From 2,997 active users across all lemmy instances at the beginning of June, the number increased to 52,797 by June 30th. Source.
An active user on Lemmy is "someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame.” Source. That means lurkers are not counted as active users.
We’re really building something here!
Image Transcription: Line Graph
[A line graph is shown depicting the number of users on Lemmy over one month’s time. The horizontal axis lists the date of each reading, with an interval shown for every day. The earliest date begins at ‘2023-05-28’ and the most recent date is given as ‘2023-06-26’. The vertical axis measures the number of users, with intervals marked at every 5,000 users, with an upper limit of 50,000 users. There is a green trend like and a blue trend line graphed from plot points at every horizontal interval. The green line is labelled ‘Active users monthly’ shows increase over time. The line remains flat at approximately 1,000 users from the ‘05-28’ date mark to the ‘05-31’ mark, then begins to gradually increase to approximately 10,000 users, starting to show a trend similar to the beginning of an exponential growth curve. At the ‘06-11’ date mark, the line begins increasing at a relatively steady rate, with the last marked date showing just over 45,000 users. There are two points in which the line shows an apparent indication of levelling off in user count, before then showing a sudden increase in users again, with neither of these points significantly impacting the overall upward trend. These points are at the dates ‘06-16’ and ‘06-21’. The second graphed line, the blue line, is labelled ‘Active Users Half year’ and starts at approximately 3,000 users, but follows an almost identical trend shape as the green line as it increases approximately parallel to it. The blue line ends at around 48,000 users at the final graphed point.]
^I’m a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^
Good human
Very cool! Thanks for doing this!
good human
Registration and discovery needs to be simplified tremendously for long term viability. But it’s a good start.
From the outside looking in, the whole model seemed needlessly complicated. So it’s like there’s a LOT of reddit.coms over here? But they’re all the same? But also different? What’s the difference? Which one do I sign up on?
But then I get here and realized it doesn’t really matter that much, since you can more or less use all of them regardless of which one you sign up for.
Something about the way users try to communicate what Lemmy/Fediverse IS, is the complicated part. It’s like everyone wants to jump straight to the more technical details behind how the model works; which probably scares off a lot of the people who just want a place to pop in and talk about their hobbies.
I just told my fairly tech-unsavvy partner the email analogy:
You sign up on Google, I sign up on yahoo, my bro-in-law runs his own from a server in his house. We can all email each other and the email looks mostly the same no matter who reads it, but yahoo isn’t Google isn’t my bro-in-law.
She immediately got it and has an account on some instance and has subscribed to a bunch of places.
Yep, it’s email but with a nice interface and open ‘threads’ which we can post on.
This is probably my favorite analogy for it so far, at least as a high level overview. I kind of made the same connection myself and that’s when it clicked for me.
This is a great way to think about it! Thank you. I’ll be using this to help explain it to my friends
This is a great way to think about it! Thank you. I’ll be using this to help explain it to my friends
Yeah, there should be simple “how and where do I sign up and find my favourite communities”. I feel like there is lots of tech talk here because lots of tech stuff needs to happen before these sites are ready for the full moderation suit and for supporting the most basic aspects of Reddit communities (like flairs)…
The thing that’s weird to me is that say I like football (soccer). I’m sure there are dozens of “instances” have a soccer community, but which one should I follow? It seems like this architecture fragments the user base too much.
Yeah, this scared me off for weeks because I didn’t want the hassle. Turns out it’s way easier than those dorks were making it seem!
yeah the people running this show need to understand that normies dont care about server hosting. they just want a feed with cat pics
Everyone wants a feed with cat pics.
Exactly. People last week were adamant about needing to spread out new users across different instances. I understand the rationale, but let’s be honest, casual newcomers don’t really pay much attention to that. They just want to see a website a lot of content before signing up.
Did we not learn from mastodon? The federation concept should be introduced a bit later after they’re comfortable.
Agreed. I feel like the apps in development are trying to make the signup process a bit easier though, so we’ll see how that goes.
Which apps? In many of them I didn’t even see a way to register.
I’m currently using the beta for Memmy on iOS. I think it’s prepping for an App Store release today. It’s a good foundation and has promise.
Is it available for download?
Here it is on TestFlight for the beta - https://testflight.apple.com/join/6jaRU6rD
I do believe I got an alert today that it’s prepping for an App Store release later in the day.
Question; cuz I’ve been using Memmy too, and I haven’t had a chance to read into it much. I don’t have the ability to upvote/downvote/reply to individual comments in the app. I’m not sure if it’s a bug on my end or if he just hasn’t had a chance to implement those features yet. Do you have that same issue with it?
I had that issue occasionally. Killing the app and restarting fixed it.
if you’re in iphone, go to wefwef.app with safari and save it as an app, it’s infinitely better than default
Memmy for iOS has an onboarding screen starting with ‘do you know how fediverse works’
Most of the devs that worked on 3rd party reddit apps are remodeling to support lemmy. So we are about to get some really good quality apps in the next 4 to 6 weeks.
