As a strong supporter of open-source and community-funded projects like Lemmy, which prioritize serving users over investors, I believe Lemmy has significant potential, and that’s why I am here. However, it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form. Despite the surge in users following Reddit’s API changes, Lemmy continues to primarily attract tech-savvy individuals, politically left-aligned users, and those accustomed to old Reddit. For Lemmy to reach the broader average general audience, meaningful changes are necessary.
The rise of Bluesky demonstrates the importance of ease of use and a user-friendly design. Its polished and familiar interface is a key reason for its growth and appeal as an alternative to platforms like X/Twitter. This same ease of use is what Mastodon lacked, leading to its initial hype fading quickly. The average user is unlikely to adapt to something that feels complicated or unfamiliar, and this challenge also applies to Lemmy.
As someone who started as an average Reddit user and became more tech-savvy over time, I can confidently say that first impressions matter. When users first visit lemmy.world, the default UI is often enough to discourage them from staying. Most will not explore the homepage sidebar to explore, figure out and switch to one of the alternative UIs available, which is unfortunate because a better UI could make a huge difference.
This is why I propose that large servers like lemmy.world adopt Photon UI as the default web interface. Photon is currently the best and most mature alternative UI, offering a visually appealing, modular design that feels familiar to users of new Reddit. It makes excellent use of screen space and provides customization options like compact and cozy views. Unlike some other alternative UIs, Photon is actively maintained and ready for widespread use, although in no way is it perfect, this can also help bring in more contributors to the project development.
While it is important to continue offering other UIs as options, I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user. First impressions are crucial, and the current default UI has turned off many potential users. If we want Lemmy to succeed as a true Reddit alternative, we need to prioritize user experience and accessibility. Thankfully today, Lemmy still continues to be THE biggest Reddit alternative, while our userbase is still considerably smaller than Reddit, it’s the biggest of any alternatives, and Lemmy continues to somewhat be in the spotlight for those seeking alternatives, we can’t let growth stagnate, it’s high time we make the platform more welcoming and appealing for the average joe.
EDIT: The image I attached is from photon.lemmy.world, which I just realized is using the outdated version of Photon, I have updated the image to the updated current photon version from phtn.app. There are a lot of improvements made.
As much as i love photon, i don’t think it should be the default. The default lemmy ui is pretty slick and lightweight, even if it is kind of bad. Photon can be sluggish, and overwhelming for some.
I think they should just improve the default UI (which they are currently), and leave it for the user to decide.
People who prefer old Reddit often say the same thing about new Reddit. While old Reddit, or in this case a barebones, simpler UI, is lightweight and “slick,” the reality is that if we want Lemmy to grow beyond its current base of tech-savvy users, we need to consider a different perspective, one that focuses on the needs and expectations of the average user.
For example, despite old Reddit being lighter and having its loyal supporters, 80 to 90 percent of users still prefer new Reddit. As someone who used to moderate on Reddit, I can confirm that the majority of traffic came from new Reddit, even though old Reddit was still available. This highlights how a more modern and user-friendly interface is often what appeals to the majority.
From my personal experience as someone who primarily used new Reddit, Photon feels far more intuitive and familiar compared to the default Lemmy UI. That said, I am not claiming Photon is perfect. However, considering that most alternative UIs are currently niche and their development relies heavily on a small group of contributors, Photon stands out as a mature and robust option.
While it is encouraging to see Lemmy’s developers working on improving the default UI, the project is still in its early stages and may or may not succeed. Why start from scratch or bet on something that is just beginning development when we already have a well-developed alternative like Photon? By adopting Photon as the default, we can take advantage of an existing solution that is in good shape, has significant potential, and can continue to improve with more widespread adoption and contributions.
This approach would ensure that Lemmy becomes more accessible and appealing to the average user, while still leaving room for users to choose other UIs if they prefer. First impressions matter, and adopting a polished and familiar UI could make all the difference in attracting and retaining new users.
BTW those who want to can still change to alternative UIs, nothing will stop them from doing so.
Also that lack of polish reads as sketchy to a lot of people with only basic tech literacy. I’ve had trouble getting other Healthcare workers to join and they always look at me sideways when they first glance at the layout. I actually agree that making something slicker looking the default would pull more normies without having to sacrifice a customizable interface for the people with enough know-how that they’re probably already modding it anyway. A big part of reddit for me was commiserating about my Healthcare job and while some of us are tech literate a lot just… aren’t.
I also prefer the new (new-old, the current one sucks) reddit UI and love photon, and i don’t think it’s too far fetched of an idea to want it as the default UI. I think it should be left to instances, so for example, lemmy.world could use photon for the default, yet lemmy.ml could use the default lemmy UI.
I’m still a little concerned over first impressions of a new lemmy user, when they try to use lemmy.world on a weak device, and realize it is slow, or laggy, and could sour their opinion on lemmy as a whole. A non tech savvy user might not completely understand the idea of lemmy, or clients, or even instances. They’d just blindly choose lemmy.world and assume that’s the “main” instance. (I also could just be underestimating the average user’s intelligence, lol.)
