we need more users
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i don't have any data on other fediverse platforms at hand rn, but from memory IIRC mastodon has close to 1 million users, and it's by far the biggest chunk of the fediverse.
- mastodon is people-centric, where you have person/user as the central element of organization, and they can have posts.
- lemmy is content-centric, where you have communities as the central element of organization, and they can have posts.
AFAIK, content-centric networks are only lemmy and piefed as of today, modeled after Reddit. lemmy is bigger (i think) with 30K (active) users.
AFAIK, content-centric networks are only lemmy and piefed as of today, modeled after Reddit.
There's also Mbin, which I'm using. And NodeBB and Discourse if we go beyond Reddit-inspired and include forums.
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
Here's my approach: over the holidays I suggested lemmy to 3 people I know. I did so by emailing or texting them links to the following piefed feeds of lemmy communities:
The first is non-political, non-tech, low-meme communities (tho sometimes those topics sneak in.) The second is non-political, non-tech meme/humor communities. One peson said they thought it was neat, the other said they bookmarked it, the third didn't say anything. Dunno if they joined.
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Isn't this not much better than graffiti? I think advocating for the fediverse is great, but let's not plaster unnecessary and potentially illegal posters/advertisements everywhere.
If you want to display an appreciation for the fediverse, perhaps there are T-shirts with the fediverse logo?
graffiti is cool though
found a lot of cool projects and organizations through stickers. i prefer it over a big bright televisions plastering the city trying to sell you unhealthy things.
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We can make our decentralised network more popular by centralising it feels like an own goal...
It depends what you want. If you want lots of people to join, you need to make it easy to join.
That doesn't mean we need to get rid of decentralization. You could have a federated joining mechanism that assigned people randomly to any willing instance. Forcing the user to pick is the problem.
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
I tell people about lemmy and send them links. Mostly people don't care about anything. Abstract or remote things like "should a platform be owned by one asshole?" just doesn't even enter their brain.
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Is this strictly Lemmy or does it include related platforms like PieFed and Mbin? Because it seems like there has been some shift to PieFed
I thought this too at first: I expected Piefed to have been the main cause. But, it turns out that Lemmy monthly active users have dropped by around 30k, while Piefed has risen to about 5k
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
Honestly fragmentation is what keeps people that I recommend Lemmy away from it. They are used to the UX/UI doing most of the heavy lifting along with the more politically charged posts being there, my coworker who loves self hosting and tinkering tried to join. But was put off with how much more political things are on Lemmy and some Fediverse instances are and how hostile they can be with certain opinions. But I taught them how to curate their feed for more things tailored to their passions. But they've been on and off since there's multiple versions the same community which feeds into the fragmentation issue. That is just a viewpoint from me, I'm still fairly new to the Fediverse and Lemmy. (Which I love how diverse it is and how passionate people are.)
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It’s quality and quantity. The quality has held despite a drop in users. Just wait and let Reddit have another controversy and we’ll get another infusion of converts. Popularity may only threaten more bots and scams.
It’s quality and quantity. The quality has held despite a drop in users.
This is my experience too; I haven't really noticed a change. I still see about the same number of conversations and the same depth of conversation as I always have here. I was very surprised that the change in user count was so high.
I wonder if there's a committed/stable subsection of the userbase, that is mainly responsible for posts and comments, and has largely stuck around throughout? And then most of the swings in user count are from people who were less active to begin with?
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graffiti is cool though
found a lot of cool projects and organizations through stickers. i prefer it over a big bright televisions plastering the city trying to sell you unhealthy things.
I definitely do not find graffiti cool. It's illegal and antisocial behavior. The art can be cool of course (although it very rarely is in my experience), but the illegal act is not.
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
I think that if we want new folks, it would make a big difference is we organized the equivalent of a new member drive.
Currently, look at a default front page for your home instance and ask how enticing it is to a total newbie. There might be some good stuff, but it's foreign and overwhelming. You feel out of place.
Now imagine if the first Friday of January had been "new subscriber day". People on Reddit and Bluesky are taking about the fediverse and if it's any good. And on Lemmy there's a bunch of posts about finding the best instances and memes about being new on Lemmy. That's a much more inviting beginner experience, and it makes it more likely for folks to come back the next day.
