Jotting some quick notes I’ve observed so far from running /m/scifi for a couple of weeks and getting to 3K subscribers:
- Even though most people will return to Reddit and it’ll be ‘business as usual’ - the seeds of destruction are already in place.
- No one is coming to a place where there’s nothing to read / think about / interact with
- The thing that made Reddit great is content - we came there for content. So when it comes to asking ‘how can we grow Kbin?’ the answer is simple: It’s the content, stupid.
- Reddit has tons of free content - in the spirit of being a #chaoticgood, we can grab the best parts of that content and use it to make Kbin an interesting, thoughtful place to be
- Creating spaces with well-thought-out rules to encourage inclusivity, collaborate, and mutual respect. It’s working out well for /m/scifi
- Redditors know what’s up - they’re pissed at Spez but there’s not much they can do about it. They’ll vote with their feet if we give them a new place to come to.
Thoughts?
Kbin really needs an app to become daily for most people I think. I’ve spent a lot of time on Lemmy because of Jerboa and the fact this whole thing came about because of Reddit screwing over app devs means people will be looking for that be alternative.
55% of website traffic comes from mobile devices.
Apps are definitely the “killer app.”
Reddit screwing over app devs also potentially means app devs free to use their skills for Lemmy/Kbin.
I’m looking forward to a proper app with more functionality, but for now the progressive web app does work fine and I have it on my home screen on my phone in the place where Baconreader used to sit (and open it multiple times each day).
I don’t mind it on the browser. It doesn’t feel that different from RiF when you play with the settings. I could use an infinite scroll.
Supposedly Sync is coming
This is true ! I do enjoy using the PWA app though
if other fedi projects are any indication, likely a unified API will develop. Mastodon’s API is supported by most other fedi projects, so you can use mobile apps interchangeably. If Lemmy becomes dominant then kbin would have to implement an API to match.
If kbin gets an API, maybe apps like rif is fun can be ported to it!
kbin has an API (docs here), but it isn’t working right now