It Took 23 Days for Lemmy Posts to Double from 1 Million to 2 Million

Paulius@lemmy.world to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 4516 points –
442

Impressive, I guess, but how many of those 2 million posts have a single comment? If 90% of these are just bots reposting things from Reddit with no further engagement…

The content will bring in users. I try to comment on interesting topics to help drive engagement.

This is my thoughts as well. I’ve noticed that once one or two people express interest in a post, it tends to get much more traffic

8 more...

I used to lurk like crazy on reddit. I had a nearly 12 year old account that mainly had a few comments here and there months apart, and only a few posts but ever since moving to Lemmy I've found myself actually posting relatively frequently to help build some of the smaller communities I'm in that have also migrated.

Keep it up. I wish people would bring themself to comment so they count as active users.

I’m exactly the same. I feel like the opportunity to have a productive conversation on Lemmy is a lot higher. There are fewer of us right now but we are the motivated minority kicking Reddit to the curb for its terrible actions and we want to see Lemmy thrive.

I still check Reddit every couple days on my laptop. I don't think they maintained a majority of their users. Engagement is way down. Most of the posts on my front page are barely hitting 2000 updoots, compared to well over 10,000 prior to July 1

(post comment edit - if you put things inside < > as your entire post, Lemmy will eat it. Cool>

Only if the content is organic. Look at !photoshopbattles@lemmy.world . Full of bot posts from reddit with 0 comments. Even if one of them gets a comment, it would get drowned out by the subsequent bot posts. Blindly filling a community with bot posts would eventually make people unsub from it.

I'm sure those bots are well intended, but I would rather not see bots just copying posts from reddit blindly. When you sort all by new, it's just a swamp of bot posts.

Edit: So I checked to verify my claim and most are from @bot@lemmit.online iirc and you can just block that account to stop seeing all the automated posts from reddit

It depends on the content.

Some of content really depends on OP being in the comments, like AmITheAsshole. Just reposting doesn't give the kind of interaction that the original post would have.

Ongoing discussion—i.e., comments replying to other comments, not just posts—drives engagement as much as content. If the post-to-comment ratio is too high, active commenters are less likely to encounter each other in the sea of automated posts.

8 more...

Hey! Some of those posts with no comments are me posting pictures of cute bugs that I took! I'm not a bot, I'm just not very interesting.

Hah, that sounds like me! I started a few communities in places where I knew I could supply some OC, and so far its been mostly just me posting my stuff, but I'm stoked whenever I get comments!

I just subbed to your nature patterns community! I love the idea! I will keep an eye out and hope I can contribute some neat things soon!

And since I notice you are a gardener, you may be interested in my !beebutts@lemmy.world community. It's about bees.. and their butts.. I've also got !awwnverts@lemmy.world for the front side of the bees, and all of their adorable invertebrate friends.

I'm subscribed to both! And I've tossed a couple butts your way already ^-^

Well the same page lists comments per day for the same period as 11,083,555. A ratio of 5.27 comments per post seems fine.

Yeah, a ratio means nothing if the bulk of the comments are only on a small portion of the posts. If 90% of the posts have 0 comments and the other 10% have 52.7 comments per post, that’s worth knowing.

And when comments are measured, you can say 'but it's just a small group making lots of comments'.

And when users are measured, you can say 'but they're just lurkers'.

Etc, etc. You can always naysay everything. This is impressive growth.

The problem is that without an effective way to ID bot content then stats like this could be covering up the real trends in human users, particularly in any stat that purports to measure all lemmy instances since we already know there are instances out there filled with thousands of bot users

3 more...
3 more...

What Lemmy needs now more than anything is commenters. If the site is to succeed, it needs robust comment sections.

It does need that, but it also needs dedicated posters for small niche communities that keep posting into the void so that when someone eventually stumbles over they won't go "aw it's dead here, I guess Lemmy isn't for me" but will actually find some content to engage with instead.

2 more...
2 more...
16 more...

All I'm missing is the more niche communities to grow. It's good to see lots of memes and engagement but a man needs more.

Be the more you want to see

It's kind of hard to have thriving discussions on niche topics as one person, unfortunately.

Gotta start somewhere. Yell into the void! Maybe there are some ears you didn't see.

1 more...

I posted, I'm gonna do more,I just don't have that much important content to create unfortunately.

