We're seeing an increase from 53k active users at the beginning of July to 72k active users at the time of this post.
According to Lemmy's documentation, an active user is "someone who has posted or commented on our instance or community within the last given time frame.” Lurkers aren't considered active users, so basically these are content creators on Lemmy.
Sources:
It feels like a threshold has been crossed. Reddit related content is there but not so dominating as before. People are memeing other things, news and politics discussion is popping up, particularly popular posts from more niche communities as well, it feels like a much more healthy mix of content now compared to the beginning of July and especially compared to when I joined during the reddit blackout.
Absolutely, and it's been very refreshing to see discussion get broader and be filled with memes and other interesting content.
It will take a while to get somewhere close to Reddit, but if we talk about how it feels, I see it getting closer and closer day by day.
Considering how toxic reddit was getting, I'm okay if lemmy doesn't get close to it.
I rarely ever posted on Reddit, I'm trying to share my original content here now.
I think this has been the first week when I didn’t have to like put Lemmy down cause I was just seeing posts I had already seen. It’s nice to have a good feed to scroll again, and not feel like I have to deep dive posts and read every comment just to see something new. Feelsgoodman.
So much this. Exploring this place at first felt a bit empty so to say. Not that much stuff to see or read. Now there's tons of comments, posts and upvote activity that makes this place feel fresh and alive now. FeelsGoodMan indeed, and we're the oned giving it life.
I feel good reading about what you said about feeling good. You inspired me to say my first fediwords, and I wanted them to be about feeling good.
Thank you. It feels good to be inspiring others, as I was inspired by other's excitement and happiness to be here. Welcome
We have hit the critical mass; and that is a cause for celebration. A month ago when I joined, I thought that people would come, post a bit. See the limited content and leave. And I will admit it was painful to use Lemmy back then since a solid 90 percent of posts where about the site or were rips from Reddit. Fingers crossed for the future of Lemmy
I agree overall, though I'm not convinced the threshold has been passed or reached just yet. If this level of growth can be sustained though, it just might.
I wonder if this will be used as a case study for critical mass of social networks in the future. We have Tildes, Squabbles and Lemmy all competing for scraps off Reddits table and so maybe what we'll end up with is a fairly clear ballpark for what kind of active user count is needed to reach the snowballing point.
Is Tildes really ‘competing’? The invite-based signup obviously invites the most dedicated and ‘quality’ individuals, but I don’t see how that’s gonna help with critical mass.
As for Squabbles, I’m suspicious of yet another centralized platform. Honestly, I’m just sorta ‘done’ trusting wannabe billionaires.
All three are quite different, which actually makes following their respective growth more interesting to me.
I suppose it's fair that Tildes is not truly "competing" since they're invite-only. I don't have an account there but I've heard they want to focus on long-form high effort posts, so it's never going to be real competition on terms of size, though it will be interesting to see whether a site with that profile can grow enough to thrive.
I'm not a fan of Squabbles personally but some people obviously are since they're at 30k users soon. It's run by a single person, and I am a little worried about whether that persons individual preferences influence development too much and in general the way development is heading. I don't like the layout and I think the logo and name are a hindrance in terms of mass adoption.
On a larger scale though, Squabbles doesn't allow any NSFW, and that is the benchmark I'm most interested in. Can a site of this nature reach critical mass without it?
Hopefully we've not just crossed the activity threshold for people to stick around and shitpost but also for people to figure it's worth posting some quality stuff here
Depending on what type of quality content you're after, they might be more related than you think. Shitposting keeps the attention of the larger crowd, and the presence of a large audience makes certain high quality stuff feel more worth it to post.
I would imagine this applies for stuff like AMAs and posting OC artwork etc in particular but I'm sure more things than those.
I’ve been lurking, thanks to these users for providing content for me to enjoy while procrastinating.
As have I — this site has effectively wholly replaced reddit for me outside of search.