Is there a list or overview of these hopefully coming apps? I am using Liftoff right now but it’s en beta and lacks a lot compared to Apollo. Would like to test these out when they are coming. Until then I’ll just use Liftoff and suggest features for them to add.
Yep there is a list: https://lemmy.world/post/465785
I keep seeing people say this but honestly registering is really easy. It took me 5 minutes to figure out how to create an account after leaving reddit
Well, sure, anyone posting here at the moment figured it out. But I’d bet there’s tons of people interested but intimidated.
I keep seeing this said about lemmy but kbin was identical to any other site. So I looked up what the process is for lemmy and, aside from like 2 glitches to look out for it was exactly the same.
Please tell me what is difficult.
My issue was I didn’t know where to go to sign up. It took me a little time to understand the fediverse, then I had to figure out what instance I should sign up for. After that I started hearing some instances weren’t accepting new accounts but didn’t know if that was a thing everywhere or only one instance. I consider myself above average compared to the general public when it comes to my capabilities with the Internet and computer tech in general, it’s never taken me days to understand stand how to sign up for a website like this before.
It does seem simple now that I’m here and understand things better. It’s just a learning curve; this is unique to any website\forum\whatever I’ve played with before.
You have to consider that your technical proficiency is not the same as everyone else’s.
I think you’re right insofar as onboarding is concerned. Once you’ve registered, though, Lemmy is relatively straightforward to use. Changing your user settings to display posts from ALL federated Lemmy instances on your front page helps with discoverability. That should be the default setting, but it isn’t. That setting is associated with the “Type” parameter (found just below “Theme”). It isn’t terribly obvious.
And sadly, the software seems to be little better than proof of concept quality. It seems poorly architected for functionality, usability and scalability.
UX is on par or better than reddit back when I joined. Mobile apps are certainly better.
Similar experience to reddit and apps, albeit slightly clunky.
Don’t get me wrong - I think it is a good start, but there are some significant concerns:
- My biggest UX complaint is that the method for connecting to a federated community is just…wrong. Do something completely unintuitive (paste a glyph / URL in search), get an error (not found), wait a while and hopefully it will start working. I can’t fathom who thought this was a good idea, and I’m shocked that apparently Mastadon does it the same way. We’re losing a lot of interested users at this step.
- UX issue #2 - which may be fixed in .8, can’t say - is that there is basically no error handling. Any server error or user error results in the spinning wheel of death. Sometimes refreshing fixes it, sometimes it doesn’t. For example, did you know there is a 10k post limit? If your post exceeds 10k - you guessed it - spinning wheel of death. Try to sign up with a user ID that’s already taken? Spinning wheel of death. Log in without verifying your e-mail? Spinning wheel of death. You get the idea.
- I’m not an admin, but apparently that the software isn’t really designed for cluster scaling. I think the assumption is that more instances solve scaling. It doesn’t.
- Functionality wise, there is very little control for mods. Pin, delete, ban. Edit the sidebar. That’s it.
These are problems that can be solved, but the next step will be to see where development leadership steers the platform. It is how these problems are solved that will decide whether Lemmy or Kbin becomes the leading platform.
I disagree. At first I was frustrated that people were having so much difficulty with such a simple process, but after a while I adopted the mindset that if they’re too stupid to figure out something so mundane then I don’t want them here anyway. 🤷♂️
Eh. This is kind of a weak attitude.
Yeah. I don’t want just tech savvy people here. I want people with non-tech hobbies like gardening and home improvement to join too.
This is the important part. I’m part of the big homebrewing (beer) community on Reddit, as well as some local subs for my home area. I don’t think a ton of those users can figure it out as easily as someone like myself.
Without diversity we are just a bunch of assholes yelling at each other about things we all already know.
Reddit refugees flooding the border
Truly though. Less than 3k users a month ago and now over 50k and counting? Basically everyone here is looking for a reddit replacement. Hopefully those 3k other people don’t mind lmao
Guilty.
I come seeking refuge from the shit storm that is reddit leadership.
That will be interesting to see how this graph behaves after 1st july
I imagine it’s going to be a near-vertical spike.
I can’t wait for this place to blow up. Definitely missing some of my niche subs but hopefully they will appear at some point!!
I can’t wait for this place to blow up
Not literally though. But I have to say it’s giving me nostalgic feeling of old reddit when it would struggle to keep up with inflight of new users/activities.
The community here feels significantly more wholesome than Reddit in recent months. It’s nice seeing a lot of meaningful conversation without hate and spam.
I don’t want to sound like a cynic but so was reddit in its early years. We were all rallying for a cause on the great digg migration. It felt great to be part of that movement (or whatever you want to call that). I do hope Lemmy keeps this spirit up for as long as it can.
The community here feels significantly more wholesome than Reddit in recent months. It’s nice seeing a lot of meaningful conversation without hate and spam.
