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 think grabbing more users right now is of utmost importance. If the fediverse needs to grow, now is the chance.
Mastodon had a big spike when Twitter went awol. And nows the chance for lemmy.
You’ll be surprised by how many redditors you can convince to join Lemmy by just mentioning Sync.
It’s very effective. Understandably so; I’ve always browsed Reddit with Sync and it’s probably the single best app I’ve ever used.
Here’s a quick summary of Lemmy/kbin mentioning Sync and Artemis that I find to be very effective to copy/paste to threads with confused redditors. I suggest others to do the same.
I’ve been using the Lemmy app and finding myself quite unhappy with it, but stopping to ask “Is this app actually deserving of my ire, or am I just grumpy because it’s not what I’m used to (i.e. not Sync)?”. I think it’s mostly the latter. Don’t get me wrong, Jerboa is nowhere near the level of polish or functionality of pretty much any of the main 3rd party Reddit apps (yet?), it’s just that I’m a creature of habit (and so are many others)
Since we’re only talking about a week timeline here, would it be possible to update the sync app with a list of popular Lemmy instances and a way to view your favorite one from a web view within the app? That way people could still use sync in the meantime while native features gradually get rolled out.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to say that Sync for Reddit is shutting down, if you would like to follow new projects by LJ, please click here for Patreon or here for Lemmy or something along those lines.
Honestly, I think it needs to be more aggressive than that, as bad as that may sound.
Something like:
"Reddit’s new API policies has made it impossible for Sync for Reddit to continue.
Click here for Sync for Lemmy, an alternative to Reddit, instead. You will be notified when it is out in [estimated time for prototype]."
Would probably be more effective if the app remained the same, and you didn’t need to download a separate Sync for Lemmy from the playstore; do we know which one’s happening yet?
I wonder if this would even be legal though.
Is Sync for ios as well?
Sync for android would be great, though since there’s already an android app which works (enough), an iOS app should be the priority IMO
