Lemmy world was growing at a decent pace leading up to July 1st, then had a big influx following the API deadline. However the last week in particular has seen a decline.

Engagement still appears to be the same, although a little lower than the start of the month. A few of the other instances i have been checking follow a similar pattern.

Do you think we will continue growing at a steady pace, or do we need another big trigger to get users to migrate? For Mastodon, it seems there’s a big trigger every other week to drive users away from Twitter, but with Reddit, the revolt seems to have quietened down considerably.

  • eggmasterflex@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    It does feel a little dead here. Right now it’s mostly memes, meta discussions, or Reddit hate. And the crowd is a very specific type of hyper aware internet dweller (myself included).

    Reddit isn’t worth using without third party apps, and it’s the only social media I used before Lemmy, so I’m spending a lot more time off my phone nowadays. I only check the daily top on Lemmy once a day instead of compulsively every time I touch my phone. Guess that’s a good thing.

    • glimse@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I blocked the major meme subs (coms?) and my experience here has been much, much better. Free yourself of last year’s memes and explore all the interesting links getting posted

      • Crisps@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        It would be nice if you could block a community directly from the front page without having to navigate to it first. Whole instances would also be useful.

        • glimse@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          I can do it on Connect - click the dots in the upper right and you can pick Block Community

          I wish there was an Undo button, though. Right below Block Community is Block Instance and I’ve clicked that a few times by mistake

    • El Barto@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      That’s a very good thing.

      And to be honest, as selfish as this will sound, I wouldn’t want Lemmy to grow too much - unless the eternal september crowd can be contained.

      • eggmasterflex@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I disagree. While I do like that the discussions and top level comments are not nearly as homogenized as Reddit eventually became, I’m really missing the niche communities. I wasn’t subscribed to any large subs on Reddit, so my feed was basically just a curated list of discussions for my hobbies. No memes, news, pop culture, internet drama, or politics. Right now, that’s just not possible on Lemmy due to the low population.

    • hellishharlot@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Once 3rd party lemmy apps get up to snuff it’ll be easier to switch. The .ml loss probably hurt us and for now a lot of redditors would rather complain than leave.

  • tj111@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    According to the Fediverse Observer, Posts and Comments are still growing day-by-day. It’s definitely slower growth, but as long as it stays healthy and active it will continue to have growth spurts as the enshittification of the rest of the web continues.

  • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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    2 years ago

    The exodus from reddit has stabilized and we’ve made this place our experimental home. That wave is over. We won’t get another wave until some of the kinks are smoothed out. If we have fewer shutdowns and better apps then I bet we’ll get steady growth. Also it might take a while for people to realize that lemmy is easier to use than mastodon, which gave federation a bad name for most normies.

    • sheogorath@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Yep, I’ve migrated but my time spent browsing Lemmy vs Reddit has tanked. Less than 10% of my previous time. This is due to still waiting for a Sync for Lemmy release and lemmy.world having issues with session. I’ve been unable to log in consistently since the hack.

      • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        You really should have more than one instance that you can sign up to, it’s a feature here. Voyager and Liftoff are pretty good in the meantime and you can switch instances easily.

      • CosmicSploogeDrizzle@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I’m on the sync for Lemmy private beta right now. You are in for a treat! 🤌 Google should approve the preload page any day now (ball is in their court). And then after that we’re looking at maybe a week until public beta.

  • Dazza@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    What’s the rush? Rome wasn’t built in a day. If people are happy (enough) with it now it will grow with time and at the pace it should.

    If things get too big too quickly then the cake will always collapse.

    I like the amount of content here right now and things will diversify gradually over time.

    Most people seem to forget their Reddit accounts were more than 8,9,10+ years old and a lot changed over that period.

  • Screeslope@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Actually I like having a “smaller” space. Reddit was already way too big, with an anonymous giant blob of users. I wouldn’t even have bothered writing an answer like I do now, since it would have been buried under 100s of other posts and comments within seconds. Sometimes smaller and slower are positive features, at least to me.

