Dan Romero on Warpcast

Dan Romero pfp

Stream of consciousness on channels 1. The overwhelming top complaint about the new channels is “I lost access” / “I can’t cast in the channels I used to” 2. The root of this is channels ran for a year as public topics / hashtags and we nudged people to cast in channels for a minor distribution boost. 3. When we launched channels last year, one of the fears was people wouldn’t cast in channels, since Twitter has tried versions of this and people were too used to casting on main / in the home timeline. 4. Farcaster user behavior was more nascent / “plastic” / early adopters. So we ended up getting most people to cast in channels. 5. The other reality is most people want to maximize distribution. So telling them “channels = more distribution” is hard to unlearn, esp. if you’re more of a weekly active user.

13 replies

16 recasts

77 reactions

Dan Romero pfp

6. We could have renamed channels to communities or groups. But then the issue is people would have said what happened to channels. 7. Most people can’t be bothered to read the manual / what’s changed. So part of my job is to repeat that 100-1000x across a variety of casts and replies. 8. Another issue is the original group of channels that got huge audiences as a result of the growth earlier this year. People see the big follower number and want access despite the new model not giving you a distribution boost / explicitly designed to not have canonical topics. 9. Removing the legacy channels wouldn’t be good since some owners did do a bunch of work in the model to grow them.

8 replies

2 recasts

42 reactions

Tmophoto pfp

So casting things to no channel is totally fine now and it shouldn’t go into a “black hole”?

1 reply

0 recast

3 reactions

chillyazz.base.eth🎩 pfp

chillyazz.base.eth🎩

Let’s say casting to channels doesn’t give you boosted distribution, but what if most users used to scroll more channel feed than their home feed. Isn't this a contradiction? Is there a scenario that specific no_channel cast of user A is “programmed” to appear in home feed of user B, but user B doesn’t scroll home feed and goes directly to channels to read casts so this cast doesn’t appear?

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Anna Morris 🎩🍿 pfp

Anna Morris 🎩🍿

I've read a number of casts about how the channels have changed but still can't wrap my head around it, still living in the topics paradigm. I don't get why I shouldn't cast a photo of my dog in /dogs or a photo of my dinner in /food with all the other similar content 🤷‍♀️

1 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Academy.base.eth ⌐◨-◨ 🔵 pfp

Academy.base.eth ⌐◨-◨ 🔵

@metawavestudio

Feels like discord’s invite to join mechanic. One of the biggest churns. But good for retention. If Q is networking and onboards people to channel they may churn. But when they come back it’s instant access to a familiar group. Could be bullish news 🐂

1 reply

0 recast

1 reaction

Pichi 🟪🍖🐹🎩 🍡🌸 pfp

Pichi 🟪🍖🐹🎩 🍡🌸

I joined Jan 28, 2024 and for as long as I can remember when I created a cast there was a pop up that literally said “add a channel for more views”, there was even a popular channel called “no channel” to put casts that didn’t fit into a category. It’s how I was taught by the UX to use Warpcast. This is a very difficult behavior to unlearn and it’s going to take people a long time to undo this behavior. We will get there eventually.

2 replies

0 recast

18 reactions

bleu.eth pfp

Its not about the distribution but the mental dissonance/ change is always hard. our plasticity deteriorates as we learn our -wrapcast- habits for months. in short, one had the mental model of casting on a channel adding a context layer to the cast. this is now gone under the new paradigm, it's hard to readjust accordingly that's all. I hope to acclimate naturally to it. and just use the /slashtag now

0 reply

0 recast

6 reactions

frederick pfp

personally, i love channels - i think they give a group of people the ability to collectively discuss certain topics. ---- for those that are interested in channel information. here's data on how farcaster channels have evolved over the last 5 months. https://warpcast.com/sgniwder/0x58aabca2

0 reply

0 recast

1 reaction

EdisonChen不是陈冠希 pfp

EdisonChen不是陈冠希

The official version of takocast app to be released soon will continue to use the design of permissionless channel joining, and we have added more designs in the management of channel content, such as users can post more discussion topics/questions and answers, which may give people a sense of Reddit. @tako

0 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Jason pfp

Thank for this. I wasn’t aware of point #3 Without that context it felt like channels were a 2nd class citizen for a while as the Warpcast pendulum swung back hard toward Twitter and away from Reddit communities at the time

0 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Marcelo Terça-Nada 💎🎩✨ pfp

Marcelo Terça-Nada 💎🎩✨

I'm very curious about how the channels and people's behavior will be in a month (when the channels will already be working with their new policies and users will be more accustomed to the recent changes).

0 reply

0 recast

1 reaction

meta-david🎩 | Building Scoop3 pfp

meta-david🎩 | Building Scoop3

Maybe as a soft rule, channels are more like the new “narrow cast?” Technically people outside the channel can see them, but the goal is actually to limit distribution to a relevant audience? Not increase it.

0 reply

0 recast

0 reaction

Ⓜ️4NU33⌐◨-◨🎩🟣 pfp

Ⓜ️4NU33⌐◨-◨🎩🟣

They're just first-world problems.

0 reply

0 recast

0 reaction