From Our Desks: Exiting X?

Welcome to From Our Desks, where the people behind Indie Hackers share the stories behind the headlines. This week, we talk alternatives to X, new features for IH+, and bitcoin's big week.

@ChanningAllen (Channing Allen, co-founder and editor-in-chief): I try to find an interesting X post to feature on each issue of the What's New newsletter, but on two consecutive days this week I gave up the search after ten to fifteen minutes of wading through a dizzying feed of clickbait videos. Our newsroom has published quite a few pieces on all the people fleeing X for alternatives like Bluesky and Mastodon, and I'm starting to understand why.

Not that it hasn't been a productive week overall. Now that we're publishing news at a steady clip, we're finally focusing more on making improvements to IH+ as a product. And by “improvements,” I really just mean “basic features we should have built months ago.” Like a welcome email for new customers and a Plus Portal where customers can view all of their IH+ benefits — premium articles, databases, etc — in one place.

@krhignett (Katie Hignett, journalist): I had some fun this week trying out OpenAI’s o1 model, which was just released to all paid API users. It’s really slow, but it does seem to give better-thought-out answers. If you use it in ChatGPT, you can watch it figure things out step-by-step with update messages like “breaking down the problem,” and “Assessing equation symmetry”.

It reminds me of the lines you’d see on the loading screens in the early versions of The Sims — “reticulating splines” and “searching for llamas.” 

But that may also be because I’m currently home renovation obsessed. I just moved back to London after living mostly in Southeast Asia for three years, and there’s plenty to fix.

@StephenFlanders (Stephen Flanders, journalist): Last Saturday I wrote about bitcoin reaching a new all-time high of $91,000. Well, things have only improved since then. One glorious orange coin is now worth almost 100,000 filthy Uncle Sam’s. 

Perhaps the best thing about this crypto rally is that, so far, it is only bitcoin itself rallying. As I wrote last week, one reliable “top” indicator is bitcoin dominance (BTC.D), or the percentage of the total crypto market cap constituted by bitcoin, dropping into the 40s. This typically happens as the bull market progresses and things get progressively frothier. You know, like Jimmy Fallon shilling Bored Apes kind of frothy. 

Right now, BTC.D is sitting pretty around 60%. So, we still have a way to go until we get the ultimate "take your money and run" sign: Marc Cuban and Trump going NFT for NFT on X.

@IndieJames (James Fleischmann, journalist): This week, I interviewed three founders from very different walks of life, in very different industries, with very different revenue numbers. Yet, all three emphasized the importance of one thing: Partnering with the right people.

In two cases, that meant marketing partnerships — finding the right influencer to team up with and/or integrating with the right platforms. In the third, it was about finding a cofounder who brings all the right things to the table.

Personally, I find it hard to connect and collaborate when I'm in the weeds on a project. But, over and over again, I see that the ROI of doing so is higher than any of my "more urgent" tasks.

Collaboration is an indie hacker's super power.

@Michal_kanka (Michal Kankowski, journalist): What a week it’s been! I’ve officially joined the ranks of the Jedi council of this space, and I can finally call myself a full-on indie hacker — passport and all!

But man, it’s tough seeing what’s happening back home in Europe. Small businesses are really feeling the heat from those EU rules that make Facebook ads way less personalized. It’s a rough time for the everyday folks, especially with AI taking over so many jobs. Even in Poland, in Krakow, a few radio journalists were replaced by AI. Wild times, huh?

Still, it brings me joy to see creators, aka news influencers, stepping up as the new go-to for news. Already 40% of young adults (30 and under) get their news from these influencers instead of the big media behemoths. And the trend’s only picking up steam.