If I have a question that I'd usually search on reddit for, i just make a post here instead and drum up content for the future, plus I usually get way more than I asked for from people as almost everyone here is a damn genius and usually very polite and understanding.

1 more...

How do you create communities?

Go to your instance homepage, lemmy.ml then in the sidebar there should be a create community button, or if on mobile it may be hidden in the ... menu button

1 more...

Not just communities, but niche instances. Having everyone on just a few instances isn't good.

2 more...

Man, I really hope more traffic starts heading into some of the more niche communities because getting a new thread every day or there and getting 1 or 2 replies - if that - is not how you sustain a site.

Are there really that few people into cars or engineering or DIY stuff on Lemmy?! Where the fuck are my fellow car and tinkering nerds at? And no one does projects around the house? So few posts in some of the home owner communities as well.

I think part of the problem is finding communities.

I search for things, but they all look so small I assume that can't be the proper one and end up not joining it. I'm not convinced I'm seeing the full list of what's out there.

So much this! Can there really be only a dozen or so posts in a community as wide as cars? Like seriously? I must have some setting messed up.

1 more...

This has been super helpful for finding communities outside of my instance lemm.ee, as many of them may not be discoverable without 1st searching for the exact community link

https://lemmyverse.net/communities

That's a really useful site.

I'm not sure why it's showing such a small number when I search for it using my instance. e.g. searching for "games" shows !games@lemmy.world has 83 subscribers, while your link shows 19,400. Is it just showing the number of subscribers from my instance on there, or some number when it was first found by my instance or what?

Is it just showing the number of subscribers from my instance on there

Yes, that's exactly it. It's an unfortunate product of how the backend works right now, as far as I understand it. I don't think there is a way to see the total sum of subscribers to a community from all instances right now. I think the issue has been raised on GitHub, though.

4 more...

True, I think the "lemmy is so confusing to join" concerns are overblown (just make an account?), but admittedly the community finding part is... not intuitive. People really aren't seeing everything that's out there through the standard search if their instance isn't federated with the instance where the target community is hosted, or no one on their instance has searched for that community before. Having to go offsite for tools to find communities is a poor experience.

5 more...

Most of us are probably computer nerds right now.... And I think a lot of people are afraid of posting their own post. It's safer to just comment. But Lemmy is a very friendly community, so I think maybe people need to adjust from reddit a bit.

If you are reading this and haven't made a post, make one now. :) Even if it's just about asking why nobody posts in a specific community. Usually gets replies.

I have. And it did indeed get replies. Great! Then everything went dead again. Not so great.

Think we have to be the change we want to see. I try to post some interesting link every day but it's harder maybe to find good car or tinker articles.

I am afraid of posting because everyone is friendly and I post hostile stuff. Willtry to post more tho.

1 more...
1 more...

Yeah, this is my experience with Lemmy so far: it has replaced the "all" experience for me, but all my hobby / interests subs are completely dead.

That's ok though, because that's how Reddit started too. They didn't add subreddits from the start. So as long as it is providing an /all experience then I don't see why it shouldn't grow from there.

I think the biggest problem with bootstrapping niche communities is that people interested in those topics have to search for and find the communities. There are a few resources for finding new communities such as https://lemmyverse.net/communities and the Reddit migration community, but it takes some effort.

3 more...

What are some of those communities you're in for cars and tinkering? I was subscribed to both of those topics on reddit and am looking to join. I think there are probably lots like me who are here but not quite up and running.

1 more...

I think part of it is a discovery problem. Which, I know, I don't want some algorithm telling me what content to look at, but it's tough to find all the stuff I'm interested in just by searching.

2 more...

is it just me or is a lot of what a see are Linux/tech users mostly on lemmy, perhaps that could be why some niche communities haven't blossomed here yet. I'm really big into metalcore music, but so far, there really isn't the same type of community that rivals the Reddit metalcore version.

1 more...

Those niche communities will remain dead for years (assuming Lemmy grows and doesn't die). It takes a long time to build these up.

Seems like every major transition from social media platform reduces that length of time for niche communities. It also took Reddit a while to get there as well. But people are already looking for identical communities on lemmy, like the tree ents

Agreed. Having a nice front page with a whole bunch of things is great, but not having those niche communities is rough even doing the transition

We're near critical mass and the more we share the apps and website, it'll pull more people in. There's some resistance to leaving Reddit for many, but not much.

