Problem is that a) new users don’t know that they can join communities across servers, and b) it is intuitive use start with the servers that a lot of people like.
Instance browsing and onboarding is probably the biggest challenge to Lemmy’s growth. The current experience either scares new people away, or encourages them to congregate on a limited set of instances.
If the registration process just picked a random instance for you, maybe something nearby, and assured new users that they can visit communities and interact with users across instances, very few would pick the biggest instance.
It’s also that lemmy.ml is the instance I’ve seen posted everywhere when it’s brought up, so naturally people would just sign up there instead of finding somewhere else.
Problem is that a) new users don’t know that they can join communities across servers, and b) it is intuitive use start with the servers that a lot of people like.
Instance browsing and onboarding is probably the biggest challenge to Lemmy’s growth. The current experience either scares new people away, or encourages them to congregate on a limited set of instances.
If the registration process just picked a random instance for you, maybe something nearby, and assured new users that they can visit communities and interact with users across instances, very few would pick the biggest instance.
I would be very sad if I was randomly assigned an instance in French (for example) because I don’t speak French.
It’s also that lemmy.ml is the instance I’ve seen posted everywhere when it’s brought up, so naturally people would just sign up there instead of finding somewhere else.
I applied to 3 instances when I decided to join and lemmy.ml was the only one that responded so there’s that.