The biggest technical feature that draws users is the Interface. Twitter didn’t gain popularity (or even the Bird icon and “tweet” moniker) until Tweetie, Twitteriffic and eventually Tweetbot came along.

Reddit was just a website for (no offence intended) “neckbearded basement dwelling incels” until RiF and Apollo made it more accessible.

Mastodon usage soared when 3rd Party Twitter apps were killed and once once again when Ivory was released.

I didn’t even know about Lemmy until I heard ‪@christianselig@mastodon.social‬ and ‪@gruber@mastodon.social‬ mentioned it on The Talk Show. I didn’t start using it regularly until I discovered wefwef and Memmy.