For those of you who don't know, Flotilla is a discord/slack clone built on nostr and bitcoin. It is standards-first, and motivated by several years hosting the Thank God for Nostr podcast in which I discover the complexity of media theory and how difficult it is to make social media that is actually good for people. The goal is digital communities that nurture instead of parasitize IRL communities.
I am currently trying to shed my nerd cocoon and become an entrepreneur so that I can turn Flotilla into a business that pays its own bills, so that in turn I can continue working on bitcoin and nostr in the long term. This involves doing many things that I am deeply uncomfortable with, including but not limited to: self-promotion, usability testing, accounting, advertising, spinning, and doing market research.
I am not here to ask for reviews (although if you want to drop some on the app stores I wouldn't object), or sue for your custom (but I do have a hosting plan that starts at $0), but to ask: what would it take for you or someone you know who runs an online community to use Flotilla?
This is where the developer in me would like to make hedges about how I know there's so much work to be done, blah blah blah, but I want to hear from you: why aren't you using Flotilla? Too buggy? Bad design? Network effect? Lock-in? Community monetization? Too purple? Wrong format? Hate nostr? Hate bitcoin?
I know this is a tedious type of post, but I have employed my own personal wit and bony fingers in typing it into a text box on a website like it's still 2022, and hope you will at least have enjoyed reading something not infected by claudish. PV and thank you.
If you aren't already, I highly recommend scheduling calls with existing or target users to ask them such questions. Also, read The Mom Test to learn how to do this best. It's hard and super fucking awkward, but you'll learn in a few hours what would take you years by trial and error.
Personally, I haven't used discord in more than a few rare cases and I'm only in Slack because other groups I want to follow use them. For SN's internal comms we use Matrix because we wanted something E2EE (not saying you should add E2EE because we are likely in minority if you look at the rest of the market). I use Signal for all my personal group chats.
Do this more. Not only for your customers but even more so for yourself. Writing is up-leveled thinking and having Claude write about your product means you're thinking less about your product than you could (and should).
I'm still no good at any of this stuff but ... As with all things you want to get better at but are uncomfortable with, approach it incrementally or outsource it/ask for help.
Yeah, the e2ee thing is interesting — in theory it has no trade-offs, but in practice there are a lot. I would personally prefer to use an e2ee product, but I think a lot of people won't care (especially if they self-host). I will keep writing.
Yeah until you can afford to invest more than what Signal has into E2EE UX, it's probably going to hurt growth more than help it. (I say more than Signal because Flotilla has a lot more features than Signal afaict).
Too many possibly, but I'm targeting a different type of group than signal. I think there are diminishing returns to e2ee as group size grows since trust also weakens. So it really could come out in the wash.
Just purchased The Mom Test, thanks for the rec
I've seen Flotilla, but while NIP29 was how communities were done on Nostr before I think that Armada and the Concord Protocol are the future, not requiring people to host their own servers if they don't want to. Also Concord is E2EE, and Armada even provides the ability to link a Discord community (although I don't know how long the bot will hold up if Soapbox are the only people hosting one, although I think the bot code is open source as with most of what Soapbox makes).
I actually have a huge list of chat apps, including Armada and many others (good and bad)
https://tangled.org/strings/littlebitstudios.com/3mnangvrunw22
Yeah, Concord is quite promising (very similar to an early private groups experiment I added to coracle 3 ish years ago now). I wish those guys the best. The reason I'm sticking with nip 29 is partly sunk cost, but I also think it might be a more sustainable business model. Someone has to run the servers, and Concord might find itself like Signal with a very expensive infrastructure bill. Piggybacking on the old self-hosted/hosted paradigm is more familiar to a lot of people and allows me to directly monetize.
At least Armada (the client I mentioned) can somewhat interoperate with Flotilla since it supports NIP29 in addition to Concord
yes, although IMO they should just drop nip 29 support and focus on a clean UX with Concord
I didn't know you work on bitcoin. What are you working on in bitcoin?
nostr 😉
No, but Flotilla includes zaps, NWC, and lightning pay/receive. It's not directly bitcoin, but it's part of the bitcoin ecosystem. The more touchpoints we have with bitcoin as a payments technology (even if people don't use it), the better.
You’re calling some APIs. You’re not “working on bitcoin”, sorry.
ok
Working on Nostr, which includes working on Zaps integrations, and getting paid in bitcoin, would include working in the Bitcoin and Nostr ecosystem. Keep up the great work.
Btw, “working in the bitcoin ecosystem” is fine with me, but not “working on bitcoin.” That gives me affinity-scam vibes.
Derek Ross, the professional cheerleader of Nostr
You probably would’ve also shilled Coldcard without knowing anything about it, except for what you’d heard about it. Maybe you even did?
dunno if you're aware of CLINK - might be useful
https://github.com/shocknet/CLINK
https://clinkme.dev/
Interesting, I'll keep this in mind
@justin_shocknet is the guy to talk to about it
A few months ago I tried this client, but I couldn’t get it to start. In the end, I ended up using the “ARMADA" client.
I just put out a new release this week which fixes a ton of issues. Give it another try and let me know if it's still busted.
OK, I’ll give it a go on my Android phone.
Testing...
@optimism
Move comms here?
Why? New link doesn't work? #1574680
Okay I’m back but all of my chats are gone 😂
I am at your disposal if you need me
Flotilla seems like a cool project, especially with the Nostr and Bitcoin integration.
PV 🤙🏻
Noted
Nostr plus Lightning makes for an interesting combination for online communities.