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!

  • BaggySpandex@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Registration and discovery needs to be simplified tremendously for long term viability. But it’s a good start.

    • BecomingTheFalcon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Ryumast3r@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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. Lemmy = email in general, yahoo = lemmy.ml, Google = lemmy.world, etc.

        She immediately got it and has an account on some instance and has subscribed to a bunch of places.

        • ???@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yep, it’s email but with a nice interface and open ‘threads’ which we can post on.

        • BecomingTheFalcon@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • EddieTee77@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This is a great way to think about it! Thank you. I’ll be using this to help explain it to my friends

        • EddieTee77@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This is a great way to think about it! Thank you. I’ll be using this to help explain it to my friends

        • Adanisi@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          The email analogy has got to be the best way to describe the fediverse that I’ve seen so far.

        • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          Exactly. People last week were adamant about needing to spread out new users across different instances. 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. The federation concept should be introduced a bit later after they’re comfortable.

        • TimewornTraveler@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          yeah the people running this show need to understand that normies dont care about server hosting. they just want a feed with cat pics

      • ???@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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)…

      • ex_redditor@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • TheSilentOne59@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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

      • BaggySpandex@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, sure, anyone posting here at the moment figured it out. But I’d bet there’s tons of people interested but intimidated.

        • ToastyWaffle@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          You literally click the sign up button, fill out the form, get an email saying your application was accepted and then log in. What is complicated about that?

          Genuine question.

          • BaggySpandex@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The complication comes from things aside from the sign-up process. It’s understanding instances and navigation. People don’t know how it works. I.e. what is the equivalent of a subreddit? Who hosts it? Is it someone’s personal server? What if it goes down suddenly? Etc.

    • QuinceDaPence@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Lilnino@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Ziro@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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            1 year ago

            Agreed. The difficulty is in the initial discovery step. Early lemmy adopters will often refuse to recommend a specific instance to newcomers. But that confuses people. I know it confused the hell out of me.

          • ThePaSch@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            Before that setting becomes default, the “Hot” algorithm needs to get a major overhaul. It keeps spamming the top of my front page with posts that have zero comments and around ~1-10 upvotes as the results from federated instances start trickling in.

    • cerevant@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And sadly, the software seems to be little better than proof of concept quality. It seems poorly architected for functionality, usability and scalability.

      • Stuka@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • McBinary@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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. 🤷‍♂️

        • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • dumpsterlid@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Without diversity we are just a bunch of assholes yelling at each other about things we all already know.

          • jtk@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            It doesn’t really require tech savvy, just a few minutes of reading. Anyone smart enough to have something interesting to add to a conversation can figure it out easily enough.

            • Spzi@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              People can be smart in very different ways. I can navigate unknown and complicated webpages just fine, but am totally lost when it comes to crafts or many other areas of expertise I might not even be aware of. It all boils down to what you’re used to.

          • BaggySpandex@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.