I really think planning for bursts of new folks is the way to welcome people.
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Just talk up Lemmy, the issue is most people doesn't realize there's another option to the popular toxic trash fires.
But thats the same with everything, Mastodon and X as well.
Hell, even Governments like mine here in Australia use that shitty platdorm. Why there is no gov.au Mastodon server I don't know.
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I’m happy to promote it. I tried to get a few non-technical people to check it out. They felt it was too complicated. I’ve shared it with tech friends and coworkers who use Reddit. They’re aware of Lemmy to varying degrees, and are not enthused about moving to another platform despite hating Reddit.
I think it’s because despite Lemmy being a great alternative, it is more complicated and lacks the user base that users of other social media platforms have.
Bluesky is marginally more complicated than Twitter, but compared to Mastodon it is user friendly. Bluesky worked to create a dedicated, easy to use app that most users use.
Bluesky existed for a while before experiencing explosive growth. This occurred during moments of controversy with X. Bluesky capitalized on these moments, with champions on both platforms that led their followers to change, and there were mechanisms in place to bootstrap a user’s feed with the followers and topics that they had in the other place.
I think Lemmy needs to follow this model. There needs to be a Lemmy app that has a user experience as similar as possible with the Reddit app. It also needs champions that have main stream recognition (George Takei, Mark Hamill, etc.) that can be willing to make noise about switching from Reddit to Lemmy when the next controversy occurs. Repeat with more and more promotion by this evangelists, and Lemmy could grow.
too complicated
Nani? It's 2026, getting an account on some lemmy and start posting is nearly two orders of magnitude easier than trying to sign up to an email account!
That people are brainrotten due to excessive Fortnite and Instagram is,
unfortunately, not our problem. At some point, the answer is "just get better users". -
Just talk up Lemmy, the issue is most people doesn't realize there's another option to the popular toxic trash fires.
They know there are other options, but they won't join us on the fediverse. That's because no celebrities or influencers have moved to the fediverse.
And as for reddit users, most of them just like "huh? I like staying here" or "the lemmy devs are tankies and lemmy is a toxic tankies dumpster"
But that's okay with me, at least we have fewer toxic people.
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
I do have the idea of making an app it makes an account for one instance and uses that "log in with Google/apple id". Then people can learn later that you you can join other instances or log in via web browser.
The server can be simple lemmy or mastodon server and the app can just be variant of Voyager or mastodon app. Someone need to get rid of copyright material then hard code an instance.
I would do it myself but I can't get an AI to code apps
The other option is to have an app that browser based
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
Lemmy is more stable than what that graph makes it out. I'm not sure how easy it is to track fediverse since instances can pop up at any moment then grow or even the domain can change for an instance
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
The source data shows that while active users are down, the number of posts and comments are near all-time highs. While you need new users to help counteract churn, I think the higher post/comments count points to what I think a lot of people feel here: that quality seems to keep getting better and better.
Regarding how to bring more people in, I personally like how different lemmy servers have slightly different characteristics but each seems to appeal to larger groups. I see a future where there’s probably a small-ish number of large servers that cover broad groups of people.
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
Do comments help also or we need to post topics etc.
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too complicated
This is an Us problem. Download jerboa. Create an account on world. Done. Simple as Reddit. We make it complicated by explaining federation, options, different instances, etc. None of that matters to the masses.
I could not find Jerboa in the App Store. I use Voyager. We need Lemmy.
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Here's my approach: over the holidays I suggested lemmy to 3 people I know. I did so by emailing or texting them links to the following piefed feeds of lemmy communities:
The first is non-political, non-tech, low-meme communities (tho sometimes those topics sneak in.) The second is non-political, non-tech meme/humor communities. One peson said they thought it was neat, the other said they bookmarked it, the third didn't say anything. Dunno if they joined.
oh wow! feeds are impressive! kinda like the feature i requested here
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i would even say searching and finding are about equally important.
finding means that you stumble upon good content by accident, which is i.e. with content recommendation algorithms. We need a system that shows you similar communities to those that you're already subscribed to. I even made a post about this here.
Also we really need a better way to link to other posts and comments. I.e. it shouldn't bring you to another site but open the link on your site/app/viewer.
it shouldn’t bring you to another site but open the link on your site
PieFed does that, FYI.
