X AI ALGORITHM UPDATE 🚨

Read it directly on X here: https://x.com/ThePeterMick/status/2114368194546696576

X just stopped cutting new posts first, and that should help small accounts (I check the Open Source X AI algorithm daily with Claude and share updates worth sharing with you)

tl;dr:

- X can only check 2,800 posts each time you open your feed

- new posts used to be last in line, so they got cut first

- now everything gets cut equally, new posts included

- posts labeled low quality or misinfo now show a warning, and people can’t like, reply or share them

- no score changes this time

lesson learned: your new posts now get a fair chance to be seen. Your first 2 hours still matter most.

full details:

- How it worked until this week

Every time someone opens For You, X collects around 3,700 posts it could show them: posts from people they follow, popular posts, posts liked by similar people, and brand new posts.

But X only has time to check 2,800 of them.

So it just took the first 2,800 in line. Brand new posts were at the back of the line. When there were too many, they were the ones left out... and a post that never gets checked can’t be shown.

- What changed

Now everything gets cut by the same amount. 25% too many? Every type of post loses 25%, new posts included. Nobody goes first.

- Why small accounts should care

Those brand new posts are under 2 hours old, with under 8 likes and under 500 views. That’s where most posts from smaller accounts are.

My read: they now get a fair chance instead of being cut first. How often X actually hits the 2,800 limit isn’t in the code, so I can’t tell you how big the difference is.

- Low quality and misinfo posts now show a warning

If X labels your post as low quality or misinformation, people who don’t follow you see a warning on it, and they can’t like, reply, repost, bookmark or share it. The code doesn’t say what gets a post that label.

Here’s a recap of what you should be doing:

- a new post gets its extra push only in its first 2 hours and first 200 views, so post when your people are online

- likes carry more weight than ever at 0.66 each

- people sticking around pays, the time-spent score is 50% higher than two weeks ago

- a read of 10+ seconds after someone opens your post adds 0.4

- the boost favors the post with the best like rate from its first viewers

- accounts up to 50K can get one fresh original lifted to roughly 16th

- nothing beats a copy link share, it scores 20

- replies, quotes and DM shares each score 5

- talk with your mutuals, replies between you score 20 instead of 5

- originals are the only posts that travel outside your follower base

- the 1st and the 32nd like each open a new route to strangers

- your 2nd post in the same feed is worth 62% of the first, so pick your best one

- videos still need 10+ seconds to qualify for the video lists

- earning a follow adds 4

- a pinned post with a bad link can flag the account for 7 days, worth a quick check

What you should NOT be doing:

- posts that get labeled low quality or misinfo now carry a warning, and nobody outside your followers can like or share them

- video alone won’t carry you, an open counts 0.02 and the watch 0

- hide-worthy posts cost more, “not interested” sits at -52.27

- a post at 3am burns its 2 hour window before anyone sees it

- a tap that turns into a bounce is worth only 0.3

- replies and reposts don’t get past your followers

- insults get your post hidden from anyone who doesn’t follow you

- adult media in 3 of your last 5 posts puts a label on your account

- disguised content in videos gets checked from 64 likes, harder at 512

- self-reply chains under big accounts risk being zeroed

- one account label and non-followers stop seeing you entirely

- low-rated links don’t belong in your pinned post

- recycled wording can get tagged as copypasta spam

- strangers tagged plus a low quality link is a pattern X flags

- engagement bait has no size exemption

- several posts in a row end up competing with each other

- hashtag stacks add nothing

- bookmarks are still worth 0

- 48 hours in, For You is finished with a post

It’s been a while to write to you. And I hope you are all well.

It takes a while to build the habit of writing a kind of journal, but I’ll get there and write to you more about what I’m up to.

Today is a special day as I’ve launched a fun product called ConfettiTherapy.com on Product Hunt.

ConfettiTherapy.com let’s you pop unlimited and free confetti right in your browser (to hopefully reduce your stress, works best at the end of the day for me) and here’s how it works:

Here’s the Product Hunt launch announcement on X: https://x.com/ThePeterMick/status/1834488400520372309

Please check it out if you have a moment, if you truly enjoyed a confetti pop or two there, I’d be grateful if you’d support me on the launch page: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/confettitherapy-com

I’ve had 100s of positive feedback after announcing it on X so I have even put together a dedicated testimonials page: https://confettitherapy.com/testimonials

Why I built it? Well, I’ve got a page for that too: https://confettitherapy.com/blog/what-is-confetti-therapy

Happy popping friends 🎉

If you have any feedback please let reply to this post or email.

