Culture and Vibes (cont.)
Aired Date
November 6, 2024
Hosts
Series
Farcaster 101
Episode
Module 6
Watch on YouTube
https://youtu.be/eMGf-Q33WxEfarcaster 101 is an educational series brought to you by gm farcaster in partnership with snickerdoodle building off of their state of farcaster report which you can access at snickerdoodle.com this 12 part series introduces all aspects of the farcaster ecosystem and helps you get started building your social graph and brand on farcaster
and we're back this is module 6 of far caster 101 and we're continuing talking about culture and in this one we are going to be talking about some case studies around culture as well as we're gonna be chatting about builder energy which we talked a little bit about in the last one and we're gonna dive into what url irl is and how it really has enhanced the farcaster ecosystem overall so first let's just take a quick review of what is culture and adrienne do you wanna just give us a quick summary for those who maybe haven't watched module 5
sure so culture is just the collection of values beliefs behaviors other characteristics that define a group of people or society so just think of it as like the unwritten rules of how things are done it's like the
in a social network you might see like why are people as a group behaving a certain way what are the things that work really well within the culture are people quick to jump and yell at someone or are they more supportive so culture is just kind of like the the vibe of a of a of an organization it's never written down and it changes all the time not a lot yeah but over time i'll say it changes over it can change over time
and it can get influenced by new new folks who are coming into the ecosystem who make their own stamp on the culture farcaster is really good for founders and we've seen this over and over again and we're going to talk about some of those founders in just a bit but it's great for founders and i would say the slash founders channel is fantastic it's a great place to have discussions about if you are you know running a startup or just involved in a startup you're gonna see some great advice being given there you're gonna see some great questions a lot of sharing great amas have been held in that channel but with some incredible founders such as brian armstrong i think the talic did an ama at one point gary tan from y combinator so there's been some just incredible content coming out of the founder's channel so definitely recommend following it and a lot of times founders are finding their first 1,000 users within this space so going from that 0 to 100 or 0 to a 1000 this can be very helpful to you in that regard and also find founders finding their voice people want to hear your personal side too so i think farcaster has made it easier for people to connect at a human level rather than just the traditional brand level so you see that happening a lot and we see that iterated by eric's here i love how many founders on fc share and reply from their individual accounts versus behind brand accounts they often talk about much more than their products too divide between personal and professional definitely seems to be shrinking and i absolutely love it relatable for for the wind so re relatability for the wind so i know that this has been something that i really liked within this ecosystem is the founders who become a part of the network and aren't just letting their brand speak for them but they're you know they're talking about different things in parenting or they're talking about different interests that they have in different sports channels or whatever it is that interests them beyond just what they're doing with their business they're playing dominion in tabletop
for real they're playing in you know tournaments and and letting all sides of their personality be a part of who they are within this and not feeling like they have to be confined to just one thing has that what do you what else have you seen adrian that you find interesting and and helpful
well i think that's one of the trends we're seeing just broader beyond crypto beyond web 3 beyond social is people today want brands to be authentic yes and i think a lot of the more modern companies have found done a really good job of learning how to kind of from a brand perspective be authentic and and and speak to their to to their audience and users and we see that on farcaster there are brand accounts that are doing an exceptional job but what's really interesting is because so much of farcaster is for founders and we talked about this in the last module about how farcaster has really courted those early like just kind of the builder and founder mentality
founders talk about their business and their product from their personal account and people seem to just love that like i i they wanna hear kind of direct from the founder as opposed to from the brand account so it's a yeah people want authenticity and i think the the more you're sharing beyond an unfiltered you know don't just show your product kind of bring yourself and and build in public i think that has been done really well in farcaster
i think we've seen that a lot throughout history here and there but then we went through a period of time where it became very corporate and very much you don't do that right you keep the separation but i think you know silicon valley in particular and tech the tech side of it we've definitely had those big personalities who have been very much attached to their brand and i'm thinking steve jobs and bill gates and these big you know mark zuckerberg so that that is seemingly more normal these days anyway for startups so i think you see that reflected here as well and i think that's a positive definitely a positive it makes it much more interesting and you'll be interacting with these founders all the time within the firecaster ecosystem so here's a good example of one and this is linda limasie and this is something that she actually posted on twitter was talking about bounty caster bounty caster was able to get its first 1,000 users from building on top of farcaster plan for growing to next stage expand to more social networks next is twitter x expand to more p2p categories job services resumes items for sale continue to grow with farcaster so bounty caster is the idea of building a craigslist type of platform but on crypto and on crypto rails and so kind of jump starting it on farcaster because of the social graph and because of the way it's built on blockchain was easier than starting it on a much larger platform where you're not going you're gonna have a much harder time getting attention to your product without having to pay a lot of money to really put it forward in front of a lot of eyeballs so i think that bootstrapping it and starting it from farcaster was a really smart move on her part and she was able to find those folks who are willing to experiment and play around and help her work through the bugs and things like that to find what was working and how to make it work in the most effective manner and it's really cool to see something that starts on farcaster and then moves to something as large as twitter or rather than the other way around yeah any other thoughts on this and i we just love love linda and love that she shares so much of her journey building bounty caster she shares that a lot on farcaster and is very much building in public anything else that i missed there adrienne