    • RampageDon@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      The only issue with the smaller space is the niche instances. One of the things I loved about reddit was finding communities for hobbies and interests. With something small you are sometimes lucky to have 20 people in an instance and then even less posting or engaging with content.

    • scytale@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Yup, I can be late for hours to comment on a post and can still get replies. If you’re late by an hour on a popular sub on reddit, you might as well not comment at all.

  • Mars2k21@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    I’m pretty sure most of the people who will come here as a result of Reddit are already here. All the new Reddit refugees are probably getting over the hype with Lemmy/Kbin and are finally not pouring so much time into the platforms. And as a result, slowing growth numbers and tapering engagement. Its pretty natural and nothing to be worried about. There’s still plenty of engagement here (just look at what happened to Threads a couple weeks after it came out).

    Regardless, we should focus on making Lemmy/Kbin a fully fleshed out platform and draw in users the natural way rather than relying on Reddit falling off for new users. At this point in time, the Reddit blackout is pretty much over.

    Might as well throw in my rant here, as I’m against this sentiment of not wanting Lemmy/Kbin to grow more and possibly even get mainstream. I get keeping out the undesirables of Reddit and other social media to prevent an Eternal September situation, but I also want more people of different backgrounds and interests rather than the same Reddit critic/tech enthusiast type of crowd. The great thing about federation is that if you want a smaller and more tight knit/topic centered community, there are smaller servers to join (not so much for Lemmy/Kbin at the moment since they are new, but it should get better over time). We can’t seriously want Lemmy/Kbin to develop well if we voice desires to keep people out and rebuild echo chambers. Lots of smaller communities and topics have little activity because there’s really only one group of people here right now.

    • Odusei@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I think we’re going to be seeing new waves of Reddit users on a fairly regular basis. Steve Huffman likes to roll these things out slowly in drips and drops, and it is very unlikely that this move alone will make reddit significantly more profitable to run. If he wants to do an IPO soon then he’s going to need to make some more choices that really annoy the users (banning porn seems like an obvious one, even though he’s said something like he’s fighting to keep porn on reddit). They’re going to keep cracking down in dumb and obvious ways on things and redditors will abandon ship just as soon as something they care about gets in some way messed with.

      Don’t forget that redditors have left reddit in large chunks dozens of times in the past.

  • Chickenstalker@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Lemmy, we, are not a corporation. In fact, exponential growth is BAD since the instance admins have to spend more money and work to keep it running. There is no financial benefit to chase the numbers. Let it grow organically.

  • Wooly@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Anyone who would’ve left Reddit has already done so, they may be a small increase when Boost/sync becomes available but I doubt we’ll see much growth. No one has ever heard of Lemmy.

    • guy@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      And certainly now that I’ve fully left Reddit, I’m no longer spreading the word of Lemmy there

  • thenewred@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    This feels like a clickbait news article headline. Any headline with a leading question can usually be answered “no”.

  • GroggyKon@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    It will always be like that. If 100 people come here for the first time on one day its great if 10 end up staying till the end of the week and lurking and out of those 10 maybe 1 would end up staying for longer. Thats just how these things work.

  • anewbeginning@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Don’t imagine for a second that Reddit is done pissing off its users. All it takes for lemmy to win is keep improving reliability and usability.

  • Squander@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I think there are 2 groups coming from reddit. 1- Users wanting a more niche community (think early reddit) 2- Users trying to turn Lemmy into present day Reddit. Theres a good amount of communities that are carbon copies of reddit subs. Personally I think that reddit has morphed into something toxic (Ive had a reddit account for 15 years). While its good to have growth, nobody wants to use a site that is so popular that Aunt Betty is chiming in with her love jesus memes.

  • Mastens@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I think that ease of use is the biggest hurdle at the moment. While yeah Mastodon has grown it’s also improved quite a bit. The onboarding is much more streamlined versus six months ago.

    Those barriers are getting better but are still there for Lemmy. Apps are starting to come which is fantastic but the users need to want to engage with the platform. Streamlined sign up, improved features and UI improvements will need to continue to evolve in order to grow the user base.