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. There are currently almost 200k total users spread across the top 10 non-bot lemmy instances.
We’re really building something here!
EDIT: Looking for a lemmy app? Here’s a whole list: https://lemmy.world/post/465785
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. 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.
This is a great way to think about it! Thank you. I’ll be using this to help explain it to my friends
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.
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.
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.
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
Came here after years of using RIF. It was a good ride, let’s boost Lemmy.
Keen to see what those numbers will look like in July.
Glad to be of service
Nice!
Suppose this post is as good as any to comment on. According to screentime on my iphone Apollo was by far the most used app on my phone.
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.
O shit dat me
Uninstalling RiF after using it for ~7 years was so surreal and heartbreaking. Now wefwef.app is my new best friend 🤝
My first post. RIP RIF.
RIP RIF 😭
Just made an account
Me too 😊
Is this the last Reddit hug of death?
I don’t believe so but I do think they will see continual decline after this. I’m envisioning more of a repeat of MySpace where everyone just loses interest.
Curious to see the July numbers… :o
Aye
Hopefully a viable Reddit replacement here
I’m optimistic. Seems to be catching on quicker than I’d expected.
I’m doing my part!
Now that I see you doing your part it feels bad if I don’t do it as well, here goes me getting out of lurking.