That’s why i brought up performance as a main point to why we should keep the current lemmy UI. Maybe if photon is optimized and is more stable, i could completely agree that it should be the default.
I just use the Voyager app, which has a great UI, with no need to visit the website at all.
I should mention this is mainly for desktop users :), but even for mobile users, people usually check the website first before downloading apps.
Voyager also has a web version web version
I love Voyager on mobile but feel constrained by it on desktop. (It reminds me of using Gnome, which is not my personal preference.)
it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form.
Good! Lemmy doesn’t need to become big, especially since the less techy masses will likely put loads of load on privately hosted instances without bothering to donate.
The growth could actually kill Lemmy.
I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user.
Please no!
Eh, i agree that lemmy shouldn’t grow too big (Reddit is an example of why, feels like a circlejerk of bots and reposts), but the userbase feels too small currently. On a lot of communities, The activity is 1-2 posts a week, which makes it feel quite dead. And I especially miss the niche communities that you could join on reddit, for small games or obscure topics.
I think the goal should be slow continuous growth. It’s a social media tool and that requires enough engaged users so it doesn’t feel dead. As you pointed out, we’re not there yet. I also think a huge jump in new users would be detrimental. Without central leadership of traffic and hardware Lemmy requires longer to respond to changes in user load. Nothing would be more detrimental to adding long term engaged users than an influx of new users that caused infrastructure overloading.
We’re very spoiled with reliability these days. People are not interested in unreliable access to their doom scrolling (myself included, unfortunately).
Yeah I remember instance hopping when I first joined Lemmy, part of the flood of new users when Reddit announced the API changes that killed mobile apps. Not one instance was working 100% of the time; I signed up on at least 4 different ones and had to keep swapping between them.
Oh, definitely. Lemmy may be smaller than most communities, but it feels organic, and more tight-knit. You see many recognizable users, there are a lot of great threads, and i think the community is pretty healthy. Other social medias may have millions of active users, but they are more focused on collecting as much internet points as possible and making their post hit off, instead of interaction with people. And it makes it feel repetitive and artificial. Main reason why i quit twitter, tired of seeing the most subpar posts from a random user with 100k likes.
And yeah, we’re more spoiled nowadays, unfortunately. When i joined lemmy, i was bored due to the low amount of daily posts, unlike reddit. I still think it’s a problem and we need more MAU, but we should also somewhat get used to it, too. Probably healthier for all of us.
Niche communities happened naturally over time on reddit as well. You need to grow the larger base communities first, since you’ll be gathering the numbers there. Then you branch off. The only other option is for you yourself to build up the niche communities by posting more often, it’s a lot of work.
I mean, yes. And I also like the oldschool interface, it does have its iffy corners but the overall layout and UX is great.
That said, there’s a difference between “avoid (success at all costs)” and “(avoid success) at all cost”. We should be making lemmy better for the purpose of making lemmy better, we shouldn’t be changing it just to please random people so they come over.
We’re at 44k monthly active users https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
100k or 200k wouldn’t kill the platform
I disagree. We want all people and all perspectives. Federarion needs to become the default to put enough pressure on the big tech companies to get all people on a common protocal. It is the ideal that web3.0 promised to be.
Also we need to monitise lemmy so that running an instance is profitable enough to support the usrload. I think we can do this via lemmy gold make it monero based where a golded post/comment get split between instance/community/post/comment. Align profit incentives with making federated media better for everyone.
For many users (including me), monero / crypto / web3.0 integration would be an immediate red line.
Regural payment methods would work just fine, this is a mere forum after all. If you are that concerned about people linking your username with your identity, then you might as well just skip gold / silver.
Ik people hate crypto and thats valid but monero is an objectivly better way to tranfer value than fiat currency.
Federation is literaly web3 philosophy. Fiat will destroy the decentralisation we have tryed so hard to create.
One thing to consider here is that photon as an spa does not offer great support search engines. Which can help drive organic traffic to lemmy. While, some may see it as a net benefit, from your point of view it’s an great disadvantage.
I know I’m tech-savvy, but I actually enjoy the fact that Lemmy (and the Fediverse) doesn’t hand everything to me easily on a plate. The hunt for new interesting communities, my long well curated block list, setting up Lemmy apps exactly to my preferences is part of the fun.
If someone handed me a fully configured Voyager app on day one, I wouldn’t have had all the exciting experiences trying a bunch of apps to find the best one for me, learning how to block instances and communities, learning how to correctly link to communities and users, finding new ways to discover communities.
All this stuff is part of why I come back here everyday. A ready out-of-the-box solution is kinda boring.
A lot of the comments including yours sound gatekeep-y to me but I have to say I kind of feel the same way.
Everyone who has come here and stuck around found their way through the jank and is joining an exclusive club of high-quality discussion. Like Linux, once you can get past the basics, you can customize your experience nearly limitlessly, but it takes effort, trial and error to get to something you like.
