Just looking at the current number of lemmy.world subscribers (115k) , lemmy is very, very far from where it needs to be for long term success as a real alternative to other social media sites. There are literally hundreds of subreddits on Reddit that have more subscribers than all of lemmy.world, which is the largest instance. So far the only place I’ve ever seen lemmy mentioned is on Reddit, and even then only in certain subs like r/CenturyClub, which isn’t even public. I think the key to getting new suscribers is for people on twitter, instagram and facebook to start mentioning lemmy on a regular basis and using clickable lemmy links in their posts.
I have been doing this where appropriate, but always run up against people telling me it’s too complicated and it’ll never work because nobody can understand it. I think usability for the less technically minded people is huge and should be a priority before any widespread adoption will be able to take place.
BTW subscriber growth is also very important if we want lemmy to have a wide variety of good quality content in the future. Speaking as an active poster, the main reward for me is when a post I’ve made get lots of upvotes and comments. I’m willing to keep posting to lemmy for now even though most of my posts here get many fewer upvotes and comments compared to Reddit. However, if several months from now the post response is still at the same level, then my motivation to keep contributing content to lemmy will diminish. It’s the same reason a community with, say, only 20 subscribers gets few if any quality posts while a community on the same topic with 2,000 subscribers gets many quality posts.
Just looking at the current number of lemmy.world subscribers (115k) , lemmy is very, very far from where it needs to be for long term success as a real alternative to other social media sites. There are literally hundreds of subreddits on Reddit that have more subscribers than all of lemmy.world, which is the largest instance. So far the only place I’ve ever seen lemmy mentioned is on Reddit, and even then only in certain subs like r/CenturyClub, which isn’t even public. I think the key to getting new suscribers is for people on twitter, instagram and facebook to start mentioning lemmy on a regular basis and using clickable lemmy links in their posts.
I have been doing this where appropriate, but always run up against people telling me it’s too complicated and it’ll never work because nobody can understand it. I think usability for the less technically minded people is huge and should be a priority before any widespread adoption will be able to take place.
BTW subscriber growth is also very important if we want lemmy to have a wide variety of good quality content in the future. Speaking as an active poster, the main reward for me is when a post I’ve made get lots of upvotes and comments. I’m willing to keep posting to lemmy for now even though most of my posts here get many fewer upvotes and comments compared to Reddit. However, if several months from now the post response is still at the same level, then my motivation to keep contributing content to lemmy will diminish. It’s the same reason a community with, say, only 20 subscribers gets few if any quality posts while a community on the same topic with 2,000 subscribers gets many quality posts.