I think the main subs are at a sustainable level, but not the niche subs. But Lemmy needs more than just politics and general news and complaining about Reddit to sustain itself.

1 more...
1 more...

Where the fuck are my fellow car and tinkering nerds at? And no one does projects around the house? So few posts in some of the home owner communities as well.

I'm right here, where are you guys? Still looking for a good homeowner and DIY community on lemmy.

7 more...
30 more...

Over half my feed is just low effort memes or auto posted arstechnica articles. Does this data include bot posts?

Half the posts are also just people specualting about activity on lemmy.

Also, there is approximately 50% of postings reserved for whinging about the speculation of activity on Lemmy.

The data I am interested in is on postings that are whinging about postings that are whinging. It’s the metawhinge factor that really measures the health of a community

Don’t forget all the updates about what’s going on at that other site.

1 more...

I mean I’ve been posting Moldy Memes on the memes page. Mainly just to share my ancient saved stuff, and to help boost the meme page up with more posts. I do understand the frustration, but hopefully more, active users will come around.

My feed has zero memes (except those form !risa@startrek.website which obv do not qualify as "low effort"). I think unlike with Reddit, what you see if what you subscribe to. If you don't like what you're seeing, change your subscriptions. Not having Reddit force stuff into the feed is nice but it also means everyone is fully responsible for what they're seeing.

I think unlike with Reddit, what you see if what you subscribe to.

This was also the case with Reddit, unless you intentionally went to /r/all? Or am I misunderstanding you? To clarify I always used RIF or went to old.reddit and was never force-fed any content from outside my subscriptions, when I stuck to the home-page.

If you don’t like what you’re seeing, change your subscriptions. Not having Reddit force stuff into the feed is nice but it also means everyone is fully responsible for what they’re seeing.

You make a good point, but I think here's where the current downside of Lemmy comes in, discoverability between instances are pretty bothersome and not easily handled unless you again, go to your instance /all and check what other communities other people on the instance are subscribed to.

1 more...
1 more...

I would assume so. But I see quite some organic content as well, with good interactions in the comment sections. I'm pretty happy. 90% of what was on reddit was of no interest to me as tends to be the case with any large content aggregator.

Half the posts since yesterday are people bitching about Sync ultra costing the same amount of money as a Costco hotdog combo once a month. 🙄

4 more...

I wonder how the graph will look in a month's time now that Sync is in open beta.

As someone who never used Sync before, trust me, it will spike like crazy. I don't know why I never used it before but this an amazing experience. If you're reading this and trying to find a Lemmy app to use and don't care about FOSS, get Sync ASAP

As someone who has been using sync for reddit for years, the app has come a long way and learned a lot over that time, and pretty much all of that is transferred over to the Sync for Lemmy app. The sync for Lemmy app really has a huge head start thanks to the Sync for Reddit app.

I remember when Reddit was releasing their app, they appeared to base it on Sync, and you can still see a lot of that influence today. I remember the Sync dev thinking it was all over for his app, since Reddit is copying his design and surely has a team that can develop a good app, but obviously Reddit stole a good design and ruined it.

how does it compare to jerboa and connect, ive been meaning to switch full time to connect but im just used to jerboa now even though I miss that swipe to next post feature

I've been using 5 different apps trying to find my favourite and I like Jerboa the most, until yesterday when I found Sync.

I tried Sync yesterday, but didn't have a lot of time to fiddle with it. What makes it so great everyone's excited? I checked it out and couldn't immediately see it having a clear edge over Jerboa and Connect (but it looked nice)

I was further thrown off by the fact that if I wanted to buy it, I'd need to pay for a yearly subscription (and in that case it didn't look cheap)

Honest question for who can answer

Probably the settings and ui smoothness are what I like. I set view to compact, switch the default touch action, move the image previews to the right and turn on colored indent lines.

After I open an image preview in connect it lags weirdly when I close it. Some of the text entry when commenting felt slightly jank to me, but I've been using sync for a long time.

2 more...
2 more...
2 more...

Boost for Reddit all time user here so I'd never tried Sync before. When I took a dive to Lemmy, I tried Jerboa because it was the closest thing to Boost, great little app, but it think it needs some aesthetic polishing. The I tried Connect, and oh boy it's fast, functional, pretty (although it needs some design polishing also), and I made it look like the closest to the classic Boost list view.

