First of all, thank you @ljdawson@lemmy.world for pursuing Sync for Lemmy. It’s honestly given me so much hope for Fediverse adoption to actually happen. I do have one thought to share with you to help with success:
Come July 1st pretty much all Sync users are going to open the app due to muscle memory or due to a lack of awareness of what’s happening.
If they see “this app doesn’t work any more” or similar, they are simply going to delete the app and will likely go to the official Reddit app. The opportunity to engage them will be gone.
However, you can use it as a huge marketing opportunity if on that day it says something to the effect of:
- Sync for Reddit doesn’t work any more due to the API changes…
- However Sync for Lemmy is in development
- Here’s how you try Lemmy (and/or kbin) in the mean time…
- Keep Sync for Reddit on your phone to receive a notification when Sync for Lemmy is launched
Even if they don’t try Lemmy right away, if they get a notification from the old app saying the new one is ready they will possibly try it at that time (but you need to convince them to keep the old app on their phone)
But the clock is ticking - after July 1st the chance of engaging someone in this way is very low as they’ll likely uninstall the old app. IMO getting this teed up is of a higher priority than developing the minimal-viable-product for the new app.
You likely already have this in the works, but wanted to throw it out there incase you hadn’t planned on it already. Thanks again for doing this - I am so hopeful and excited for a viable alternative to Reddit and Sync could be such a huge piece in making it possible!
Originally posted to /r/syncforlemmy but figured I should put my money where my mouth is and post here as well. After all, this is the future!
I’ve noticed myself and others getting downvoted for mentioning lemmy. Other posts mentioning discord or whatever just get ignored.
I don’t think it helps to go looking for arguments though. Some people will stay on Reddit. Some will leave. Que sera, sera.
I had a better than expected, but not completely groundbreaking post that you can use as a template. It’s for a local subreddit, which are understandably small and generally will just go where the other site content is. Remember that users are not going to quit reddit because of a single sub, they need all their subs or a good number of them to be replicated here before it becomes viable. That work is being done, but I think the best thing you can do is plant the seed of having an alternative community for people who want to leave. If reddit becomes a ghost town, the people downvoting will just move by themselves. Change is hard.