Hot damn, in just over a week. Data from https://the-federation.info/node/details/25274. Made in GIMP.
Thank you Chris, alyaza, Gaywallet again for making such a nice place and managing this explosion in popularity, to the mods and other people keeping it operating, and lastly to everyone joining, contributing, posting and commenting and be(e)ing friendly!
I came here myself yesterday. I'm worried it isn't going to be able to grow much however. Everyone seems to go to the same instance when wanting to join. Really should have some sort of home page for the service where users are presented with a randomly selected, general purpose instance to join. That way one can spread the load and new users won't have to deal with the confusing process of signing up.
That said, I'm new to the whole fediverse concept. This might not be a good idea for obvious reasons that I'm not aware of.
I don't know whether random is the right answer... We've already seen a little drama on the lemmy.ml instances based on one of the server operators preferences. I think people will naturally go to other instances. The server operators effectively determine what belongs and what doesn't in the instance, and that can change based on their whims. I am against a default but a random server selected automatically seems like a weird roulette.
The power structure of Lemmy instances is like a fiefdom, the admins hold the effective power to select what users and what discussions is allowed within their server they rule. Some rulers are generous and benevolent, some are strict, some are hostile, some are laissez-faire except for certain peculiarities. If you don't like any of them, then be the ruler of your own kingdom that you create and communicate with the other lords from your throne.
The common sentiment and the one I've been feeling is that lemmy overall feels pretty cool. There is an incredibly steep learning curve, but that cool feeling kind of keeps you motivated to try and figure things out.
Beyond simply finding an instance, the signing up process can seem a little confusing as well. Waiting for manual approvals on some instances can really kill the hype and lead to that initial pull being lost.
I completely understand why some instances would want to keep that signup process. But if the "top instances" all have that "wait period" people may, also understandably, not stick around. A seemingly opaque bureaucratic process in order to even be able to see if they like lemmy.