SimilarWeb has just released traffic estimates for June. According to these estimates, Reddit’s traffic has seen a 3.36% month-over-month decrease.
For comparison, here’s how traffic has changed for other popular social networking websites:
- Discord.com: +0.51%
- Twitter.com: -1.65%
- Instagram.com: -1.35%
- Facebook.com: -3.18%
- TikTok.com: +0.77%
- Pinterest.com: -2.27%
- Youtube.com: -2.02%
Source: https://www.similarweb.com/website/reddit.com/#overview
That’s a disappointingly low number. I was honestly fully expecting closer to 30% drop.
I think that’s wildly optimistic that it would be that high. Most of reddit is lurkers and a large number of people who are using 3rd party apps were still using it anyways.
I think I would be surprised if it is in the double digits. With that said, I wouldn’t expect it to have been in full force in June. Many people kept using it until the apps ran out. But I do think the people that really care is a relatively small group.
What I would love to be able to see is:
-The change in numbers for the official reddit app
-The change in traffic through July
-The change in content creation through July
I honestly expect the numbers to be 5-10% but I doubt we’ll ever get reliable numbers for most of it.
True, and you’re absolutely right. As much as we’d love it, Reddit would gain nothing for telling us how much damage we caused, and we’re likely never to see the numbers to prove it. I was fairly optimistic with 30%, that’s more a wish/dream rather than reality. I might be satisfied if we see 5-10%.
I have a habit of taking casual glances at other people’s phones (don’t @ me), and I can tell you I can count the times I’ve seen someone use an alternative Reddit app on one hand, where as the official Reddit app is semi prevalent.
It’s really just us nerds that make the move to somewhere else, casual users would never have bothered.
I think it will be a long time until you can find casual lifestyle advice on Lemmy, if ever. Most people have a hard time grasping what the fediverse is, why it’s supposed to be good and figuring out how to follow people on mastodon. We’ll stay niche for a while
I’ve found the people I know that use third party apps are much more likely to post links and content as opposed to just lurking.
I think it’ll take time but as things settle a bit I wouldn’t be shocked to see a lot of uses spring up that draw in users without them really being aware they’re even using the fediverse.
For example one of the main draws to Reddit was always the tech knowledge of the users but us nerds are all here now so it’s only a matter of time before Twitter and Facebook have screenshots of Lemmy posts rather than Reddit posts, all the rabbit holes that used to lead to Reddit will start pointing here.
There are already interesting bots being written for communities here, I saw a chat GPT one and no doubt anyone making a fun toy is far more likely to design it to work here where it’s not going to have API access destroyed and everything is more flexible - I know that next bot I write will be for lemmy rather then Reddit which I’d normally use. I might even get round to writing the community RPG game that was going to work on its own subreddit, I could have it as a custom instance instead and allow members of federated communities to play.
There’s so many more possibilities and as they evolve they’ll slowly draw people over and when they have their toe in I suspect meny will stay. I’ve got a hundred ideas for things to make and with ai coding helping I’ll probably actually get round to finishing a dozen of them before the end of the year - I went to try new ways of visualising discussions, of working together and against each other to reach a common goal, I want to make games and mobile apps that work with communities in interesting ways and this is the perfect platform to do it on so I know I don’t be the only one
An RPG with its own instance sounds super cool!