Last week I left Twitter, Instagram & Product Hunt
Disclaimer: this post only represents my personal views
Last week, I decided to close my accounts on Twitter, Instagram (and Product Hunt).
Why? Because I felt relationships on these platforms were based on ever-growing fakeness and hyprocrisy - to a lesser extent on PH, but that's another story.
Of course, I must admit I found interesting people to follow on these platforms, Pieter Levels and Dan Rowden, to mention just a few.
But what annoyed me the most was the concept that kept the users coming over and over again on these platforms: screaming the loudest they could to get attention.
Indeed, a vast majority of users - and I might have done it myself - in despair or voluntarily, were basically spamming everyone else to get noticed and promote their product to the world.
That's not what I expect from a social platform. A social network should be about building authentic relationships, like we are doing on Indie Hackers 🗣, and helping you find people with the same areas of interest.
That is why I decide to exchange 🔄 my accounts on these big impersonal platforms with accounts on smaller but (I guess are) more authentic ones:
- Exchange Twitter with MeetUp
- Exchange Instagram with We Heart It or Behance
- Exchange Product Hunt with... another platform that described themselves as an alternative to PH. I was following their account on Twitter but I forgot the name when I closed my account, well done Sven 😂 If you recognize yourself in this description, drop a comment below 👇
What about you? I've seen Indie Hackers discussing how to promote products without social media; does that mean you don't have any accounts on social networks, or that you only have accounts on smaller platforms? If yes, which ones?
I've given up trying to use Twitter in a deliberate way for now. As a general rule if you're only using a platform to promote yourself/work then you can expect the same from others. You just end up in a cluster of fakeness that is boring to everybody, but you still get engagements from people pretending.
This to me seems a lot like the corporate culture I want to avoid.
We all should get together and have a beer as corporate culture haters.
Is there a group dedicated to people like us on IH? 🤔
I totally agree. What's worse is that the Twitter algorithm insists on showing me content that was "liked" by someone you follow which is usually something completely unrelated to my interests.
I'm encouraged to see others' feeling the same as I was pretty saddened to think I left my full time job to build products yet and this involves hours on Twitter since that's a core part of recommended IH strategy e.g. Arvind K. Sahil
Daniel V. etc.
I think it's a great idea moving your time to smaller more authentic platforms and I will be doing the same.
Truly one of the worst developments on Twitter was when likes became a mini retweet. Sometimes I like a Tweet because someone is putting themselves out there. Not because I endorse the sentiment.
On the plus side this does mean there is a downside to spamming likes.
Also there is an agency problem with promoting Twitter when one is actively building their own audience on Twitter. Not only that, but in some cases also selling an info product on how to build an audience on Twitter.
Right! Never understood that feature!
Nice! Do you have an idea of what platforms you'd consider moving to?
You said it all.
I must admit that is why I did when I started Twitter in 2020 (I hadn't had an account there until then). For weeks I chased people with larger audiences than me (it wasn't complicated 😅) and was trying to always have something to answer to their tweets. I don't really know what I was expecting - getting noticed, likes or whatever else), but I quickly realized it wasn't very efficient.
Anyway, I changed my ways but it seemed that there were always users trying this technique on the long run. That is why I left.
Now I will look for smaller platforms where you can have more spontaneous exchanges with people, like the ones I listed in my post.
I have started following people because they did this. These tended to be high volume accounts. Either repeating themselves in multiple places or producing noise. The problem with this is that if you put them in a list they fill it with noise and I mainly use lists.
I assume like minded people do the same so I don't want to spam up their lists... However Twitter rewards volume and this is where I give up. It's worth mentioning that low volume, high quality accounts with many followers are usually famous from external sources.
Yes, you're right, they favor volume over quality because that's what brings money in.
Since you paused Twitter, what networks do you currently use for your online presence/promotion?
I haven't actually paused it, it's just now my SaaS tweets are buried under geopolitics and memes :-p
I don't have an alternative except my own website. I have one or two articles that get search engine traffic. The most popular is this https://richiejp.com/zig-vs-c-mini-http-server
Zig gets systems engineers juices flowing apparently. Generally though howtos seem to do well in search engines given time. Then I link from those articles to stuff people don't search for. Most visitors leave immediately, but occasionally someone goes through the whole website.
I think that if you ever try searching for something, can't find an answer, solve it, then write an article on solving it. This is guaranteed to get traffic for a few years. It's a slow process however.
Oh yes, I know that as well 😂 suddenly everyone found a new role as a geopolitics expert 😂
I've got a different perspective here, so I wrote a novel about it.
Twitter became a wonderful resource for me once I figured out how I could have a healthy relationship with it.
When I first struck out on my own, I jumped into the swarm of "indie hackers" using Twitter because they were told that's what they needed to do. The whole experience was awful.
Almost everyone I interacted with was pretty clearly just looking for engagement to make their follower counts go up so they could sell something to other indie hackers, or just so they could feel good about having X followers.
There were tons of obvious grifters selling tools or ebooks to help indie hackers grow on Twitter. The worst $39 I have ever spent was on an ebook from a well-known Twitterati about how to grow on Twitter.
Along with the grifters was a constant stream of fake positivity, empty platitudes, and hustle porn regurgitated over and over again by people hoping a big account would give them a RT or like.
To make matters worse, I had basically nothing interesting or useful to add to the conversation — I was just wasting time and hoping for a miracle.
I eventually realized spending time on Twitter, for me, was just a way to avoid doing harder but infinitely more valuable work. The quick dopamine hits were a constant distraction from the difficult but vital work of trying to figure out how I was going to build something of my own.
