GM Farcaster chat with @dwr Dan Romero

good thanks for having me and congratulations on one year

i was about to say it feels very permissionless yeah

i'm well i can't can't complain and i

customer progress was great it was i think 15 plus cities 300 plus people you know ted kind of led the initiative but it was really driven by a bunch of people all across the world which was really great and i mean we've talked about this in the past we talked about our farcon i'm i'm sure you guys talk about it but this idea of url to irl i think it is one of the kind of more interesting things about farcaster relative to other social networks social media at least in 2024 i think like most social media a is media not a network and mhmm you kind of hang out with existing friends on it right so like you might join tiktok or instagram and the primary yeah you have stories with instagram but for the most part like you're consuming content in a feed that is professionally produced and it's very clear the button that is in like kind of like the spot where we have like they have dm which is a kind of like a message your friends and i think what's neat about forecaster is people meet new people like like minded people and so it's it's actually something that i think we're doubling down on a little bit in terms of like our our near term product strategy is to kinda try to lean into like can you meet and make new friends on the internet i i think it's a little tricky because sorry i'm like starting to ramble beyond the farcaster friday

if you were to ask most people on the street like are you interested in watching like highly entertaining and interesting content for the most part they'd say sure that that is like a relative thing right it's like what's interesting or entertaining to you versus me might be different but i think universally like people that they do do that it just depends on where they do it right whether it's netflix or you like to read a book or you know you you watch hours of reels or tiktok that's that's a very very common thing if you were to ask someone on the street it's like hey do you wanna download an app to meet new people and make friends most adults would tell you no like they'd be like i don't i don't need new friends like what what are you what what like weird like snake oil are you selling me and so i think it's a little bit of a harder sell because i don't think most people think that is something that they want or or is a problem but if you can figure that out which is like okay it's kinda like that south park thing where it's just like the underpants gnomes like there's like the big question mark in the middle and then you have profit if you can figure out how to position that or or kind of build the right set of products and and protocol primitives so other other developers can build their own apps that do that you actually have a pretty enduring valuable thing for for the protocol that will keep people around and then keep people really motivated about telling people like oh you have to get on farcaster it's it's so amazing and so i think that that ties all the way back to farcaster fridays is that when people meet each other in person that connection becomes i think significantly stronger whether that's two x or 10 x who who knows but

know why why farcon was so important right and and i think like shows like what you guys are doing and you know okay banger like the the idea of like this kind of emerging creator ecosystem within farcaster that is not just broadcast which you get on a place like instagram or or twitter and is a little bit more community like subcommunity oriented where it's like you have your set of loyal fans who and i'm i'm on the streaming software i don't even see the chat but like i'm just

what i've got right now but like that is that is a really powerful thing and and like so i think everything we can do both product wise to help foster that but also you know kind of ecosystem culturally that that that's useful and so farcaster front is very much fits into that theme

yeah so kinda history channels launched them last summer we've done a bunch of iterations and and you know experiments with channels i don't think any of them have quite worked outside of people on the network and if you were to kinda take the subjective you decide but the top thousand most interesting accounts on the network the rate of those accounts participating in channels is really high so we've actually

the the behavior on the network was plastic enough to like kinda get people to do it as much as people resisted posting in channels when we first launched them in a way that i think is really positive because if you can do that then there's still a chance that if you if you can kinda get the right configuration of what a channel feels like it can actually be a really powerful primitive for growing the protocol and and then specifically deepening those relationships which i think is the thing we kinda wanna bet on so i think where we've missed with channels is they've tried to do too much i think if you can kinda think of it as like two camps like one is the hashtag general topic idea like food or gardening or ethereum it's like these massive topics like with tons of people interested in them and you have good good you know like people and content getting posted but there's also just a lot of like kind of like mid content or just like ai program like programmatic content like and and we're getting better at filtering out the like clear egregious versions of spam but it's it's very hard to actually programmatically decide like is this interesting or not without people liking it but if the content is mid then people aren't likely to go to the channel to like it so therefore you don't actually get the sick so it kinda creates this tragedy that comments almost if you think of shared space and so i think that there's another set of channels that within the kind of same primitive that we've had you know late night crew yep ted gm park castor has a channel right so you you're actually building more of a community there's a it's it's less a kind of like hey i'm generally interested in this i wanna find other people it's actually more of like no there's a vibe here or there's a group of people that have a collective set of interests and it's a little harder as a new user to figure that out but if you do it it feels more special right like six is a great example of a personal channel right which again we we never thought people would do that and then as soon as we allowed people to create channels they started creating personal channels six is a it's like a vibe like what why does wode post a product take in six i you have to ask him like but it's just like it it's it's a public group chat right and so there's this idea that like oh i i saw something this group of people over here this is the one i wanna actually have the conversation with and you do that in messaging apps all the time but it's not public and so i think that that is the more interesting of the two directions for channels and in a world where we were trying to kind of make both of them work i think it just like kinda didn't it like if you try to please everyone it's it's just not gonna work and so i think we are going to be more explicit and say we wanna head in a direction where cozy corners is the term we use but it's let people create communities essentially or or like these these vibes public group chats whatever you wanna call them that aren't as you know we've been accused of like christian rapp like oh it just feels like a like a crypto version of linkedin but like there's a certain aspect of like a irreverent channel in some ways is actually more valuable to network in terms of building culture and and and kind of like this idea of building friendships than something that's like highly serious and so you know and i'm i'm as guilty as anyone because i've been trying to kinda push it it's like you have channels like product and founders that are kind