Any examples? Why not start them yourself… Im sure others are thinking the same thing and searching for them. Especially now
I’m new here. I have no idea how to start a community. Any tips?
I think you just go to the top of the page and click “Create Community.”
Im brand new here as well, but my guess would be to start posting stuff about whatever your topic is, links etc so people who run across it have something to participate in. I imagine its kind of a labor of love in the beginning but if its not super niche I’m sure you’d show up on searches.
What are you looking to make? It may already exist on another instance and you can just sub there if it already has users.
working on bringing mine over. hopefully nosleep comes with - they’ve been on the fence
Uh. I wonder what might have caused that…
The real challenge will be seeing if the servers can handle the new traffic. It’s already a bit on the slow side loading posts
imo the servers have already been having trouble from time to time. Get all kinds of weird issues. Would be very willing to see like a monthly donation goal in a sidebar or something
I would donate for sure
From the lemmy.world front page:
Donations If you would like to make a donation to support the cost of running this platform, please do so at the mastodon.world donation URLs: https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld https://patreon.com/mastodonworldToday I’ve started a recurring $5/month donation to lemmy.world. Scaling up infrastructure to meet demand is expensive, and they need as much help as they can get to offset their costs. I’ll most likely bump it up to $10 a month if the software continues to improve the UX and performance. I encourage everyone that has the means to, to even make a one time small donation to your local instance (if possible), as these first couple months will be critical in the growth and sustainability of this federated community.
they can’t it seems, some of them
I am so new here and have generally no idea what’s going on, but I an excited to be here at the beginning.
My only question is if I am required to wear pants?
just created an account. looks familiar but janky
same, hopefully it’ll become less of a mess later on
I recommend trying the connect for lemmy app. It is the most polished way to browse I have found so far.
I recommend trying the connect for lemmy app. It is the most polished way to browse I have found so far.
Speaking of janky, voting doesn’t seem to actually work for me?
Might just be performance related? Are posts and comment threads loading slowly for you, by chance?
Yes, everything is loading very slowly. The voting doesn’t seem like just slow loading, though. When I click the button nothing happens at all, with or without a delay.
I was having the same the other day, but sure enough the votes were going through eventually. A better pending indicator would be nice for sure.
I kinda love the jankiness it’s reminiscent of how the internet used to be.
This is a blast from the past. It takes me back to 13 or so years ago when all of us Digg users made the migration over to Reddit.
That’s not a bad thing, though, as this place has promise! Hopefully increasing numbers of Reddit users take the plunge as the site continues its death spiral.
It’s funny yeah I remember the redditor panic when all you guys showed up, who’d have thought we’d all end up being refugees together
I thought the site was unusable (on mobile at least) until I started using wefwef. It’s literally just Apollo - to the point that I’m not sure it’s legal lol. Highly recommend it or some other client over trying to use the raw website.
I’m hungry, man. Can you come to me?
easy to say when people are hosting this out of their own pocket and devs putting on countless hours of free labor to make this work. even ads are not rolled in yet to find resources to host ur sorry ass and ignorant comment.
Refugee here. Been poking around trying to find the right place in the fediverse for ages, while lurking on reddit for pics, memes, and news. The impending death of reddit apps was just the push I need to finally make a decision. Happy to finally be here and looking forward to the expansion of a decentralized decorporatised internet
First day, checking in. So far, so good.
Idk exactly what I’m doing but I’m having fun!
Happy to be part of the sudden stress test of your software and infrastructure! June 30 hit and I needed a place to go. Found Lemmy. Found Connect for Lemmy. I don’t know if this is the future for a Reddit-like service, but I’m pleased to see some real activity and I’m glad to be a part.
Connect for Lemmy seems the best all around Android app so far. Have an eye on Boost for Lemmy and a few others.
We’ll see how this goes as usage ramps up.
That’s what I’m using here. It has a few bugs (I can’t turn off swipe gestures, and pull down to refresh never works), but it’s minimal, to the point, and easy on the eyes. I think Boost for Lemmy has a good shot at being the popular client when it’s ready, but for now, Connect seems to be stable on my device. I do like the web desktop UI.
I can’t be too critical though because the whole community and user base is so young. If the Lemmy.world stats are any indication, the app userbase must be exploding too, testing paths that just haven’t been tested much before.
My first comment!
Just heard about Lemmy from a random tweet. I was banned from reddit after ten years!
This feels nice. It’s cool seeing the precise up and downvote counts. Feels like ancient reddit.
The biggest issue with this website is the lack of basic explanation of how it works. Imo, the moment someone visits this website for the first time, a pop-up should appear explaining what this is, and how it works in maybe one simple paragraph at most.
Thank you for welcoming us to the Fediverse. I hope we can bring more good than bad. People are so fragile and flawed, but we can try to not be assholes or own at least own up to it if we do.
❤️ Free hugs! ❤️
Hopefully a viable Reddit replacement here
I’m optimistic. Seems to be catching on quicker than I’d expected.
