Sadly the country is too interconnected for that to work. Red counties in blue states and vice versa. States that rely on other states for vital resources and so on. If there were another Civil War maybe that could force a split but otherwise we're stuck with each other.
There's one simple way to boost traffic that I've run by Cicero which he refuses to do on principle I guess. This site has thousands of lapsed users, many from years back that may not even remember signing up. My recommendation to Cicero was that he send out an email to all members, like a digest of some highlighted recent posts and showing off the app availability just as a reminder to people to come check out the site again.
That'd instantly boost activity by at least a few hundred users without having to even worry about onboarding new ones. The email wouldn't have to be a regular thing, heck it could be one time or just something sent out when/if traffic gets too low for too long. Still boss man doesn't like the idea so that's out I guess.
The other realistic option is advertising. Multichannel, throw out ads wherever it's possible to cheaply reach many people. Like maybe sponsoring small Youtubers, nothing expensive, just the type that'd take a tiny bit of cash (or whatever perk Cicero can dream up) to big-up the site in their vids for a few.
Then there's the dark pattern way of building traffic (the way Reddit did it initially before Digg imploded) which is to pay one of those traffic spoofing companies that'll load up the site with a lot of real-looking and sounding users temporarily. This eliminates the biggest road block to user growth which is the empty restaurant problem. If one looks through the Reddit Alternatives sub over there a constant ask from people is that they want a site with a high active user base site. This is self defeating since Reddit has all the users, no alternative will ever rise up because they first have to acquire a bunch of users who are already on Reddit and not leaving for the most part. That's why Lemmy gets so much traction there despite most who've tried it finding it to be just as bad as Reddit in some ways or worse. Lemmy has a big active (ish) user base which is what most people want to see when coming upon a forum for the first time. They want to come to a raging party not spend the time and effort it takes to throw the raging party, fake users achieves that. As organic traffic rises you then taper off the paid/fake users until you're left with just the organic users. Raging party achieved. This is how some big platforms have gotten over the adoption hurdle.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Archive https://archive.is/UeYYM
I turned off political posts a while ago
Sadly the country is too interconnected for that to work. Red counties in blue states and vice versa. States that rely on other states for vital resources and so on. If there were another Civil War maybe that could force a split but otherwise we're stuck with each other.
There's one simple way to boost traffic that I've run by Cicero which he refuses to do on principle I guess. This site has thousands of lapsed users, many from years back that may not even remember signing up. My recommendation to Cicero was that he send out an email to all members, like a digest of some highlighted recent posts and showing off the app availability just as a reminder to people to come check out the site again.
That'd instantly boost activity by at least a few hundred users without having to even worry about onboarding new ones. The email wouldn't have to be a regular thing, heck it could be one time or just something sent out when/if traffic gets too low for too long. Still boss man doesn't like the idea so that's out I guess.
The other realistic option is advertising. Multichannel, throw out ads wherever it's possible to cheaply reach many people. Like maybe sponsoring small Youtubers, nothing expensive, just the type that'd take a tiny bit of cash (or whatever perk Cicero can dream up) to big-up the site in their vids for a few.
Then there's the dark pattern way of building traffic (the way Reddit did it initially before Digg imploded) which is to pay one of those traffic spoofing companies that'll load up the site with a lot of real-looking and sounding users temporarily. This eliminates the biggest road block to user growth which is the empty restaurant problem. If one looks through the Reddit Alternatives sub over there a constant ask from people is that they want a site with a high active user base site. This is self defeating since Reddit has all the users, no alternative will ever rise up because they first have to acquire a bunch of users who are already on Reddit and not leaving for the most part. That's why Lemmy gets so much traction there despite most who've tried it finding it to be just as bad as Reddit in some ways or worse. Lemmy has a big active (ish) user base which is what most people want to see when coming upon a forum for the first time. They want to come to a raging party not spend the time and effort it takes to throw the raging party, fake users achieves that. As organic traffic rises you then taper off the paid/fake users until you're left with just the organic users. Raging party achieved. This is how some big platforms have gotten over the adoption hurdle.