Why Does Nobody Use Lemmy?
This is not going to be a blogpost about "Why do people still use Reddit instead of everyone moving to Lemmy?". I noticed that even with Mastodon users, who already understand and like the advantages of decentralized platforms, the usage of Lemmy is extremely small, and more people use Reddit. Most of them haven't even heard of Lemmy. To be fair, the Reddit usage also seems to be fairly low.
like this
nullspace
in reply to squirrel • • •undree
in reply to nullspace • • •nullspace
in reply to undree • • •Naming something after a famous person means you're starting off on the back foot in terms of SEO and brand clarity.
Digg worked well because it came out of an era where adding a second G was enough to sound techy, but it also played into the dig/bury aspect of voting. Reddit works because the name is "read it" while also being a unique string you couldn't mistake for anything else. Both have a lot going for them that Lemmy just doesn't.
eneff
in reply to nullspace • • •nullspace
in reply to eneff • • •That's what your post reads like to me.
eneff
in reply to nullspace • • •That's what your post reads like to me.
nullspace
in reply to eneff • • •Ten Thousand
xkcdatro_city
in reply to squirrel • • •"nobody", nearly 50k people.
Asking people on mastodon if they use lemmy also doesn't make much sense to me. I don't use mastodon because it's not threaded, people on mastodon probably don't use lemmy for a similar reason. I'm not sure how many people use both threaded and unthreaded platforms, but it feels to me like the two layouts attract different people.
AmyAye
in reply to atro_city • • •cinoreus
in reply to AmyAye • • •AmyAye
in reply to cinoreus • • •César Hinojo Hinojo
in reply to squirrel • •lambalicious
in reply to squirrel • • •Crozekiel
in reply to lambalicious • • •It's named after a famous musician that was active for like 30+ years. Half the results when you search "Lemmy" are him, not the platform. Oh, and he had an unfortunate collection of Nazi memorabilia - he claimed it wasn't because he liked the nazis just that he liked the look of their shit...
FOSS often ends up with bad names unfortunately. People never know what is going to become big when they start a project and they might get a giggle out of the name when it's a small project. By the time the project becomes big enough that the name might actually start being a problem, it is also known by that name and changing it could significantly impact how many people keep using it. Unfortunately, a name change is often a touchy subject for any project.
lambalicious
in reply to Crozekiel • • •Crozekiel
in reply to lambalicious • • •Coca-Cola literally contained drugs when it was invented... The name wasn't in conflict, it was extremely descriptive. I feel like that analogy only works if we find out that Lemmy was originally created for the sole purpose of discussing Motorhead.
Like, you asked where these posts complaining about names of Lemmy (and other FOSS projects) comes from and the above is the explanation. Just because you disagree doesn't mean all the people that do agree are a psyop or bots, lol.
percent
in reply to squirrel • • •If I had to guess: the culture here seems unusual, and unwelcoming — sometimes even hostile — to diverse opinions (i.e. people who aren't similarly unusual).
I haven't met many people IRL who would fit in here. For some visitors, that's okay (I don't fit in here, myself), but I think most people would just move along and forget that Lemmy exists.
Being federated, Lemmy is technically capable of being more diverse. It's a bit ironic that it still ended up being like this.
Also, some images don't load. I just ignore those, but still people might be put off by broken UX
pomp
in reply to percent • • •percent
in reply to pomp • • •