I liked tildes a while ago, but I don't think the signup process helped them. I think it was invite only iirc.

Probably luck, really.

A bunch of subs moved to Lemmy, first and foremost, which spread its popularity more than other apps, as more subs went and joined up with Lemmy.

Alternatives like Kbin followed behind, but since Lemmy had already taken first spot, that was more or less that.

You also had a few that were also closed, that hampered their growth, for better and worse.

Tildes, for what it's worth, is not intended to be a replacement for Reddit. Its creator/admin is trying to purposefully cultivate a very different culture than what you might find on Reddit or Reddit replacements like lemmy/kbin/squabbles/discuit/etc. From their Philosophy page:

High-quality content and discussions
Tildes prioritizes quality content and discussion through its mechanics, design, and organization. Fixation on growth and related metrics results in other sites having a bias towards high-appeal, low-depth content like funny images, gifs, and memes. The priority on Tildes is to cultivate high-quality communities, which are far easier to build when they don't have to fight an uphill battle against the platform itself.

Limited tolerance, especially for assholes
Tildes will not be a victim of the paradox of tolerance; my philosophy is closer to "if your website's full of assholes, it's your fault".

This is a difficult topic, so I want to try to be clear about where on the spectrum Tildes is trying to land. I'm never going to refer to the site as a "safe space" or ban anyone just for occasionally acting like a jerk in an argument—I'd probably have to ban myself fairly quickly. However, it will also never be described as anything like "an absolute free speech site".

Personally as an old, I love it. The whole vibe promotes longer, better thought out replies, as opposed to the modern internet where people are more often looking to do quick hit n' run posts with popular sentiments for easy internet points. I also love the proactive removal of problem posters. Some people are just looking to stir up trouble wherever they go, but don't fall under a specific rule that might get their account axed. Tildes isn't afraid to uninvite problematic assholes.

If its culture is something that resonates with you, feel free to hit me up for an invite while I have some.

I'm weirdly nostalgic to the era of hanging out on a random phpBB forum with 40 or so active users, so a part of me feels like maybe they're right. :)

It got mentioned a lot on /r/RedditAlternatiives and since its API is already up and running, there are a whole bunch of apps for it. With mobile apps being the thing that started the whole Reddit disaster, it makes sense that Lemmy would grow quicker than kbin which doesn't have mobile apps yet.

Lemmy was mainly ready for it.

Kbin's cloudflare on top of the stability issues made it unusable for the first few weeks. Tildes wasn't an option.

I tried kbin and lemmy, and although initially it was harder to find communities as new instances were popping up and growing, ye overall feel of lemmy was more compatible to how I felt using reddit. Being a Sync user, Jerboa and wefwef (and the other developing apps) were just a bonus. Once I learned how to use lemmy, I felt it was more intuitive than the kbin interface.

The fact that multiple people came together to work on the code, provide instances for users, and commitment to continuous improvement keeps me in the lemmy game. While I know ernest@kbin is doing a great job, I feel the nature of multiple instances in the fediverse gives lemmy an advantage.

But that's just my experience and opinion. Just happy the fediverse exists despite whichever platform users choose as their primary access to it and thankful for all who have contributed to its growth and development.

I go back and forth between Kbin and Tildes, with a toe still left in reddit for a few niche communities. I like the idea of the fediverse, but there are definitely a lot of growing pains that it seems to be going through, and kbin just seemed like the most modern, polished, choice. (plus the devs are much less sus than Lemmy)

Tildes on the otherhand feels a lot more close knit, and more about discussion specific topics rather than being a collection of different communities. I kinda like the smaller size, plus the overall tone there is very respectful, so it's great for more nuanced conversations. This is where I come for my memes and my random conversations though.

I joined because it was mentioned on /r/piracy. Seems everyone I hear says something similar.

I’d say it has better growth because it got better advertising. I have no idea if it’s the ‘best’ instance.

Most things like this don’t happen because the thing growing is the best, it becomes the best because people come to it and it gets resourced.

For me, it was the top google result for "Reddit Alternative". There was a github post explaining the basics of Lemmy and essentially said if I wasn't sure where to sign up, just head over to lemmy.world.

Now that I'm here I can safely say the interface feels like an improved old.reddit.com and am quite pleased.

Lack of awareness of Kbin I think. Also the monthly average users are the same, but lots of communities were created on lemmy instances.

Lemmy is older and I think when people thought a million people had signed up they thought that was the place to be. But it was all bits and the two are similar in terms of users, although most Kbin users are on Kbin.social at the moment.

I've tried both and I prefer Kbin. I like the interface, I like the mobile PWA app, it just feels more modern and polished compared to lemmy. But it's just a preference thing they're largely the same.

I’m on both (repeatedly, multiple servers and accounts) but even with Memmy I find myself gravitating towards Kbin and once Artemis is out I’ll probably stay there. Beehaw has the best interaction on its local communities, but Kbin is just a better feed for me mostly. No brand or server loyalty for me, I will continue using all until one seems to address all my wants.