First and foremost, before the usual argument happens, I know that more is not necessarily better.

Having said that, it would be better if lemmy’s userbase were much bigger. There are many, many, interesting communities that are basically dead. We need a bigger userbase to drive some content to those communities.

If person A wants to discuss topic X, but there are barely any people with whom to discuss topic X, person A will go back to the usual for-profit corporations to do just that. This is obviously not good, for obvious reasons: just look around.

And an equally important point: for profit services, such as reddit, need to die. The userbase create the content and a select few get rich from it? Fuck them.

So the question is:

  • In your opinion, what can we do to increase the userbase?
  • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
    10·
    18 days ago

    If I want to read discussion about a new movie or game that all seems to be on reddit, so I guess the lesson is to try starting that sort of thing here and hope it picks up. With a smaller user base you have to accept that individual posts may not get any traction though. I do think having discussion other than Linux and whatever Trump is going on about this week would help to grow the platform.

    • Nanowith@lemmy.world
      2·
      18 days ago

      Honestly variety is the spice of life, and keeping up with the zeitgeist is half of why people like to be online. I think this is a very good point!

  • whaleross@lemmy.world
    9·
    19 days ago

    Honestly I’m happy the Fediverse doesn’t have the Reddit user base. I’d rather try recruiting people from various forums on specific topics to the Fediverse. Like homebrewing (alcoholic beverages) is still happening in independent web forums that I think would be neat if they got federated, but I don’t think they in turn are interested in a Fediverse user base.

  • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
    7·
    18 days ago

    the biggest hurdle i see right now to expanding the threadiverse is how often people here are just absolute assholes to each other.

    • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
      31·
      18 days ago

      That tracks with every other platform though. I think the big hurdle is that it seems more complicated to get into since having independent instances is so different than everybody else.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    19 days ago

    First and foremost, before the usual argument happens, I know that more is not necessarily better.

    Having said that, it would be better if lemmy’s userbase were much bigger

    Ok Rick James…

  • razen@lemmy.world
    5·
    18 days ago

    The main hurdle is onboarding. Normal people wont understand federation. All they know is Login with Google, that’s it.

  • Formfiller@lemmy.world
    5·
    18 days ago

    Can we pool some money together and advertise somewhere or put stickers at coffee shops in big cities. Some of my other thoughts are to have influencers plug it, put adds on blogs especially hobby blogs and niche blogs if that’s who we’re trying to attract.

    • beSyl@slrpnk.netOP
      2·
      17 days ago

      This would not be such a bad idea, honestly. Or just some small stickers that people place on their laptops.

      However, I feel like we should see who comes on top, lemmy or PieFed. I feel like piefed might be our best option tbh. The lemmy devs don’t seem to be open to ideas, not to mention their whole stance on politics.

  • FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world
    4·
    19 days ago

    Best thing you can do is make your own communities for topics that we haven’t already got one for.

    Also going on reddit and just going “join lemmy join lemmy join lemmy” over and over again probably helps, right?

  • Jarix@lemmy.world
    51·
    18 days ago

    First thing is gain enough support in the presumption that increasing userbase is a desirable outcome.

    Chasing bigger numbers for bigger numbers sake is one of the biggest problems with capitalism

    • floppybiscuits@lemmy.world
      2·
      18 days ago

      Honestly memes on lemmy are orders of magnitude greater than ones I see on reddit. If growing user base makes the memes more lame I don’t know if I support it