while im here: does anybody actually know why lemmy.world grew the fastest out of all of the instances? its not the "main" instance like .ml, not a safe space like beehaw, and a normal general instance like itjust.works. im curious why out of all places, .world got the main influx
Because on the main Lenny website world shows up as recommended. The other recommended sites want users to put an email in addition to a write up on what they can offer. Which totally kills interest for any new people.
I think the main Lenny website is to blame here tbh. It pushing users towards a few preset instances that are not really new user friendly.
Personally speaking, at the time I made this account it seemed one of the better open, general instances with a home domain that wouldn't be kinda clunky to tell others about. Folks I'd suggest this to wouldn't care about the shit just works jokey name, but they'd probably be a little annoyed at the whole sh dot itjust dot works formatting...Which even just saying that aloud kinda sucks.
If it were shit.just.works no big deal, but it's not, so lemmy.world is easier to write & say by comparison. That all said, even more important to me than the name was whether the admin had any experience running a federated server before for awhile, which lemmy.world's had via their hosting of mastodon.world, so I opted for this instance. There may have been other general instances at the time with similar experience that I overlooked tbh*, and I may still hop over to another at some point, but so far this one works decently enough to me.
*-I know of some "legacy" lemmy instances that kinda fit this description, like .ca or midwest.social, but I regarded those as more for folks from those areas, and Beehaw is a little too positivity focused for my tastes (I also don't know that I'm "nice" enough to get along well there).
sh.itjust.works is an unbearable name to read. i read dots in a website link like the end of a sentence (ex lemmy.world would be lemmy {break} dot {break} world.) good instance, despise the name
For what it's worth what sold me on .world is the slogan, front-page of the internet. It may or may not be misleading but I'm after a Reddit replacement with a mix of all communities.
As I explore more I may go elsewhere but so far it has the Reddit feel.