Sedj on Nostr: This could end my use of social media (for fun) altogether. Sorry, shitposting isn't ...

This could end my use of social media (for fun) altogether. Sorry, shitposting isn't very high on my hierarchy of needs. I only post occasionally, share very few things other than text. I did pay for a couple relays initially, under the assumption it was a one-time payment. Then I ended up preferring a nostr client that doesn't even have relay controls. So I have no idea if any of those services I did pay for even exist.

I get your frustration - but I don't see much of a market around social media outside of advertising and maybe appeasing influencers. Just because you spend time developing an app, or front the costs of media hosting, doesn't mean you have a market that will pay you. The successful companies and paid developers are being paid by companies that already have a market, usually subsidized by advertising or subscription revenue.

Nostr is more of a protocol, sort of like bitcoin. You don't see a lot of smtp or tcp/ip developers, although plenty of service companies have been successful using and extending these protocols, often after already establishing a market presence through other means. Nostr may wind up the same way. What if Google, Microsoft, Meta, or Amazon created a client (or something more multifunctional), its own relays, or backported existing messaging to use the Nostr protocol? Would businesses pay for it, like they do for Google Microsoft web-based services? Could it become part of Amazon Prime, or subsidized through Meta's advertising reach? But Nostr isn't there yet - maybe some day, but not today. I don't remember paying for Netscape or Thunderbird, and Nostr clients are barely even at that point. They aren't AOL, or even Earthlink or GeoCities, which people did pay for. All of those services did more than one thing, and tried to do it fairly seamlessly. We're seeing Nostr trying to do the same by combining wallet services into clients, but again, early days.

The initial protocol is built. Sure, maybe it could use some refining, but so could anything. Now we build, we wait, we extend, we try to become a critical mass worthy of the attention of something bigger that will really accelerate Nostr. The same way Bitcoin is waiting for its next adoption phase. ETFs were big, nation states were big, but it hasn't yet grown to its full potential either.