no just follow linda she's at linda on farcaster and she is a great example of what we mean when we say build in public and and and be authentic and and she does a great job of of kind of being a founder and sharing a lot of her story about bounty caster but also kind of sharing other parts of her of of who she is as a human so yes yep she's a farcaster culture influencer
and yes for sure
whatever whatever that means
whatever that means another founder who's found like an incredible audience and really impacts the culture of farcaster is nonlinear and johnny mac who is one of the cofounders of fabric which is also hypersub is one of their products so originally fabric started as a crowdfunding type of platform and it still exists in that manner but hypersub was then launched and that's been something that has really taken off within the farcaster ecosystem and hypersub is a crypto blockchain type of patreon just to give you a reference point but works in a little different manner so what you're buying is an nft that may give you different benefits depending on what that hyper sub and that subscription is meant to provide so for example gm forecaster has 2 hyper sub tiers and folks who are in one of our tiers the wawa tier yes we connected with the memes they get a copy of every nft that we drop and then we have a lower tier where they may get pieces of that and other benefits so that's what hyperstub is you'll see it often on farcaster for all different folks doing all different types of things whether that is supporting art or supporting different creative efforts podcasts etcetera or as there's even been a couple that have been more service based for like design services and things like that and now our own little ai bots are launching their own hyper subs so there's a lot of fun to be had here but johnny recently casted that they reached their first you know 1,000,000 usd worth of hypersub subscriptions and that happened in a fairly short amount of time probably maybe about a year maybe maybe a little less so again being able to sort of bootstrap and and really go hard and find those early users it seems to work much more easily on farcaster than other platforms anything else you wanna add to that
just to shout out as well nonlinear is yes he's a builder yes he's building on forecaster and he cast about it but he also runs the memes channel which is kind of big into you know we we talked about the importance of memes in in farcaster and he also has a podcast called many such cases that he started which is a farcaster podcast he and his cohost ted who they also met on farcaster do a podcast so just another example of someone who yes is a founder but is doing other things for the farcaster ecosystem and from a culture perspective like and we keep calling out these examples of the people who are kind of impacting farcaster for the better it's these are people who are just kind of contributing and contributing to farcaster as a like as a brand and protocol and entity more than just their own personal self interest to grow their own product so i
just they have an a true a true belief in farcaster and what it's trying to do and like where it's trying to go and really love the idea of decentralized social and the social graph and being able to build upon it yeah beyond just what they're building individually
and then we have matthew so matthew is building events dotxyz so if you think of this like a competitor to something like eventbrite or luma that but is integrated directly into the farcaster social graph and uses frames and composer actions as part of its basis that's what he's building here and it's been sort of a growth over time too an iteration from where it was just a bot and then it became a frame and then it became a composer action and sort of continuously building on top of the protocol as well as finding new ways to integrate into the social graph and use that social graph to make it more valuable so this is another great example i think of being able to i think if you started something like this if you're like i'm gonna go create a new events type of company without some kind of purpose like building it on decentralized social it probably wouldn't go anywhere there's so many competitors out there but this really works within our within this environment because it's directly integrated using things like frames it makes it very easy to rsvp and connect in and also be able to see who else is attending things and connect with those folks as well and he's constantly adding new features along those lines
to really utilize the social graph in this regard anything i may have missed there adrianne
i'll just kind of call out matthew as again being one of those kind of forecaster ogs that is building in public and he's been building events and and we've seen it and he goes out of his way to help other forecaster people who are trying to use events so these are his users but he he really wants people he listens to feedback i'd say he wants to help you it's a new product and things haven't always been perfect so things will break he is so transparent and so willing to receive feedback and iterate and work in public and and it's just a it's a great great example of kind of the the farcaster culture at its best i think which is just someone building in public connecting directly with their users taking feedback shipping very fast so just follow matthew and check out events and use them for your farcaster events i think he also just so much promotes the it's like if it's a lego block within farcaster and so people building on farcaster are using it it's it's it's just been really nice to see events get built
yep it's been fun to watch this journey and to see all the different iterations of this particular product and business
