Reddit is profiting a lot from the network effect. By now this reddit is a known brand, has a lot of content is already there, has a lot of people (especially non-technical users) are already on reddit, and they’re there to stay.
All the other reddit alternatives, including lemmy and/or the fediverse suffers from:
Bugs (I love lemmy, but gosh, have you seen how buggy and sometimes unresponsive it is?)
The complexity of “servers” (don’t get me wrong, federation is the way to go IMHO, but it is confusing to non-technical users)
Lack of content
Lack of users
Everybody is talking about the Digg exodus, but nobody is saying that it didn’t happen in a day, it took ~1 to 2 years.
The complexity of “servers” (don’t get me wrong, federation is the way to go IMHO, but it is confusing to non-technical users)
I’ll admit the technical stuff is probably the most off-putting. Most major social media got where it is by being idiot proof. The whole set-up will need to be much more streamlined if they want to really dip into Reddits user base.
For example, join-lemmy.org should do this, IMHO, without any technicality. Just transparently register to random server, with a curated cross-servers pre-selected list of subscriptions. Once users are distributed across servers, people will just recommend friends/family to join their own server, then the centralization of join-lemmy.org won’t become an issue. But I might be utopian.
I agree with you Dr. Jackson, it would feel kind of like signing up for an MMO, and they usually just suggest you a server to roll a new character on. Once they sign up people will start to understand the whole “having a home server” thing. Honestly doesn’t seem to different from a modern MMO that has cross server travel, etc.
Lemmy is buggy and unresponsive for you? Huh. For me it’s both way more responsive and not buggy at all, kinda why I decided to give it a shot, instead of dropping social media all together…
The server thing isn’t that bad, just go to lemmy.world and make an account, really not that difficult.
And the lack of content and people is because people started caring about lemmy like a week ago…
Compare to old [dot] reddit [dot] com? Yes, a thousand times yes! When clicking on “Reply” or “Post” I see spinning a spinning wheels for ~30s. Sometimes, I’m looking at the front page of a community, and new posts rush in over the websocket from different communities. It looks like the websocket updates are absurdly buggy.
If you’re comparing the reddit’s redesign, I guess lemmy is about as responsive/buggy.
The server thing isn’t that bad
Because you’re a technical user. For the average user, it’s convoluted and unnecessary. (Again, I’m a huge fediverse supporter, it has to be this way, but I have to admit it’s not user friendly.)
I haven’t ever used old reddit, I’m comparing lemmy to the new reddit and it’s 100 times more responsive if anything. I don’t have to wait like 10 seconds after I click on a post every time, it’s amazin.
Reddit is profiting a lot from the network effect. By now this reddit is a known brand, has a lot of content is already there, has a lot of people (especially non-technical users) are already on reddit, and they’re there to stay.
All the other reddit alternatives, including lemmy and/or the fediverse suffers from:
Everybody is talking about the Digg exodus, but nobody is saying that it didn’t happen in a day, it took ~1 to 2 years.
I’ll admit the technical stuff is probably the most off-putting. Most major social media got where it is by being idiot proof. The whole set-up will need to be much more streamlined if they want to really dip into Reddits user base.
I think the solution is a central registration which selects a random server from https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
For example, join-lemmy.org should do this, IMHO, without any technicality. Just transparently register to random server, with a curated cross-servers pre-selected list of subscriptions. Once users are distributed across servers, people will just recommend friends/family to join their own server, then the centralization of join-lemmy.org won’t become an issue. But I might be utopian.
I agree with you Dr. Jackson, it would feel kind of like signing up for an MMO, and they usually just suggest you a server to roll a new character on. Once they sign up people will start to understand the whole “having a home server” thing. Honestly doesn’t seem to different from a modern MMO that has cross server travel, etc.
Lemmy is buggy and unresponsive for you? Huh. For me it’s both way more responsive and not buggy at all, kinda why I decided to give it a shot, instead of dropping social media all together…
The server thing isn’t that bad, just go to lemmy.world and make an account, really not that difficult.
And the lack of content and people is because people started caring about lemmy like a week ago…
Compare to old [dot] reddit [dot] com? Yes, a thousand times yes! When clicking on “Reply” or “Post” I see spinning a spinning wheels for ~30s. Sometimes, I’m looking at the front page of a community, and new posts rush in over the websocket from different communities. It looks like the websocket updates are absurdly buggy.
If you’re comparing the reddit’s redesign, I guess lemmy is about as responsive/buggy.
Because you’re a technical user. For the average user, it’s convoluted and unnecessary. (Again, I’m a huge fediverse supporter, it has to be this way, but I have to admit it’s not user friendly.)
I haven’t ever used old reddit, I’m comparing lemmy to the new reddit and it’s 100 times more responsive if anything. I don’t have to wait like 10 seconds after I click on a post every time, it’s amazin.
The old reddit was a gem. I still used it until the end. It had no javascript, it was Web 2.0 from the 2010s. It was great. The redesign was a sin.