On join-lemmy.org, the project is described as “A forum and link aggregator for the Fediverse”. In the previous post, multiple people mentioned that this is not a good description. However I have a hard time coming up with anything better.
So please post your suggestions below, and upvote the ones which are both accurate and easy to understand for new users. Later I pick one of the most upvoted options for the website.
By the way the second title “Follow communities Anywhere in the world” will likely go away (see the pull request for frontpage redesign). After this is decided I may also make another post to get suggestions for the longer description text below (“Lemmy is a selfhosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. …”).
Edit: Please only post concrete suggestions in top-level comments, and use replies to discuss. And here you can see how a few other Fediverse projects do it:
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Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I collected the ones which subjectively seem best, here is the list for a quick overview:
- An open source discussion platform for communities.
- Lemmy, a decentralised discussion platform for communities
- Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums
- A decentralized network of forums
- Discuss interesting topics and join communities on the Fediverse.
- A discussion platform that can’t enshittify. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
Based on these suggestions and the discussion, the best option seems to be: A decentralised discussion platform for communities.
I will keep making more updates to join-lemmy.org based on this post and the previous one. Once that’s done I will likely make another post to show the results and gather additional feedback.
Drop the “Fediverse” verbiage, or even “federated”.
You may be speaking to potential instance admins but only those familiar with AP know what federation means. Otherwise it’s a term with no meaning.
Ironically, even “Lemmyverse” means more than “Fediverse”, so “linked together through the Lemmyverse” actually works better.
I would rework the other stuff, like the whole branding because all that hacker green doesn’t help in feeling the communities. And the images for the same reason… Also there are some features that are worthless listing like “you can have an avatar”
Also the censorship thing…
Let’s say that the homepage kinda reflects the state of lemmy people as a group right now and it’s not so nice imo
Focussing on being a clean forum with nested answers and human curated algorithm and idk, just pointing some low hanging fruits
On a side note I wonder if having the page as onboarding for users instead of explaining the software is the right target. Ideally it should be communities trying to outreach to have people on their servers, not the software asking to join people who use the software (?)
But I digress.
On a marketing level point of view, while we are clearly the small fish, it’s not bad to leverage being enemies of Reddit. Like in the past we’ve seen much more Apple vs Microsoft while now they ignore each other.
“Reddit if was not owned by venture capitalists who keep ruining your life” lol (too long)
Anyway, is there any kind of data to know if people actually join lemmy by joinlemmy site?
A community poll for Lemmy users would be good.
Youre right, the whole website could use an update and redesign. As none of us Lemmy maintainers are designers, its very hard to do this well.
There is no tracking/statistics on join-lemmy.org, but some new users mentioned it, and mentioned that the site could use improvements (which I’m doing now).
“Discuss interesting topics and join communities on the Fediverse.”
IMO it’s better than “link aggregator” because we don’t only share links here, but also images and text.
The best sentence will depend on the target audience. Is there a way to know who would be that audience?
Also, responding more directly to your question, I’ve got a frame challenge: What about two or three short sentences, like what Mastodon does?
A platform that is truly democratic. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
A platform where you’re truly free. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
A platform that can’t enshittify. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
That third one I like, because it’s a differentiator that Lemmy has in comparison with ButterflyX or whatever Jack the Twitter Guy is working on right now; Lemmy is not at risk of enshitifying, unlike ButterflyX.
Also, if it’s important to differentiate Lemmy from Mastodon or other Fediverse platforms, the sentences could start with “A discussion platform”.
Also, here’s a take where I tried to make no reference to electronics:
A bustling room filled with tables, each filled with people talking about what they find interesting, where the conversation topics are always chosen by the table and always changing, and where you’re free to set up your own tables with your own topics.
or, more succinctly,
A bustling room filled with tables, where each table is filled with people talking about what they find interesting, a room where you’re free to set up your own tables with your own topics.
Also, I just realized that every time that I edit this post you get notified becase I @ed you. Sorry!
And, finally, happy cake day, @nutomic@lemmy.ml!
The target audience is basically anyone who comes across Lemmy somewhere, looks for it via search engine and ends up on join-lemmy.org. So in other words, anyone really. Including people without any prior knowledge, nor technical knowledge.
On joinmastodon.org I only see a single sentence at the top: “Social networking that’s not for sale.”
Btw I didnt get any extra notifications from this comment, so no worries. And thank you!
Ah. Thanks for the target audience explanation.
What I mean with Mastodon is that, immediately after “Social networking that’s not for sale”, you see more sentences: “Your home feed should be filled with what matters to you most, not what a corporation thinks you should see. Radically different social media, back in the hands of the people.”
