Comment on Introducing Habitat - A Social Platform for Local Communities
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
Oh wow this would be huge. The local sub is the main thing that keeps me coming back to Reddit.
However, it probably will take some local organizing to get it to fire in each area. Getting a critical mass for these is tough by just having randomly distributed global internet users join. Even with thousands of users, the California community on Lemmy is way less active than the sub for my city on Reddit.
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 5 days ago
Maybe one strategy here is to promote it at universities? That’s how Facebook got a critical mass before opening it up to the general public. People would join if other people from their school are on it, and its much easier to achieve critical mass at a university than a city at large.
You could start with the compsci students, who might appreciate it for the merits of the ActivityPub protocol. From there, you could branch out to other departments. Hopefully this will create enough activity to make it an attractive place to join for the city at large.
Once you get enough people on there, you could reach out to local politicians (eg city councillors) and ask them to join. If they join then hopefully they promote their account at least once on their mainstream normie social media like X, which will hopefully attract a few users from there.
Hanging flyers around the city with a QR code is another option. I know in my city people do that to promote a local Discord for cyclists. That Discord is very active.
Asking for a call out on local email newsletters is also a helpful possibility. I know a separate urbanists Discord group in my city that has got a fair amount of users from their email mailing list, which they’ve picked up just from a signup form on their local website as far as I’m aware.
Promotion on your local FB group or subreddit is also a very viable option.
If you live in a small community, then you can’t beat word of mouth.
Anyway, there are strategies! I have hope. Let’s make this a thing.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
Wow great comment. But I’d have to figure out who is going to host a local server first. I’m not super tech savvy personally, especially compared to Lemmings.
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 5 days ago
You should give it a shot and ask OP if you have any questions. If you were to set it up, you’d be one of the first, and I’m sure OP would be happy to help you get his/her brain child up and running.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
Yeah I think it’s way beyond what I would know how to do… I’ve also got some pretty crazy things happening in my life right now so I’m not looking to take on any big projects at this time. Maybe when things are back to normal.
Or I’ll ask around and see if anyone else is interested in doing it.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
Could straight up petition the city to host the servers. It would have some interesting legal ramifications but it could help speed up adoption and also provide a full on town square thing, with actual city fundings.
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 4 days ago
That’s an interesting idea. I think this would be most successful in a city that prides itself on being high-tech. Maybe somewhere in Japan or somewhere in Silicon Valley or something.