and this kind of segues perfectly into the idea of url to irl and i'm using farcon as an example but really any events at all and the reason that events are so important and the reason that meetups and things like that are so important is this idea that yes we may get to know each other on a online platform but we wanna continue that conversation in other ways as well so whether that's jumping on a zoom with folks which used to happen a lot in the early days not as much now or going to a meetup in your area any events in matthew were some of the first folks who were really promoting that and helping people even help fund some of those early meetups and that led to far con the first one so this was originally organized by cameron and gren and this was a very small unconference in boston in june of 2023 in its first iteration it was farcon the beta so technically farcon 0 and only about 70 folks in the room but very very impactful because it brought together a bunch of different builders who all were doing something related to farcaster and there were lightning talks and presentations about what people were doing really i think a pivotal moment for a lot of folks some of us met our cofounders there and it was i think the first real big moment for me of like oh i wanna definitely build in this space this is something that you know i can see the future and where this is going and that kind of solidified beyond just what i see on my screen what do you wanna add to that adrienne in terms of like the first farcon and and then maybe actually i'll i'll slide over to this as well and then we can and i'll open it up to you so we had the first farcon and then why don't you talk about the farcon in venice and farcaster fridays
yeah well i'm going going back to the first one i'm reminded of of a thing that a lot of people in farcaster say but i think dan the founder of of farcaster says a lot too which is farcaster is more of a social network than social media and so it really is network based so therefore the relationships and your social graph and the people you meet are really valuable so the concept of url to irl which is you're meeting online first you're meeting very often behind pfps where people are somewhat anonymous you may not know where they live what their gender is what their real name is what they do in real life but you meet on your feed talking about shared interests you find out who people are and it kind of leads to irl interactions and so after farcon the beta in 2023
farcon the second one was held in venice beach in may of this year 2024
it was i think it was sold out probably had about 400 people who came in it was over a conference over a few 3 days or it was like a few days followed by a hackathon
and it was a phenomenal phenomenal event tons of tons of builder energy and and always also all these events were kind of organized permissionlessly without
really any involvement from the farcaster founders themselves so i think that is showed up yeah they delighted but they didn't go to boston because they
didn't wanna travel but they showed up dan was there dan was in boston that's because
he was dan was
in boston bea wasn't yeah he didn't yeah
but it
oh yeah but just the key that this is permissionless so that is just something we always talk about in terms of what is the brand which or i'm sorry what is the culture which is it is permissionless so the people who are willing to kind of step in and contribute and take initiative are the ones who can influence the culture and so farhan the second one was organized by ted and mcbain and heavyweight and matthew and who am i phil stack
phil stack and carhat yep yep and then with a lot of help from the larger community like base and seed club and variant for the for the hackathon so there was a lot of folks coming together permissionlessly to pull this off and it was amazing and it was amazing few days and i think what most people knew coming out of that was that we need to do more of this so not long after that launched farcaster fridays which is an effort to try and create these smaller irl meetups each the 1st friday of each month and bring people together on a more regular basis so we are seeing more of that as well
and there have been just just a big i think emphasis on meetups so there are city channels wherever you are and there's like have always been opportunities for people within farcaster to meet irl so that's just been i i i think a theme of yes we meet online but there's a lot of interaction outside of
the the digital space which has been really cool yeah it definitely solidifies those relationships in a different way when we talk about we've talked about a lot of authenticity and founders who share a lot of themselves beyond just talking from their brand or having a very controlled presence and
one
of the things we've noticed because of that is that brand accounts can be very hit or miss but the ones that have done really well have leaned into the idea of the brand intern that has a great sense of humor and that can spend a lot of time diving into and integrating themselves into the culture of farcaster they're not just sort of coming in and just talking about themselves they're leaning into all the different aspects of farcaster becoming a part of different channels and communities and also you'll see them often in the replies adding their own brand of humor to this and 3 of our favorites are the poly market intern me on base from magic eden and the shibuya intern as well so just a few few pieces of fun and this kinda leads into our recommendations for those who are newer to farcaster and especially burns and and sort of some best practices so adrianne what should people know when they're joining farcaster and don't know much about the culture what is some advice to approaching farcaster and what are some best practices that work well in this culture
alright let's let's break it down and the first one on the list is dan has often used a party analogy so imagine walking into a dinner party that has already started like you're late to the party you walk in you don't know anyone what do you do you don't stand in the corner and just start screaming at everybody at what you're selling because that is the fastest way to get kicked out you observe a little bit you listen to what people are talking about you might integrate yourself with a little side conversation at the corner of the party like you just don't bust away into the center and tell everyone to listen to you and that's a little bit of kind of how he's advised people to approach farcaster is imagine it's a big party people in farcaster have already kind of figured out how to mingle you are invited and i and i've said this in the last module and i'll say it again farcaster is not exclusionary it's not exclusive and it's not exclusionary it's extremely open and welcoming however there's a little bit of an art of like figuring out so think about it as a party and just like a party what do you do when you get invited to a party you bring something so i love the concept of like give give before you get and you don't approach farcaster as a what can i get from farcaster and you know as and and don't think of of farcaster as a place where you can extract try to contribute see what you can do to contribute to farcaster to other people give product feedback to someone if someone asks a question or wants a recommendation answer
