Full disclosure, this idea is for a Lemmy client I’ve been toying around with making. I’ve gotten a bit in my head and would to run an idea by everyone.

The challenge:

Onboard people onto Lemmy in a way that makes sense to people that understands Fediverse and explains it well enough that typical social media users will understand it too

My onboarding flow idea.

As you read this, think of CARROT weather, an app with a funny personality.

You are an alien creature exploring the Lemmy Verse, a federation of social planets. You must chose a home planet, then you are free to explore its local communities or any of the communities in the lemmy federation of planets

I might give the alien creature a name. TBD.

Is this stupid?

Remaining challenges:

I suspect a guiding the user to select the same “home planet” if they log out could be an issue.
Should I explain that not all planets live in the same Federation? I’m thinking no.

Would love to reinforce this with animations that really drive the idea home. Almost like cut scenes from a video game. But that is beyond my area of expertise, for now.

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[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Alternative: just send them to World and do not even mention the whole federation thing. Federation is essentially a power feature for a few people who care about it.

For normies, the real killer USP will be something much simpler: no ads.

[–] asudox@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 days ago (2 children)

That's bad. LW is already dominating the Lemmyverse. I'd say just send them to one of the top 10 or 20 instances at random.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I'd agree. And LW isn't a particularly nice place anyways. It's just the biggest. And if our core features aren't important to us, we might as well send users to any arbitrary place. That doesn't need to be Lemmy.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That's an idea too. But personally I think this worrying about the dominance of a single site is a bit misplaced, assuming that the server uses the same software and protocols. There's advantages in having some centralization. More resources can be put into the chosen instance to improve its reliability and its moderation. These need to be absolute priorities when trying to attract new users.

A certain encyclopedia site has a de-facto monopoly of the encyclopedia space. That's not a problem because it has the right governance and ownership structure. I think the discussion space could perhaps use a similar site.

[–] TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 days ago

It would be the nail in the coffin for me to block .world, and I imagine more instances would end up defederating

[–] Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

This. Pick and instance and roll with it. Most ppl won't notice nor care about the federation.

[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

What I could do is pick an instance at random and see if I can write that instance to app storage that persists on reinstall. That way, they don’t lose their account by not remembering what instance. That doesn’t solve the web.

The issue is password managers save username and password, but I need to save instance as a 3rd value. I wonder if I can prepend the instance to the front of their username in a way that the password manager picks it up, then slice it off later when they log in. But that’s kinda hacky.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Usernames include the instance, @moseschrute@lemmy.world

[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

~~I’m so dumb. That literally solves so many problems. I just have to confirm that works with the login endpoint. Thanks!~~

Edit: I’m not dumb. You can’t login with your instance at the end of the username. I also need to check if @ is a valid username character.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

You know, I would pick instances that aren't federated with hexbear or Lemmygrad.