it also means that the users who are connected to you could reshare/repost your content on their feeds and on other relays, and you will get even more visibility.
Nostr takes the gamification out of spreading your content, and if users find your content valuable, they’ll be willing to spread it far and wide across their networks. Networks that have no algorithmic curation, so you’re getting reach based on the merit of your content, not because you were able to game the system by chasing trending topics, using specific keywords or having to post and repost at certain times.
7. A platform for unpopular opinions
Traditional social media platforms have transitioned from information hubs where content could be promoted and shared to curated media services heavily influenced by corporate interests. These services come under pressure from political affiliations and advertisers, which ensure that certain narratives get promoted above others and, in doing so, limit and censor opposing voices.
If you happen to hold and share opinions that are counter to the mainstream consensus, you might see your posts continue to reduce in reach as your shadow bans become more constricting, or worse you could receive an outright ban and be totally de-platformed.
If you do have certain opinions that you think could land you in hot water, you could use Nostr to share those opinions, while the corporate-friendly messaging could remain on your traditional social media, and you can use that account to funnel people to your Nostr account where the real juicy talking points and discussions happen in a free and open space.
8. Build a new audience
If you’ve been trying to build an audience on traditional social media from scratch, you’ll know how hard it is to compete for views with established accounts. Trying to break through the noise is not easy when most social media platforms have an overwhelming incentive to limit organic views in favour of paid ads, so you’re constantly competing with an ever-shrinking organic impression share.
In addition, you have to compete with paid services and bot services that help build social media followings for certain accounts, which continues to erode your organic reach opportunities.
Finally, on social media, not all content is equal, social media apps are designed to increase time-on-site, and with this incentive driving their service, off-site content like your own website gets demoted while on-site discussions, particularly content that enrages people to engage, get preference in feeds.
Instead of dealing with all that noise and gamification, with Nostr, you can build a list of followers that will see your content should they log in and scroll through their feed. You will always have access to your followers, who can view your content on their preferred front end without losing out on your latest posts.
Both you and your followers could be using different client interfaces, and you would still be able to engage with one another, making Nostr a fantastic way to build an audience that you know is following you because they enjoy your content. An audience that will follow you anywhere they can access your content and an audience that is willing to engage with you and provide you with valuable feedback.
Do your own research.
If you’d like to try out Nostr or want to learn more about it, we recommend checking out the following resources to kickstart your research.
Are you on Nostr?
If you are a Nostr user and want to hang out and chat with us or follow our content on your preferred Nostr front end, feel free to add us using our PubKey below.
7ecd3fe6353ec4c53672793e81445c2a319ccf0a298a91d77adcfa386b52f30d
The Bitcoin Manual’s Nostr Pubkey