Thank you and write to you all soon :-)

Cheers,
Peter

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome: ReplyHunter.com - inspire your replies in a single click for multiple social media platforms.

Under-the-hood it’s the same great engine that comes with TweetAI.com that I’ve been running since 2022, but ReplyHunter.com comes with the support of multiple social media platforms:

• Facebook (2.9 billion users)

• X / Twitter (415 million users)

• LinkedIn (40 million users)

• And more coming soon (let me know which platform you’d like to see next)

Many TweetAI.com customers had been asking for it for a long long time, and I’ve also ran a question on X asking what platform it should come to next at the end of 2023.

Finally delivered. Let me know what you think about ReplyHunter.com - I’d love to hear any and all feedback.

Now onto marketing 🥂🚀 (psst, there’s a launch discount offer at the end of this newsletter 👀)

Here’s the long story for those interested:

Once upon a time (and a long long time ago), I bought the domain name… it all starts with a domain name and a logo, right? But that’s been over a year ago now. I’ve always wanted to expand, but lacked time to do it (and energy, for someone who builds mostly in the late evenings only after the kids had gone to sleep).

TweetAI.com is nice, but as the name itself suggests, it’s kind of limited to “tweets” and the Twitter (now X) eco-system, so it’d feel wrong to me to expand to other platforms there.

It also took me longer to build due to a few delays and setbacks, but I’ve managed to get it out there.

One of the setbacks was that I had to completely re-implement payment processing from scratch as the previously used one is no longer available to new projects (Paddle Classic). So I had to explore new options, go with Paddle Billing (aka the new Paddle) or a different payment processor. Either way, it was a re-implementation from scratch.

So this time I’ve decided to use Lemon Squeezy for payments because it comes with a Customer Portal (where customers can manage their subscriptions) and Affiliate Program built in (yes, Reply Hunter will open up an affiliate program soon so let me know if you’re interested).

Having a done-for-you Customer Portal is life changing for solo founders like me, saves me a lot of time implementing the UI/UX and the logic behind plan upgrades/downgrades etc etc. there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.

The built-in affiliate program that comes built-in with Lemon Squeezy is also a game changer, many asked me if I had an affiliate program for TweetAI.com - and sadly I had to say no because I never had the time to implement one - but now, I can proudly say yes. Affiliate programs can be a very effective sales channel and you can have an army of marketers who love your product and are willing to promote it in exchange for a reward $$$.

So, I once settled in my mind for Lemon Squeezy, I looked for a payment processing library for them, got so excited to find one on github, only to then find out it was lacking some key functionality and incomplete (I’ve even made a github pull request - so, back to square one, another delay as had to implement the core events handling from scratch)

Ah the solopreneur life, it’s not easy, but it’s fun.

Thanks for reading till the end.

As a prize for reading till the end (and being a subscriber here on Substack):

Here’s a 47% off forever discount code for the Reply Hunter Starter Plans: SUBSTACKFRIENDS (limited to 100 customers and will expire in a couple of weeks).

Cheers,
Peter

To continue the “Did you know that?” series of updates after not writing to you for a long time, just wanted to bring you up to speed on another event I’ve been running for almost a year: Pitch Your SaaS / Startup

It’s a regular weekly event (every Saturday morning) where founders can introduce their products by telling us how their products can help us save or make money (or time).

Each week thousands of people get to see it, and:

• For the founders, it’s a great space to promote their hard work and efforts, while some might find marketing hard and may not result in sales, I keep reminding that any and all marketing efforts do have results something, namely: brand awareness. In the long term, all the efforts add up.

• For the readers, it’s a great way to discover new and interesting tools that can help them make or save money (or time, of course).

Last Saturday was the 43rd edition of Pitch Your SaaS, and here are a few highlights:

1. Boring Launch, founded by Karan, helps you submit your startup or product to 100+ directories (directory sites are on the rise with new ones popping up daily), so it’ll save you a lot of time if you were to do it all yourself and boost your SEO and sales.

2. Shipped Club, founded by Luca, will actually help you ship your SaaS faster, it’s not just a boilerplate, it comes with a discord community membership of like-minded individuals who love to build things.

3. Clipwing.pro, founded by Lera, will help you slice up your long videos and produce many short videos that you can easily share on social media - a total time saver.