not sterile but like they feel a little bit more like again linkedin y and i think the you know what's interesting is actually a lot of people tell me that founders you know linda has been very vocal about this it's like actually it's it's like a it's

of other people yeah you through that journey and whatever and so there is value there but like the value is in the community not the content if if anything yeah like and so i think that that again says like the topic itself is less interesting you don't want the twitter like thought influencer who's like giving you like here's 10 quotes about steve jobs' product no we don't want that or whatever it's just like no i i don't want i don't want that it's i want the commentary from other people and the other people who are kinda going through a similar journey to me so

spiritual idea behind like channels there's now naturally a a strategy and a set of features that we can actually go do but i think if i was the one critique i would've had of myself yesterday is like maybe previewing it in the dev call to only then have it get onto farcaster because it's recorded and then people being like change oh no bad whereas like actually let let let's start with like kind of where we are today and then like what what is the thing we actually wanna make a bet on people naturally always just go okay what does that mean in terms of like specific changes right

yeah and and to be specific on on i think a couple of changes that you know i mentioned and maybe are being misunderstood a little bit so the first direction we're headed is so channels are the best way to think about them are public group chats that have a very similar mechanic to like a clubhouse stage or tavern or kind of any space where you have people on stage and you have people in the audience right and so anyone can participate in terms of like listening or i guess it's not participation that's just listening and then the people who have the ability to speak are curated by host moderator whatever you wanna call them and so basically that that's that's what we wanna be explicit with will there be ways that people can kind of like figure it and make it like more open accessible sure and and actually part of making it programmable like will allow people to be really creative with that but i think we wanna be opinionated and say rather than you pick what kind of channel you want we kind of are like this is what a channel is it's like you actually wanna curate who is on stage because that will lead to a tighter knit community and higher quality discussion which makes people more likely to wanna go to a channel page and like all these things that kinda don't happen now and then the second thing which again would probably be on the more radical side of things of just like how things have been but for people who've been around this is actually how channel started if you don't follow the channel you won't see channel content from that channel so i think one thing that's confusing to people in a world where we really tried to use channels as a way to like grow distribution we have the you know in the preview it's like if you don't post in a channel you you post in a channel get more views like the whole goal was like try to get people to post in channels because that's actually good for growth of the network i don't actually think that that mentality is useful if anything it actually confuses people and if you actually ask new people they're like i don't understand why when should i post in a channel versus not so i think just super simplified post in a channel if you wanna talk to that group chat and if you want megaphone just post in your home channel now obviously some really large channels are gonna have potentially more distribution for you than your your follower account especially as a newer account so that can still make sense but i think like just to simplify the framework of like goes out to all my followers over here it goes out to literally the people who follow it over here it's actually like i think a much simpler mental model and so those are the two i think like fundamental changes to like how it and and obviously any client could go implement it any way they want woah she can do whatever he wants on that but i think the way warpcast takes the opinionated approach and says this is what we think a channel should be at the protocol level and we're gonna respect that we'll have a pretty big impact in in terms of the shape of that feature and so i think there will be some change there will be some channels that like hey this worked way better when it was like open access i didn't have to worry about it but we'll kind of iterate our way through that and it's not a change we're dropping tomorrow it's it's like over the next few weeks we're gonna like kind of put more effort into this launch than we actually do for most launches like we're pretty famous but we're really iterative it's like okay fresh off the presses like ship it but i think really going through every bit of surface area around channels and say should we keep this should we remove it or change it is is is like part of the review here and so the goal should be whenever we get to the point of like launching this new version of channels it should feel different for people and like that that that actually is important for this whole thing to work because if it just feels too iterative people are just gonna keep the same habits they had before

well if your followers also follow the channel yes but right you can think of it as like you're opting in

right to that vibe topic whatever however you wanna describe it right and so part of that is like we need to improve discovery we need to improve it so that

be my suggestion yeah channel owners and moderators like we'll we'll likely bring back more moderators like that was a mess up i tried to simplify it down to one and people actually kind of like the collective idea of having ten ten people but but it it you know make mistakes so i think it's like really cultivate this idea that there's like a shared community identity thing that people are building together and then give people the tools to actually make their space feel great and then find other people to bring into their community and and and so like there's just a lot of details to sort out and so i don't want people to over rotate and be like ah fear change bad but i think i i'm optimistic that we can get to a place where it actually is just a lot clearer for people and then like once they adjust the new model they're like actually this is pretty great right like think about how many people want channel mute and we've never relaunched it yeah by definition this is muted if you don't follow channel you won't see the the content

yeah i think like if i don't know if you guys when you know the analogy for me is like going to college and you go to the activity day like the first day as a freshman and you find all of the things you could potentially do in in college or then if like and i wasn't in a fraternity but like there's like the whole greek scene is but like it's like people try to sort you into as many different things as soon as you show up to this new effectively social network right like