reply don't you know like one of the things we tell people is like reply 10 times to every top level task you do engage in conversation so just generally feel like give and what we will what i think most people find is what you give you end up getting back so just approach it with that kind of giving giving mentality
anything to add to the party analogy before we no
i think that's i think it's a great analogy because also when you're at a party like that you're just walking in you're gonna you're gonna kinda listen you're gonna kinda hang out and then you're gonna find those moments where you can add to the conversation where you have something like oh yeah i used to work in that industry oh i love that song or i love that or have you seen this movie that relates to that adding that thing that you bring to the party or your special area of expertise
love to see that like come on in bring that in bring that energy and and sort of find those moments where you really can add something of value because everybody brings something unique to the party right to the to the ecosystem
okay the next thing i want to encourage people to remember is farcaster is not done it's not a like mature established fully decentralized protocol where it's just done and we're we're already there it is being built which means it's changing not everything works all the time so come in with the attitude of 1 get comfortable with change so
mhmm
the platform is is constantly changing so as long as you just kind of expect that it's not as uncomfortable when it does change praful and i have had a hard time preparing for these webinars because we've taken screenshots of things and we have recorded past modules that are completely out of date which is why the chat
like within the past like 3 weeks the end yeah it's like it happens now gonna change yeah
that to me is a feature not a bug you are literally being able to be part of a movement that's creating the future and you can put your imprint on that future so it's like it's fantastic but don't if you know if you get upset because a button used to be red and then you come in the next day and it's blue or you know something that used to work it's you gotta just kinda roll with it related to that is be experimental things are dropping all the time so if there's frame developers dropping different frames people are doing you know be because it's a builder community everyone is throwing out their in progress work you have an opportunity to try things in beta before they're fully flushed out lots of people are are giving you access to their apps from when it's still on test 10 testflight apple's testflight
lean into it it's really exciting i think to kind of be on the forefront and and i think what else like don't overthink because i think if you're trying you know if you can really lean into like not everything is fully cooked things are a little weird and you can lean into it it can be it's really fun so just kind of lean in and and participate and engage what else what else would you add to that
yeah i think that's you covered it really well and i think that the other thing is yeah just know that it's not just the merkel team who you know the warpcast team who might be adding things that are new we're also talking about people who are building things that are new so they're building something that integrates that might really enhance the experience or that might not you know and and being able to provide feedback on that as well is really helpful so have fun with it for sure
and then i think the last piece i'll iterate is what we talked about just a few minutes ago which is farcaster is a social network not social media so yes there's a lot you can get out of a social network but what i think i wanna encourage people to do is really focus on the relationships and focus on building community find your users find your community reply more than like yes you should cast your original content but get into the replies ask people questions engage be authentic and and really treat it i think the treat it like it's a group chat yeah that's like the best way to develop community is it's not broadcast social media it's not look at me it's this is a group it's a public group chat and if you treat farcaster that way you are more likely to be successful and have a lot of fun while you're doing it
and i think finding people to follow and finding people that follow you that's gonna happen more in the replies than anywhere because i mean just personally that's where i normally will find people that i knew that i wanna follow because and it's not necessarily replying to me directly it could just be in a conversation that i found interesting you say something that's interesting and that might be somebody oh there's somebody new here that i wanna follow and that is very easy to see too because there'll be a little plus sign next to their pfp if you find somebody in the replies who you're like oh that was really interesting who are they let me go check them out click on their pfp go to their profile learn more about them or just follow them right there by clicking the plus sign yeah i think that all great advice and we've talked a little bit about there's a little bit of crypto culture here there's a little bit of internet culture but there's not ct culture so crypto twitter culture a lot of the dunking the really aggressiveness that's probably not going to work as well and so you know just be aware of that but also for most folks who are kinda tired of that sort of approach on social media this might be a welcome welcome news so hopefully we can continue to keep those vibes alright i think that's everything adrienne in our next module we're gonna talk more about cryptocurrencies and tokens that are integrated or that are built on top of farcaster and sort of a little bit more of that technical aspect as well anything else that i may have missed adrienne that you wanted to add there about culture or about what we're going to be doing next
come for the decentralized text day for the culture
there you go and
reminder as part of the forecaster 101 series thank you for watching we have office hours every week so make sure you jump in find us on farcaster tag us say hello give us feedback on this course if you have questions definitely reach out we are very accessible and available and we'd love to hear from you
yep and there will be also be some accompanying paragraph posts that'll give you a little bit more information along with all these videos so everything that we hope will help make your adventure in forecasting a little bit easier and all the links and all the
just all the links will be in the paragraph posts as well in our blog post our companion blog post so
yep so all the helpful things and with that we'll bid you adieu until the next module when we're talking about cryptocurrencies and until then bye bye