Then Sync for Lemmy was released and I wanted to know what was all the hype about. How could it be as good or better than Boost for Reddit?, I thought. Well, two days and I'm seriously thinking if I ever going to switch to Boost for Lemmy when it becomes available. Blew my mind!

Yes, there are some things not quite there yet (not being able to submit posts the major flaw for me), but design wise is just aeons ahead of any other Lemmy app.

Posting is coming soon. He's just adding all the features, like crossposting, which I don't think any apps support yet.

It's just the new gold standard. Every app trying to compete for the biggest userbase will have to match or beat Sync.

Apps that ignore Sync and just target at FOSS minded users will share the remaining portion of the pie.

I copied this from another comment of mine. My advice is just give it a shot! The set up is super quick and the app just works.

For features: incredibly customizable material design. Extremely fluid. A lot of view customization. Comment drafts are something I missed on voyager.

Paid exclusive features: Cloud backups, user specific highlighting and theming, pull text from images, translate text, saved post folders (coming soon). No ads (yes the other apps don't have ads and are generally free).

I don't think I have any app, Lemmy or otherwise, that follows Material You so well.

I only used Jerboa, but sync is far superior. Jerboa was so glitchy, it worked about half the time. Sync is very smooth and the developer is on it about fixing any glitches that may pop up. I've been using lemmy with jerboa since reddit closed the door on 3rd party apps, and I couldn't be more relieved to have sync back.

3 more...

I always thought Sync for Reddit looked cool, but never found myself comfortable with it because RIF existed, and I always felt more comfortable with it.

I'm now using Sync and it is pretty great, but in my case it required some UI fiddling. It looks like Material Design 3, but I feel there's something wrong with the default values for font and text size nothing that is unfixable, but just... Weird

Tweaking things to meet your usage is fantastic in Sync. The dev has some weird defaults, but assumes you want to tweak almost everything.

4 more...
11 more...
14 more...

Would be great if all previous reddit apps went to lemmy. I personally can't wait for Baconreader for Lemmy.

Apollo going to Lemmy would be the ultimate middle finger to Spez, especially with the false accusations of blackmail.

Don't get me wrong, I'll keep using Sync as it's actually good.

14 more...

Lemmy does seem to have enough content and user engagement for my needs. I've noticed engagement going up the past month but wasn't sure I was making that up in my head.

I really haven't felt the need to go back to reddit much. But the niche communities could use a lot more users posting and creating new content.

I agree but with more and more users, that will happen naturally.

I agree with this. Plenty of content on All, not so much once you start doing a deep into communities. It'll improve with time.

I agree with the niche stuff, but I will say I almost like having to create a post for my inquiry, and though not much engagement, what I do get is really helpful, more personal info from a few kind and knowledgeable people. So I think perhaps we should readjust our expectations and enjoy this for what it is.

1 more...

I would like to thank everyone on here for the last two months or whatever it's been from the start of the migration, and to the people just coming over, and those who were here already. I actually feel like I've grown as an individual in my time here. I'm starting to see certain patterns in my own behavior and working on them thanks to the content and the engaging discussions on here. I used to avoid interaction and lost all hope, but you are all really awesome. Thank you <3

We are pretty amazing. This being my second post I am a self prescribed expert. That said... you too are amazing.

1 more...
3 more...

First comment ever on lemmy! With reddit and the latest update moving shtiff around, it's gotten to a point where I no longer want to be apart of that app. Not mentioning the money grubbing infants over there... So I'm trying this one out! Thanks for staying open and active! 👍

Welcome home!
Literally, the more the merrier.

Thank you!

I'm currently using "Connect for Lemmy". Is this what most here might recommend for Android?

I personally used Connect for a long time (currently trialing Sync) and honestly it's a fine client for Lemmy. The really nice thing is that there are so many apps, you can start a Hunger Games out of them and narrow down to the one you like the most. That's how I got to Connect after starting with all of the maintained Android apps a month ago.

Use the app that works for you. That's why many of us are here, because Reddit took away that option to push their shit tier official app that's far inferior to literally every third party app I ever tried.

I really love it! Works better than jerboa on my side.