but i think like a that's overwhelming and going back to this idea of like most people signing up for this don't actually think they're looking for new friends they they they're they're coming to a social app because they're like oh social media like interesting content so i think that there there's like a kind of set of ways of like basically getting people excited about you know channels or or going deeper and so one one way you can think about it is you start following people because you find that their takes in the home feed are interesting that's like pretty normal that pretty comparable to twitter and then naturally the app can or whatever app you're using can actually start to be a little bit more like hey like looks like you really find you know adrian to be interesting like you're interacting with her content at home by the way she's she's active in these channels like maybe you should go check those out right so it like i think we can this this is key is like you have to improve the discovery process like i mean the channels list today like the descriptions are not even like it's just it's we haven't changed it since last year so putting a little bit of tlc into the the like the method for discovery and there can be a variety of them i think it's important and and i think like you you guys have actually brought this up in terms of like the explore page for developers is like hey there there are content creators on the network that are more than just casting it's like putting out a daily podcast and or you know streaming or what whatever i i think that there's a natural fit there with channels because channels yeah like effectively when you're building a media property most of the time you're trying to actually build a community and so you can imagine the the kind of like farcaster native creators their channels being featured on on kind of like channel discovery that has actually a better rather than trying to like put apps and and content in the same thing it's like no no this is where i go when i wanna find kind of like communities and interesting things to go participate in and then this is like apps that i can specifically use and there's a little bit of blending between the two but that that's like one way to think about it but i think that's

if we improve discovery right like we can't we can't yeah just the primary way to discover channels today is in the home feed and so if you're taking that away from the by default you have to kind of offer other tools so that channels actually can find the like minded people

yeah i i think it's like really fluid right like i i meeting with the team and and the other thing i said in the dev call is so traditionally it's been one engineer plus me anytime we do stuff with channels we have two engineers plus our wonderful designer and myself so it's it's actually a big investment for our relatively small team in merkel because we got a lot of things going on yeah and so this is a like top priority for the company like we have our daily stand up for the like the whole team and it's like the first thing we talk about is what what's the progress on you know kind of like towards this version of channels so i'm i'm kind of like working on a public spec like getting feedback you know from people and and i think should have something next week that people can roughly understand i think the other thing too is change is always scary like it's just like okay like wait like some people like change but like i think most people by default are like change change is bad because i'm used to this other thing

and i hear that but at the same time like i think we really have to figure out like to make channels something that's actually really useful for the network versus just this like thing that you know people call it like under invested in or whatever whatever critique they want i think it's like fair but i think the reality is like we should just have a very opinionated point of view of like this is what a channel is good for and we we we can solve some of the other things that we're potentially moving away from in future product you know launches or iterations or things like that

with the dreams i don't know if dreams are the right term they they happen while i sleep sometimes you might call those nightmares but yes i think i think there have been many a night where i can't sleep thinking about farcaster how about that so it's it's it's a i am trying to sleep and i end up spending time thinking about farcaster but for better or for worse i'm not asleep i'm sitting there and back thinking about like you know what should we be doing i i think that's well

yeah so i mean that's like i i it's like bill belichick for those who are football fans he would always just tell you he only cares about the next football game coming up and so like i think i'm very focused on channels if you were to like really push me i i think that there's probably we're we're already doing it with the the stuff that horsebacks is working on in the developer side so this idea of like mini apps and so we're like kinda like inching towards that so that is a surface area for people but you know probably more limited although ai tools probably make it easy to make many apps like i just watched someone open ai make like a game with like one prompt and so if you think of like flappy caster from matthew fox which is pretty good like we're not too far off in the next year or two where you could just be like oh i have an idea for a mini app and you could literally probably code it and i'm sure you know d f and steven stefan are building stuff that like make it easier to build frames and stuff like that and so i think that that's like a whole area that still has plenty of exploration i think if you were to ask me like the the core social stuff i think the honest answer is we need to get channels right and then move on to i think figuring out how we're gonna do dcs from a protocol standpoint so that's again less like individuals but more like can i use these in other apps like how how can i make them more programmable so outside of something like brilliant that like just like someone suggests or you know comes to you in the shower like i i think right now it's just like focus on channels we have a kind of side bet on many apps we also by the way have this like big snapchain thing that we're gonna be probably doing at the protocol level which day to day users don't experience but like any developer in the ecosystem who's had a you know issue with us like syncing with neymar or supercast or anything like that is gonna be happy but that that's a significant amount of work so we're only 14 people so we have to be pretty focused on what we're working on

i do not

i do not i actually don't know who rand amaro is

if i had an alt it would be funnier i i'm a little insulted like that people think that like that's my alt i i think my alt would be funnier

arrow is it serves a purpose in the ecosystem but you know you can't you can't be encouraging all these like alt accounts they're like funny for a second and then then they can kind of veer a little too negative so

yeah i've fallen off a bit

of just the posting pace

today yeah

i i don't think the letting you part is part of the permissionless show yeah cheers