1y ago

Lemmy is popular nowadays, yet is losing its active users

Similar to Mastodon's spikes last year, it seems. Anyways, there is data to think about. Source

You're viewing a single thread.

475 comments

Sites like reddit, Instagram, and twitter make the cognitive effort to go from signing up to using the app as low as possible. The users' experience is considered from before they even have an account. They make sure you don't ever see a blank page or feel like you're battling the app to find content.
Lemmy actively puts roadblocks in the way. Server choices, the hoops you need to jump though for server memberships, and highly fragmented communities all but ensure that people will face issues when signing up.
Sadly, a lot of users here feel that because they had to overcome them, so should everyone else. Until that changes then the self-defeating cycle will continue.
- They really really need to do something about the confusing account creation process. Most people ended up on Lemmy.world because they assumed that that was the site you had to use. They were never directed to other instances.
  What they need to do is have a lemmy.com website and when you create an account on it it just creates an account on a random semi-popular reliable instance. To spread load. If everyone uses the same platform then the robustness of the platform goes away and we are essentially back to a single point of failure. But now in a more complicated manner.
  
  We're getting there, still in the very early stages here. One thing I've noticed is how extremely techy the initial community here was, something I personally collided with like a bit of a wrecking ball. People in general, not just techy people, tend to assume others will approach things similarly to how they naturally do. So they don't necessarily always see problems that others might stumble over, ahead of time.
  Now that we've started growing more rapidly, these problems of scale, where they now have to anticipate problems they did not have to anticipate before, all are coming due. So, growing pains.
  This is why I have not been inviting people to Lemmy yet, I've been waiting until it's more polished for the mainstream. It's also why the graph is trending down. We're literally not ready yet for the mainstream, in many, many different ways.
  Also useful to remember, we're only done getting big growth spikes if spez is done pissing off reddit. I doubt he is.
  
  Yes, agreed. A single point of entry, supported by multiple instances. If the accounts are distributed across them based on availability and capacity, it would immediately fix two of the biggest issues Lemmy faces.

475 comments