But waiting for "boost for lemmy" and I'll see then

It really depends on your taste, you can download and try the suggestions and see which you like the most.

That being said my favourite is Voyager (wefwef.app), I have a Linux phone and need something that runs in the browser and it works great. It resembles Apollo so will also be good for iOS users who miss it

3 more...
3 more...
3 more...

185 comments are mine! :)

And 7 posts...

To the moon!

Also think about how many more lurkers there are. There are many more lurkers than people making posts and comments.

A truly embarrassing amount of comments are mine.

Well can't blame you. Lemmy is fun :)

3 more...

Was waiting for Sync upgrade and finally I'm a daily active user of Lemmy. Finally I will be useful for the community 🥂

Precisely this. Sync was Reddit for me. Now, Sync is Lemmy for me.

Bingo. Just got Sync. Now it feels like home :D

Just waiting to save up for the ultra 👍👍

8 more...

Having the sync app has made the transition so much easier. I don't know if the same level of discussion will ever happen here, but I'm going to give it a try. I'm done going to the bot farm over there

The thing I find with discussion on here is that although most threads have way fewer comments and especially top level comments, I'm way more likely to get a response and end up in some kind of discussion than on Reddit where most of the time you just get lost in a sea of comments. Also think comments tend to be more conversational, less memey, less aggressive etc, just generally nicer.

1 more...

I keep hearing good things about the Sync app and I’m just waiting here on iOS.

*Fixed typo thinks to things.

2 more...

all the subreddits i love had no visible immigration to lemmy so i will have to wait a while to see the change

Why wait and not just start a community up?

Not OP, but for me, the main community I interact with reddit for exists, there's just no activity there. It's currently the off-season (the community is hockey), so I think there's no point in trying to grow the community at this moment. Hopefully in the fall we can get some traffic.

The main posts on r/hockey are just links to Twitter, as all the news is posted there first. I think they may even have bots on Twitter that post all of the links. If in the fall we are still as barren as we are now, I might communicate with the mods and ask if that's something that they would be open to if I'm willing to write the bot.

2 more...
3 more...

Same here. How many of these posts are in meme communities?

A few of my communities came over but the big one I'm missing is the college football sub with flairs and everything so I can discriminate against those of lesser teams.

The one here just isn't the same.

3 more...

How does a cumulative line graph, with a running total that only ever increases, possibly descend rather than plateau?

I'm not sure exactly how the Fediverse Observer calculates the day-to-day totals, but my speculation for the dips in the graph is:

  • Some of Lemmy's servers/instances going offline could cause the total to go down;

  • Post deletion could also contribute to the total going down.

These dips in the graph confused people in my previous post, as the dips were suggesting that the graph represents 'new posts by day.' I edited the title in the screenshot this time to clarify it is total by day.

Was gonna say the death of vlemmy probably contributed to one of those dips

In particular massive bot-related deletions.

Maybe posts were deleted or defederated.

1 more...

Happy to be here, doing my part. Thanks to all of you, that made it possible!

So it seems like lemmy is still improving in content, even though the reddit situation has stabilised. That is awesome to see!

Could you please tell me where I could read more about the reddit situation having been stabilized?

I'm new to Lemmy and I am using Sync for Lemmy but so far none of my comments are showing up. I'm attempting to comment from my browser this time and I hope it works.

Edit: my comments seem to be showing in browser but not via Sync for Lemmy. Can someone recommend different Lemmy app?

Edit: you guys are great, I uninstalled and restarted and now my comments are showing up along with all your replies that just popped up at once!

I use Jerboa. It does crash for me on ocassion though.

I'm trying Sync right now and it works ok for me. I find Connect and Voyager the best Lemmy apps right now.

Jebora is aight, but lacks polish. I don't think yo ucan comment from sync yet... I got a "feature coming soon" or something when I did. I think this might also work on infinity for lemmy.

Edit: You can't post links to communities with sync yet

I don't know why people like you and me initially think it's spelled "Jeb-ora" when it's actually "Jer-boa"

Did you know the Jerboa is the same creature that Muaddib is named after? Qul-wahad!

1 more...
3 more...

Connect would be my recommendation, surprised I haven't seen it mentioned here. It works well, and is pretty close to what the Reddit apps felt like

Sync is generally working for me, but I find it depends on server. Lemmy.world seems to withhold my posts.