Again, similar with Follow Monday, I’ll feature 3 SaaS pitches (randomly picked), but there are many founders who pitched their products too (check them out here) and long term will send the newsletter from its dedicated newsletter at PitchYourSaaS.substack.com

If you haven’t pitched your SaaS last week, hop in next Saturday to promote your hard work and a chance to get featured in the newsletter.

It really gives me joy to create a stage for founders to promote themselves, as I know from my personal experience how hard it can be to do marketing especially in the early days.

Giving > receiving.

Speak soon.

Cheers,
Peter

PS:

👍 Enjoyed this update? Or…
👎 Not enjoyed this update?

Please reply to this email and let me know 🙏

And welcome to the second newsletter issue.

I hope to build up a consistent (maybe daily?) newsletter writing habit to share my journey with you and help me reflect on what I’ve done on a day.

So, yesterday I have:

• Announced AffiliateTribune.substack.com and got 13 subscribers in one day 🥳 It’s a new publication dedicated to sharing my journey of learning about the world of affiliate sales. It’s always been an interest I had, but never got around to actually exploring it. So what better way to learn and document the process while sharing it with everyone? Here’s the tweet I made about it.

• And I’ve also done many other things, like dropping off and picking the kids up from school, but I think I’ll spare you from the busy parent BAU because it could become a lot of writing… 😅

Does writing for Affiliate Tribune make me an Editor-in-Chief? An ambitious, newspaper-y title, but who knows, if I keep at it might turn into something.

Keeping this newsletter issue short and simple (because if I start to overthink it I’ll never get around to sending it which goes against the goal and intention).

Speak soon.

Cheers,
Peter

Each week, thousands of people see the Follow Monday tweet and I’ve had a lot of positive feedback about it and some even said it’s their best growth day of the week.

For the readers, it’s a great way to discover and connect with new individuals that are active on X.

Yesterday was the 87th edition of Follow Monday, and here are a few highlights:

1. Meet Paul, a founder of a $600K ARR startup who told us he’s a professional overthinker. Overthinking is something many of us experience, so it’s great to connect with fellow overthinkers and talk about our overthinking struggles… (remember: better done than perfect)

2. Meet Serg who started indie making in February and is now at $9K in revenue (in case anyone is wondering if it’s worth working on side projects and hopping into the creator economy).

3. Meet Lewis, who introduced himself as “I’m Lewis” with an AI-generated photo of the King of Queens character but the face replace with… Lewis’ face. While Lewis somewhat broke the rules of Follow Monday (he didn’t say why we should follow him…), I’ve featured him here because his intro has a sense of humor, and entertaining posts go a long way and Lewis might have gotten a follower or two.

I’ll feature 3 intros weekly (randomly picked), but there are many great folks who introduced themselves (check them out here) and long term will send the newsletter from its dedicated substack at FollowMonday.substack.com

If you haven’t introduced yourself this week, hop in next Monday to grow your following and a chance to get featured in the newsletter.

My intention is (and always has been) to positively contribute to the community, so Follow Monday aligns with that. Especially in the early days, it might be a bit harder to grow your following or find genuine people to follow - so I hope it’s helpful for all.

Cheers,
Peter

PS:

For the 100th edition of Follow Monday there will be a giveaway (or book discount) from a popular maker in the programming space on X, so stay tuned for details.

PS 2:

👍 Enjoyed this update? Or…
👎 Not enjoyed this update?

Please reply to this email and let me know 🙏

You might (or not?) remember me and you likely subscribed to my newsletter on Revue (via Twitter / X @ThePeterMick) but Revue is no longer around so I’ll give substack a go for writing newsletters for sharing lessons learned and what I’m up to.

I want to write about things that are helpful or interesting to you.

I want to write for you.

I’ll keep it simple and straight-to-the-point. No BS. No spam. No overthinking.

Here’s what content you can expect:

• Lessons learned from startup building

• AI (that AI-thing can be useful sometimes)

• Internet money making content and tips

Every now and then, I might throw in a personal update or story as well.

I’ve also had thoughts to write about things that I’ve done every day - “What I’ve done today” - kind of a daily journal of short updates - this could be a great exercise and a commitment to daily writing… is this something you think I should do?

Please reply to this email to let me know what content you’d like to see more of and I’ll do my best to cover it in future newsletters.

I really look forward to sharing my journey with you.

Cheers,
Peter

Hey everyone, I’m Peter:

• A indie maker passionate about creating useful products and startups that help others achieve their goals.

• A husband.

• A dad of 3 (including twins).

I’ll use this space to share my journey and lessons learned (good or bad) from my life and startup adventures.

Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue.

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In the meantime, tell your friends!