Post by @stani • Hey
Lens users, what do you think if every app on Lens would have its own content feed?
Each app has its own content culture. Pros? Cons?
Comments
- for sure, different content and niches are needed for different apps! but i think it will become more diverse when apps can onboard their own audience directly. right now, most of the top of the funnel for onboarding is through lens, so every app ends up having the same audience. moreover, all the apps use the same lens apis, so the content curation is also the same.
so, basically, these two things would create more diverse content across the apps:
1. apps onboarding their audience directly to their app!
2. apps using their own data curation algos instead of using lens apis!
but slowly lens ecosystem is getting there!
- This was one thing that attracted me towards Lens in the beginning.
Lenster for Feed.
LensTube for Videos
Orb/Buttrfly for Media + Feed
However, now Im inclined towards what you said, Lens needs to dissolve in the background for the apps to thrive.
Buttrfly is building is own Zora/Sound on top of the Lens layer , thats a general direction that every app could cater to a particular niche audience, functionally as well as culturally.
- For me, that "non fragmentation" of content was one of the most interesting parts about Lens. Post a video on @lens/tape, people see it on @lens/hey and interact with it.
Instead of splitting it per App, I would prefer having more "communities" (like on Orb). Where people with a shared interest/vibe come together, but it doesn't matter (much) which interface they chose for doing it.
- the same feed for all apps, for sure! Segmented content makes more sense in created communities, whether with gated content or not. And of course, also in apps aimed at just one "type" of content, such as music, videos, collectibles or apps aimed at some type of curation. 😃
- I guess general purpose apps should provide the option to show the same (= plain) feed.
Besides that every app should feel free to create its own feed imo. Or no feed or whatever :-).
- Maybe their own content feed catered to the user but I feel like a global feed would lack desirability
- Let's Keep it the way it is but there should be more rooms for more focus community contents.
Eventually, everyone will spend much time in communities that align with their interests which the cross-platforms posts allow one to catch up with trending general contents.
- Against. They should innovate with algorithms rather than content
- Great idea ⭐
- Would be great! Quick iteration to find pmf from your early adopters
- I think each app should have its own content otherwise they’re all just an aggregator of content and basically UX clones of each other. It’s better for content to be unique to different apps. I think if the app chooses to have the content onchain, then it should be user owned, that’s important to me. But it’s not important to me to spray my content across multiple apps. Someone can build a tool for that and let users decide.
I use Lens because I love the idea of a shared graph, but would love to see more innovation outside of aggregation of content.
- Interesting idea. We had these lens app spesific topics on phaver before for over a year but now put all the content other apps content under one ”from other lens apps” feed
- This defeats the purpose of decentralized social. Lens would become merely a toolkit for de facto centralized apps with a single sign-on on top.
Maybe apps should have an option to close off their feed and as a result forfeit access to the public graph? In that way Lens the protocol would widen it's client base while retaining the public graph. Users would then decide which model works best. However, negative fragmentation effects must be evaluated. E.g., a scenario where the shrunk open part grows too slow to catch steam, while none of the closed feed apps pop either.
- Also as we can’t support paid collects without getting banned from app store would want to filter those out from phaver feed as just confusing to ppl
- After sitting on this for a while, here are some thoughts: https://hey.xyz/posts/0xe30c-0x01a8
- Against
- I think having siloed feeds on each app would fragment engagement with Lens users. IMO a social platform needs users to engage with content, build conversations around that content, and have the widest range of people access the conversation. Otherwise, content that might have the potential to go viral just dies on the timeline.
If a user doesn’t want to see the same content, then this is where custom algorithms come into play. Let the user decide what culture they want to curate on their feed!
The pros of an app having their own culture content could be that certain users might gravitate towards those apps to have a unique vibe or experience. But the cons would be that devs would be catering to a niche user base that might not even stick around.
I think that app developers were excited to start using Lens because they didn’t have to worry about generating and retaining a user base. And another key highlight of Lens for the user was the possibility to curate custom feeds by using algorithms of their choice (not to mention seeing your content move around from app to app).
So, rather than front-end devs trying to build their own unique content culture, they should be focusing on how to provide a seamless, well-functioning, and enjoyable user experience. Also, they should just accept the fact that users are not going to use their app exclusively - that was a HUGE draw for Lens right out of the gate.
Lens needs to be more than just a protocol that devs build on - it needs to be the platform for a global user base that is building a strong web3 community. The apps are the gateway to that community.
- Interesting idea. We had these lens app spesific topics on phaver before for over a year but now put all the content other apps content under one ”from other lens apps” feed
- Yeah that would be great because then you would have reasons to open the other lens apps to see what they're upto ,new content discovery and all
- Nostr does something similar where content is routed or filtered by the apps. The protocol does not care what is posted but the apps serve as the filters to only show the content that fits their criteria.
Lens Sports
Lens Gaming
Lens Photography
Lens Adult
Lens travel
Etc
- It's absolutely ok I think, Lens is the protocol so each app should have their own policies, etc.
- All content are same on Lens and every app. If not, something went wrong.
- I think that if each app introduces its own token, such as @lens/kaira 's, and different systems for distributing them in the community, it could lead, through gating, to a situation where, yes, the content is visible throughout Lens, but its content can be seen by, for example, $ 100kaira holders. I think the introduction of tokens inside the application and gating ($tokens and NFT) could be very useful.
- The apps do have overlapping content.. It would keep things more organised I guess 🤔
- Lots of pros we have teh best one is content available at one place is equivalent to other, but we have other side too duplicacy of content.
- Should be good.. Otherwise there's no reason to use different apps to see same things
- No, it's not fair for all apps
- 100% agree with this point
- Nope, disagree
- i only use orb
- there is already enough separation in the world fam, can we just try united this time
- yeah it's necessary