0 sats \ 0 replies \ @maciek OP 4 Nov \ parent \ on: Building an open social graph - backed by email/calendar data tech
Yes, absolutely privacy controls will be critical. We think some users will choose to keep their network private or share with a small group of friends or co-workers, others may choose to make everything open. We envision privacy controls that would enable both extremes, but we have not put those in place yet.
I do think we can implement nostr. It's just that it's not relevant for the initial phase which is about achieving user adoption. I think nostr is great for handling identity long-term, but that would require an already popular platform educating users about nostr rather than the other way around.
I love Nostr, but I currently don't see a viable path to bootstrapping critical mass. The idea here is to leverage an existing, massive social graph to bypass this issue and I can see integrating Nostr at some point.
I do agree that the business model in itself is not sufficient to guarantee the graph remains open. This idea is work in progress and I am open to suggestions. My high-level thinking is this:
- The more the platform depends on the revenue from its users, the more it is incentivized to act in their interest
- The network effects can be established on the platform level, or integrations. I.e. the ecosystem of connected apps and platforms can, in itself, create a network effect
I'm trying to figure out how to structure the product and the business model in such a way that the most value for shareholders is created when the graph remains open.
Social graph is a representation of relationships between entities, in the context of social media it's typically who you know or interacted with on a platform, but it can be broader than that. A social graph can also represent relationships between organizations. For example, you could represent podcasts as a social graph between hosts and guests who appear together on episodes, or the VC/startup ecosystem where each investment is a relationship.
Example use cases:
- Bootstrapping network on a new social media platform โ you can automatically follow/connect people you already know
- Podcasting app โ you can automatically find podcast episodes with people you know/follow on other platforms
- Email client โ you can see what friends you have in common with the sender
- CRM โ you can see who can introduce you to a lead
I think it's a mistake to think of namespace as just DNS. Assume you had a namespace that is decentralized, it does resolve to a single name and is universally accessible. It would create an alternative to trademark laws and other institutions created on the foundation of the nation-state for managing intellectual property, reputation, etc. It's a missing piece for decentralized identity. When you combine a decentralized network that enables you to control assets (bitcoin) and another one that does the same for names you can build an alternative to the State.
Bitcoin succeeded because it had a perfect incentive system where early adopters got rewarded the most and the reward scaled down over time, ~ proportionally to the risk and value. I don't think a token makes sense for the namespace protocol, so a different incentive structure needs to be invented.
I will take a stab at describing how to achieve a global algorithmic feed.
First, let's acknowledge how weird it is that we cannot choose the algorithms that curate our feeds. Imagine that your phone came with a set of pre-installed apps made by a manufacturer, and you couldn't remove them or install any others. That is how phones used to work before Apple created the App Store.
Mobile apps are good analog to algorithmic feeds. The fact that people do not pay for curation algos today does not mean that they won't in the future. My money is on algo stores becoming an important piece of Nostr's ecosystem.
The marketplace could work in the following way:
- Algo designer submits his algorithm to the market & sets the price.
- The user chooses an algorithm and pays for it with lightning.
- The marketplace keeps track of user satisfaction from each algo, similar to the App Store's rating system.
- Algo designer shares part of the revenue with relay operators to ensure access to data.
Many users will likely prefer to watch ads instead of paying, and ad networks will also emerge over time. I suspect there will be something like Google AdSense, catering to algorithm designers, as AdSense caters to website owners. This way, individual algorithm designers would not need to run their ad networks to monetize with ads.
GENESIS