Farcaster

PSA 

Clearing up a few misconceptions

1. Casting in your home feed gives you the same distribution as casting in a channel.

2. Everyone can read and reply to casts in channels

3. Most people will appear above the fold with a reply.

4. We changed the way channels work to shift them from hashtags to communities.

5. If you’re annoyed by the changes, just cast in your home feed. You’re not missing out on distribution or discovery casting in a channel.

"I thought if before, casting in channels showed my casts to people who follow the channel but don't follow me?"

1. We tried it, didn't work; this was measured through 100% of users in an A/B test for the home feed on Warpcast. People *engaged less* with content recommended from channels they followed but people they weren't following. 

2. What has worked is boosting individual accounts and casts with engagement from a lot of people you follow

3. So any version of claiming that people were getting a lot of engagement from content post in channels is not backed up by the data.

4. There were a small % of users visiting channel pages. But vast majority never left the home feed. When you asked them why not, the answer was channel pages were uninteresting and in many cases spammy.

Working on Farcaster and Warpcast. Longer thoughts at https://dwr.email

> 4. There were a small % of users visiting channel pages [...] were uninteresting and in many cases spammy

They *were* spammy back when spam algo was still in flux and channels weren't curated.  Now they are less spammy of the excellent work by Warpcast team

So, imagine
- anyone can cast in any channel
- only members casts go to main channel feed (default view)
- separate tab allows for non-members (call it "All")
- keep the spam algo improving
- that way people can have their channels cozy and also topic/hashtag ("All" tab)