Onboarding New Users
This document describes how new users are onboarded to the platform from a user perspective. For a technical overview of how new user's client join the network see Client Bootstrapping
Challenges
Onboarding new users to a new digital communications platform is a formidable challenge. Forcing new users to own and use cryptocurrency in order to use a new decentralized platform is a usability killer which blocks adoption. It is the platform's goal to attract normal users who are used to the ease-of-use convenience of centralized digital communications apps.
Onboarding Goals
We aim to provide a smooth and simple onboarding experience to new users who want to taste using the platform's communication apps, casually before committing to its paid features and its cryptocurrency and stable coin.
Onboarding Design
Service providers will be incentivized to have the platform adopted by early adopters in order to attract late adopters and to build users-trust in the federated service providers and the platform.
The platform software is designed so service providers may provide the service for free for early adopters.
So, instead of asking new users to establish a payment relationship with providers and to start paying for network services, providers are encouraged to provide a free tier of services to new users and the providers node software will fully support the free trial feature.
A user who uses a provider's free-tier service will only need to start paying after a certain level of use, typically just after he becomes a daily user of the platform. So, it is in the interest of the providers to offer the free tier in order to convert casual users to repeating paying ones.
The cost of supporting free-tier users is subsidized with the income from users who converted to full paying users after the free tier period has ended and by the cryptocurrency rewards paid to service providers for running cryptocurrency nodes and participating in the ledger consensus.
Summary
To summarize, the communications apps and the service provider by service providers to enable them for users will be free for a period of 3 months for all new users. Users will convert to paying users if they adopted the platform during the 3 three months of usage if they believe it is useful and beneficial to them. Cryptocurrency payments should not be part of the experience of new users. Service providers will still be free to charge new users but they will have to compete with providers who provide free service for a period of time in a free market situation.
Onboarding New Users
Early adopters can start using the platform using the free tier of services. This makes the onboarding process super easy.
Step 1. Set friendly name - personally identifiable or anonymous.
TODO: show a mock here.
A random nickname is already selected so users who just want to taste the platform can just click next without having to think about a new nickname.
Note that unlike any other comm platform - we don't ask for user phone number or any identifiable information. Sharing personally identifiable information is completely optional.
Step 2. Choose a provider from a list of available providers. Each provider on the list specifies the free tier terms of use, when the free tier expires, and the price of usage when the free tier usage expires.
The initial bootstrap process will only display providers who offer a free tier plan.
A random provider with a free tier is selected by default so user doesn't have to change anything - just confirm the recommended provider.
We could skip this step and automatically select one of the providers who are applicable for the user's id who provide a free tier. However, here we educate the user about the platform being powered by a federation of servers who follow a protocol. This is a decentralized social media platform... We are likely AB test between showing step 2 and skipping it...
Step 3. Start using the provider services for the apps provided by the platform. e.g. Create a status feed, join a group, 1:1 communications.
There will be 1 group for early adopters to join to experience the power of the platform immediately without having to know about any specific group with activity.
TODO: Show menu of apps and link for others to comm 1:1 with user.
- Join Early Adopter group
- Publish a status feed (like in Twitter)
- Communicate directly with another user (1:1)
There will also always be a welcoming user that the new user can start chatting with who will be responsive via chat on the first user's session. e.g. A decentralized MySpace Tom powered by modern AI :-)
The goal of the first session is for the user to be able to interact with at least another user in a group or via direct chat.