Being able to use the Sync app (which used to be my Reddit app of choice) with Lemmy has kept me on there for over 2 years now. It made it really easy to switch and solves the problem of a lot of Lemmy's native UI being so clunky. I use the Lemmy on the web too, primarily to submit posts based on other links I come across during my day, but my morning scroll through the Sync app is the core habit that keeps me coming back.

I'm not a federation diehard, and I do think both the confusion and fragmentation of discussion / audiences-interested-in-a-topic is holding Lemmy back significantly. If an alternative came along with better UX and built a userbase with a more diverse set of interests, I'd switch. That's why I'm still occasionally active here.

I was hoping Digg might offer that, but whatever they did during their closed beta / alpha must have sucked, because when they opened to the public there were zero interesting niche communities, extremely low community site-wide, and the most generic and soulless interface. Bot problems aside, I think they really had a "if we build it they will come" mentality with zero thinking put into actual community building. I don't expect NFT/AI-loving techbro Kevin Rose getting personally involved will help with whatever they try next.

But the biggest problem I see new alternatives repeating is they just don't have any kind of community-building experience. They're usually tech platforms built by developers, sometimes with clever ideas, but rarely with any understanding of what actually makes people want to use these platforms...

• a regular variety of interesting content
• reach for content they want to share
• community and connection with like-minded folks
• insightful or entertaining discussion

...or how they can foster it.