I think the technical details, such as open source and federation are not going to click with people who don’t know those ideas. However, open source and federation can create something that, for those people, is valuable.
So the question is: what does Lemmy offer that clicks with people who don’t know technical details?
This is up for discussion, of course. But I’d argue there’s “freedom”, “choice”, “human (and not corporate) communities”, “made for people, not for profits”…
That leads me to my suggestion:
A discussion platform that is truly free. You choose your feed, not a corporation. You choose where to set up your account, not a corporation. You choose what communities to be a part of, not a corporation.
or
A discussion platform that is truly free. You choose your feed. You choose where to set up your account. You choose what communities to be a part of. You choose, not a corporation
The bolded text is like Mastodon’s first sentence. The rest of the text is like Mastodon’s other sentences.
The technical details can be explained later in the page, just like Mastodon does it.
Ah yes there is the short description at the top. At the moment it talks a lot about “it”, good idea to make it more focused on “you”. How about this?
Lemmy is a discussion platform that is truly free. You choose which communities to be a part of and which posts to see. You can use extensive blocking and filtering tools to sort and curate your feed. You are in control and not a corporation, so there is no tracking, advertising nor secret algorithms. And you can follow the development in the open, or get your own ideas included.
I’d love to edit my previous post but I don’t wanna spam you.
As to target audiences, I think it could be helpful to specify the personas that we’re building the sentences for. Does the persona know what the Fediverse is? Do they know what enshittification is? Do they know what open source is? Do they have strong opinions about surveillance capitalism (even if they don’t know the word for it)? Or are they clueless regarding all of these topics?
My suggestion assumes some knowledge of these topics. To be clear, if I’d single out a suggestion of mine, it’d be:
A discussion platform that can’t enshittify. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
Lemmy - Free federated open source social media. Find your community now!
“You remember when people were generally nice on the internet?”
leave it be. there ain’t any one reason for the influx of new users or the absence thereof. do your thing to the best of your ability and if you happen to stumble onto something better along the way, that’s a job for then. for now, it does its job.
It’s really hard to know what to focus on. Here’s my best shot:
A discussion platform for communities.
Sounds good, but I would keep the Fediverse in somehow, eg “A federated discussion platform for communities”.
I think leave the federation out, it just confuses new people. People who don’t know what the Fediverse is won’t understand what federated means, and those who do understand likely don’t need to be told Lemmy is federated.
Still its the main feature. Plus the sentence is a bit short like this. Or mention that it is open source instead.
“Open source” would be good. From my point of view, however, people are unable to keep a thought. The shorter, the better in the marketing world, I would say.
My friends still think fediverse are for federal agents.
I very much like the simplicity of “A discussion platform for communities”. If one wants to highlight the one feature that sets Lemmy apart from others, then adding “decentralised” would do the job for me. As others have already said, I am not using “federated” because that can only be used when “federation” is a known word, which it absolutely is not. If you understand “federation”, then you probably already know about Lemmy. So,
“Lemmy, a decentralised discussion platform for communities”.
“Lemmy, a decentralised discussion platform for communities”.
I like this one the most out of all the ones I’ve read here up to now.
Not bad, but I personally don’t like centering the attention on platforms because then we are drawing attention away from the instances. By centering attention on instances, we normalize instances and allow them to thrive.
I’d say something in the direction of Discussion Instances for communities.
people don’t know what instance means. they aren’t all object oriented programmers.
Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums, allowing you to interact with a federation of sites where no single entity holds total control.
Edit: I think it flows a little better without “next-generation” so I removed it.
This one is too long, I would only use the first part:
Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums
Whatever works mate 💚
I’m not saying your sentence is inaccurate, but send that description to a regular person and it will either cause their eyes to glaze over or cause them to run in the other direction.
It is what it is. I didn’t want to spend all day thinking about it so I posted what came to mind. If it helps, cool.
Lemmy: the Mastadon of Reddit.
Absolutely no way, this will never work. It should be “Lemmy: the Mastodon of Reddit”
I would honestly drop the “link aggregator” part completely and just call it “discussion forum” or “discussion platform”. “Link aggregator” sounds pretty technical and like it just collects links which seems almost pointless. And the links aren’t even mandatory when creating a post.
Yes I agree, others have mentioned the same thing. The purpose of this post is to gather concrete suggestions, so please edit your comment with a sentence that you would use instead.
Communities, free from corporations.
Share and comment in communities, free from corporations
Lemmy has limited federation with Bluesky and Threads. Lemmy itself isn’t being given with a non-commercial license so if any Lemmy instance grows large it’ll likely monetise and become a corporation.
Lemmy: Wow that’s a lot of communists
The decentralized forum for countless communities