Holy smokes! Honestly I don’t know if we have or will make much of a dent in r*ddit, but at this point I don’t care. We’re building a new enthusiastic community and doing it fast. It’s a lot of fun.
Yeah, completely killing Reddit was never in the cards in all honesty. Creating legit competition is good for everyone and this is definitely an awesome place already.
If I can speak for myself I literally switched over today cos boost stopped working only yesterday.
Welcome, stranger. Make yourself at home.
I don't miss Reddit at all. The Lemmy community is wonderful and vibrant. Very reminiscent of the early days of Reddit
Honestly this has been my mindset since I joined Lemmy. I deleted my reddit account of five years yesterday. I have no intentions of going back.
It's weird these numbers are so small, it should feel dead. But there are a lot of great discussions and a lot of good laughs to be had here.
The level of engagement for the very small numbers here must be quite impressive.
I guess it's the old quality vs quantity.
I suspect the type of person who was motivated to move to Lemmy is the type of person who posts more often.
There are also people who are posting here more because they want to participate and see Lemmy grow. I know that is me and I can't be the only one. I've posted more on Lemmy than the last 3 years of Reddit combined im pretty sure. I always just lurked over there but I want this to go well so I participate more.
I used to have a high barrier of thought prior to posting but now I just post whatever bullshit is on my mind at that moment just so I can keep threads active. Like I'm doing now
That's exactly why I've always been a mere lurker. Maybe I should change that!
Super impressed with growth over the last week alone. I really was worried how I would adjust to not being on Reddit after Apollo died but I feel pretty encouraged now.
Me too! Replacing Reddit for me is not so easy but I’m getting better at using Lemmy. Still browse “popular” on Reddit in an alt to compare a bit but so far so good
I feel like the real headline here is that active users are about 8x what they were a month ago.
I like that lurkers are more likely to post comments here. No need to fear downvotes, hostility, or feeling like their comment is redundant.
To be fair, that is still going to happen. Everyone just needs to learn the phrase, "Don't be a dick!". ;)
That’s the thing, right? In trying to force everyone onto a dumpster fire of a main Reddit app, instead, they forced their MOST TECHNICAL and active user base to look at other options.
They even chased off their resources doing things for free, such as a massive bot detection network and large-subreddit moderation.
Everything is snowballing out of control and it’s barely getting started.
I’m waiting for the real protest. When a large collective of moderators decide to form an agreement to protest for compensation all at once. It could happen now that these moderators are seeing their friends being removed from self-created subreddits.
TL;DR: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Turns out the real protest was the Fedifriends we made along the way
While there is definitely a bunch of content popping up now thanks to to influx of actuve users, there still are some more niche communities that were pretty active on old reddit that i guess just can get to critical mass on lemmy and so are pretty dead. I hope that can change going into the future though.
If the community you're looking for exists but doesn't contain posts, the best thing you can do is to start posting yourself, no matter the quality you think your content has.
Humans tend to follow others, which leads to both positive and negative feedback loops. If nobody is posting, anyone discovering the community will think "oh this place is dead, no point in posting".
Being the first to break the ice and do something in a group setting is scary, but once somebody is doing it it's much more likely others will join in.
It's often uncomfortable to be the first person to start dancing to the music, but have you noticed how much easier it is for everyone else to join in when that one guy starts going off?
While this is encouraging, I wonder how many users have multiple active accounts, like I do.
Doing my part to add statistical significance. This feels like using Reddit a decade ago. And that’s a great thing. Lots of room to expand and improve. It’s the age of discovery for the fediverse, and I’m looking forward to seeing how things evolve.
welcoming the new home with open arms 🙌🏻
honestly I'm happy for know and use Lemmy platform, I thought that Reddit was a unique thing: but this is awesome, is its evolution
Ahh the future satisfaction I’ve given myself to me by being able to say 10 years from now “there were no posts! …no one knew what an instance was…” and hopefully it was still be good and that day im acting holier than thou
Good job team
Thanks for the content active users!
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