I was having the same issues you are with posts being seen on browser side but I couldn't see my posts in either connect or sync.

They showed up later on tho and people were voting and responding to them in meantime. So I think it's probably just a server or api issue and not app related since for me at least the issue was consistent across apps

11 more...

Honestly thats all Lemmy needs. Just more content body. This software is already a really amazing drop in replacement for reddit. To be honest its easier to navigate the federation aspect with Lemmy than it is for other federated services like mastodon in my opinion.

2 more...

Joined yesterday coming here from Reddit. My favourite app no longer works (Reddit is fun) and I just can't get myself to use the official app. Lemmy seems pretty cool so far, only missing a few subs that were not super large on Reddit but are not really viable here due to a small number of users. Hopefully that will change if the number of users keeps growing so fast.

I'm here for the same reason. RIF finally stopped working and I found Sync. Slowly but surely I'm finding communities that interest me but I'm not sure how to setup "a feed" just yet. I'm not going back to Reddit (it's literally becoming a bot and self promotion farm) so I hope to find positive ways to contribute here.

1 more...

I bit the bullet after I read there the Sync app was released. Now I'm lurking until I find the communities I love best... and it feels like they're already starting to spring up. If I had the time to, I'd make and mod them myself.

Man, how are you guys keeping up with the servers and increase in traffic?

There is also a very clear upwards trend I would say 😁

I know a lot of communities are trying to get more popular by using bots to post relevant content. And generally they do a great job, its like an aggregator inside an aggregator. woa dude. Post engagement might be a better metric, but this graph is visually more impressive.

I'm not really enjoying the communities that use bots to create posts, considering I have to follow multiple variations of the community subject matter just in case. The engagement is definitely more important to me and what I'm missing most from reddit. It's building up though.

The only place where I wish there was a repost bot is the BestofUpdates community (can't remember the name). I crave those stories and don't care if it isn't a human porting them over to Lemmy

2 more...
2 more...

This is surprising. Hopefully organic driven growth instead of bullshit statistics like threads and their stupidity.

1 more...

If RiF ports their app to Lemmy, have it as nearly functionally as it was on Reddit as possible while accommodating the ways lemmy is different, I think it would be a winner.

Are there any plans of doing that, though? I'm a lifelong RIF user and would love for it to work on here 🥺

I'd love for RiF to be ported to Lemmy. I'm using Sync now but I don't feel it's as good as RiF was to me.

Boost is coming. Did you try Liftoff or Connect? They can be good Rif alternatives

I'm testing Sync and Connect. I've just installed Liftoff, will see if I like it but it seems promising. I'll try Boost once available as I've heard good things about its Reddit version.

i'm seeing a lot more content here recently, which is why I keep coming back.

Ya I'm surprised it moved that fast but that's awesome, be sweet if it keeps up the momentum and gets as big as Reddit.

Daily users have almost halved in the last month. Guessing a purge of bots or something

I'm cool with that. The only bots should be the AutoMod ones to help weed out the bullshit.

I approve reposter bots tho. More specifically I also made a bot to repost some content from niche subreddits to here.

1 more...

this isnt a social media home anymore. This place felt like a big home for all.

Thank for helping me fight my Social Media addiction. You guys made it look easy

Very good, I hope this platform has a bright future. We really need more like this, out of the control of giant companies.

At the same time, I hope they will develop more features to make it harder for content to disappear if an instance every goes down and for users to migrate their accounts.

I'm almost purely a mobile user - as soon as sync enables post generation I'm all over it.

Could you license this image under CCBY so that it can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons? I'd add it to here. Let me know if that's okay or if CCBY is mentioned somewhere.

2 more...

Great growth so far. How does this compare to Reddit?

Great growth so far. How does this compare to Reddit?

In 2020 their year-over-year growth was around 50%, or roughly 4% per month. (source)

What caused that giant leap a few days before end of July?

No idea why you were downvoted. There's two vertical periods that catch the eye. I wonder what those are, too.

The first one is towards the very last days of the free Reddit API calls so the mass exodus began, the second is probably around the time all the apps were getting finalized for their beta versions of Lemmy - like sync.

1 more...
2 more...

Very nice, now lets see the data about how many new communities are being created on lemmy

Let's keep it up! To the moon! 🤣

This is the way. It doesn't have to happen all at once. Positive growth is good.