basil (propagation arc) pfp
basil (propagation arc)
@itsbasil
increasingly more 10k fids & below are in my dms calling for me to get LOUDER it appears the inner circle is finally getting pissed off? two notable developments: 1) “get louder for us” — people are scared to speak up due to fear of retribution from ex-cb mafia (this is horrifying, no different than censorship & why we get called linkedin) 2) just talked to a second crypto & fc og who is now advising an fc competitor interested in tokenizing the social graph: one just wants to start a fire; the other is giving “fine i’ll do it myself” energy while i appreciate dans recent visibility on the timeline, we’ve debated this time & time again to no end & nothing has changed out of love for the network, the people want SOME of the 100m+ of capital being SAT ON deployed & deployed LOUDLY starting with ONE non dev hire to run ONE of these initiatives (to start): > eco fund > marketing & ua > branding & optics > grants & devrel > meaningful creator rewards & ambassador program
26 replies
8 recasts
49 reactions
six pfp
six
@six
> meaningful creator rewards & ambassador program they are deploying 5 figs a week (and increasing) into both of these exact things?
1 reply
0 recast
2 reactions
basil (propagation arc) pfp
basil (propagation arc)
@itsbasil
haven’t talked to a single person who hasn’t scoffed at even $200 a week these are consistently the top 500 people here (who don’t need it) with a few outliers week to week the consensus is too little too late the ideas are > match x creator rewards (all in) OR > reinvest it into one of the other buckets (all out) i am just an echo
1 reply
0 recast
7 reactions
six pfp
six
@six
i don't mean to sound dismissive i think the concerns are valid but it honestly does (at least partially) seem like a self-fulfilling prophecy/moving goalpost, where people see what they want to see and ignore what they don't e.g. re incentives - i personally see a lot of people on the leaderboard, who i have never heard of, or who i know are small accounts, but i go to their profile and they are posting great stuff and deserve the reward, this means the system is directionally working imo to amplify and reward them without being gamified or e.g. the farcaster retro grants they did a while back, another point you suggested not tryna be Merkle Defense Team or anything, lots they can prob be doing better, startups are about iterating based on contact with reality. but feels like a pattern i am observing in the discourse: > call for X thing > X thing gets implemented > either ignore X thing or say it's not enough, not the right way, or say ok but what about Y
2 replies
0 recast
2 reactions
basil (propagation arc) pfp
basil (propagation arc)
@itsbasil
i hear you on the rewards. i also think the system is actually quite good at highlighting lesser known accounts i think the issue stems more from the belief that paying these smaller accounts ultimately does little to grow the greater network whereas if that capital was used to attract creators who ~already have communities~ those communities would follow them here as opposed to forming another community here with the same faces found in all the rest
1 reply
0 recast
1 reaction
six pfp
six
@six
i just think you would get the same criticisms and goalpost moving in that scenario. like if merkle pays ansem to come here and start posting to try and bring CT over. the same criticism would just shift to "how come ansem/[insert established creator of choice] is getting paid, he definitely doesn't need the money, i've been here so long and merkle doesn't care about me"
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
basil (propagation arc) pfp
basil (propagation arc)
@itsbasil
surely there will always be the “screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t” argument to be had i think nerves would calm down a bunch if they announced a non dev hire ngl the general consensus is simply: please try something, anything, but we cannot afford to wait any longer & we have a literal fuck ton of capital just sitting there so wtf in light of: the network is materialized; frames are here; clanker has attention, political convergence, competition is coming, bull market…. please get out there & try more aggressive tactics, we lose nothing if it fails https://warpcast.com/itsbasil/0xce1dec54
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
six pfp
six
@six
yeah, i get the sentiment, my point is just that i don't believe people will ever be happy to just see merkle trying things and deploying capital, whether thats hiring a marketing person or something else. they want to see merkle *succeeding* in growing DAU. agree they can prob go more publicly offensive/aggressive, i just kinda resent "devs do something" vibes. feels low agency and blame-hungry, mostly rooted in anxiety/frustration (which is fair) but not in reason. in any case appreciate you speaking on behalf of people who feel like their voices aren't heard, agree that is a problem in and of itself.
1 reply
0 recast
1 reaction
JR ↑ pfp
JR ↑
@juli
Literally just hire (1 good marketing dude &) 10 (unpaid) smart college students to intern and do all sorts of marketing starting with high activity on tw, running a few top channels seeded with good crypto people, supporting top eco projects with channels, partners, marketing, frames.. running dev calls, office hours, maybe ambassadors, monthly local community meetups, experiments w/ monetary incentives. This isn’t expensive nor do most things require seniority. This is 101 startup hustling. Obv getting things more right than wrong will do wonders & some experienced early startup marketer would be valuable. It will require some oversight from the CEO, core team to take time off other things but there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit from doing unscalable things and being hands-on such as learning why not a single channel is great today, why few users signup, users jump off, why they don’t come back (prob not even targeted?), why builders go elsewhere. I’m sure we’ll be unhappy but at least we tried
1 reply
0 recast
1 reaction
JR ↑ pfp
JR ↑
@juli
Ps: @six I don’t know of any social network where users, 3rd parties showed this much agency. Everyday community people are paying signup fees for friends, offering some kind of incentives to try warpcast, trying to grow their farcaster token project on Twitter and promoting farcaster. I think that’s part of the current frustration where some users & teams feel they do most of the work and the core team could at least reduce the frictions identified or amplify some tweets - before spending real money on new users, new communities. (And yes, some frictions are reduced and goal posts will shift to the next issues - which is kinda good as long as the vibes remain healthy, constructive)
0 reply
0 recast
1 reaction