So, I deleted all of my tweets, unfollowed everyone, and deleted the app from my phone. It took a little while to break the habit of going to Twitter reflexively to procrastinate but since I followed zero accounts, there wasn't anything to see when I logged in which eventually made my brain give up on going to Twitter.
In my time away from Twitter I wrote a number of technical tutorials that performed pretty well organically on Google and people were finding and sharing those articles on social without me. Last fall, I decided that I would get back on Twitter, but use it extremely intentionally.
I still follow 0 accounts and I post sparingly — 1 small thread for each of the 2 - 3 articles I publish each month and 1 small thread for my monthly newsletter. A few more posts each month when I have something to say that I think people might find interesting.
I don't have any kind of strategy and I don't pay attention to growth or engagement metrics. I just share things that I think people who care about what I care about will find interesting. If people like it, cool. If not, who cares.
Funnily enough, with this new approach, I spend almost no time or energy on Twitter but I've grown from 50ish followers to 600ish, sold enough copies of a technical book I wrote to pay my mortgage for a month, and I've made a number of authentic, genuine connections with folks in my industry who add value to my professional life.
Moral of the story: I found the value in Twitter once I threw away all of the toxic positivity, guru nonsense, and engagement chasing and just used it to share authentic, valuable, original content without any expectations or interest in making the numbers go up. Its valuable as a way to share your work, and as a way to connect with people, but I had to be very intentional about finding my people there.
If I had to choose just one social media product, I'd stick with the small Discord communities I've joined over the last year where it is easier to build genuine connections with like minded folks, but I don't think Twitter has to be a negative — you get out of it what you put in.
Nice piece @davidcolby! 🤙
I agree on this! Sometimes the more you push for something, the less chances you'll have to reach it. That's another interesting aspect of marketing/promotion, which is the intention.
For me that's another thing. Being unable to find users for your products is one thing. But the thing for me is that I never found anyone interesting on Twitter. I mean, I never found anyone interesting from the platform. All the contacts I had on Twitter were people I actually discovered outside the platform - blog posts, PH, IH, etc. - or people that reached out to me on Twitter. Never in the other way.
After quitting Instagram, I started feeling a lot better, and became much more efficient in my work. Instagram has become a toxic pit of misguided illusions that swallows you up if you’re not careful (and most people aren’t).
Same goes for Twitter. It’s a platform that stands for nothing and offers its users nothing.
Basically, if you’re hustling and grinding, it’s better to avoid all social media. It’s not what it used to be. Too much fakeness and toxicity flowing around.
Yes and we're not even talking about the proliferation of bots spamming on there!
You're right! Facebook was still kind of cool until 2017, when more older people started creating accounts. Idk for Twitter since I've only been there for less than 2 years. And as said for Instagram, it's the 🔞 bots that killed it. I still wonder why Instagram doesn't take any actions against them. Maybe it's because they bring content to the platform? 🤔
Obviously bots have destroyed almost every platform we have today. Platforms don’t care simply because the users don’t care. Especially Instagram. People whine about one thing or another about it, but they keep going back to it. Company know this so they ‘teach’ the algo to just ‘bury’ people in echo chambers so that they keep coming back to the platform to be immersed in confirmation bias.
Also, Twitter is becoming like Tumbler in a sense that they’ve become a porn streaming site in censorship-heavy (porn sites) countries.
Heavy sigh.
Hey, sorry to kinda hijack the thread, but since you've mentioned bots, I thought it would be appropriate to let you know that I'm working on BotMeNot.
It's a tool for measuring bot protection of websites. So if you see that a website (yours or someone else's) has problems with bots, you can use BotMeNot to see how well protected it is.
Yep, definitely! It pleases users with a bigger audience who can brag about their high number of followers/likes, who at the end of the day, are just bots 😂
Most people on Twitter seek popularity, not to be part of community
That's an interesting side debate we should have! "Do people use social media mostly for social recognition?"
That would be a good debate indeed! I personally unfollowed everyone trying to 'build a following' in favour of small more genuine accounts. Although everyone in twitter seem to end up in a race of likes and follows until they become repetitive and shallow.. I don't know anything about ProductHunt though
That's a good and fair measure 😂 Problem is, as I noted somewhere in this comment section, even if you manage to mute/block these accounts, Twitter via its algorithm will find a way to continue to spam you with new recommendations 🌵
Exactly this! There is nothing really 'social' about twitter, its a platform for promotion not interaction. The algorithm rewards impulsivity and frequency and not thoughtfulness or genuine engagement.
Now I'm considering creating a new post on IH to know if there are people who manage to successfully promote their product without the help of these big platforms.
I know that's a topic that's already been raised in the past, but maybe it could be interesting to refresh it 🤔
I just posted to gather information and experiences from Indie Hackers who successfully built profitable business without social media 👉 Check it out here: How did you make it without social media?
Thanks for sharing that!
I think one huge strategy of marketing your product without social media is simply content and SEO traffic. I think this is neglected a lot but can definitely help to find a market and niche people are really looking for with some data where this is based on.
Good luck with your journey and let me / us know if you need any help with that or found the optimal way 😃
Thanks!
SEO and content writing is not really my thing, so I prefer looking for other strategies 😅
I am currently focusing on designing ads and sending them via postal services. I guess it's a more "uncommon" way to do it.
Thanks! I think I'll make a post on IH if I find the perfect way of promoting without social media 👉
Yeah I get that as well. This sounds really cool! LMK if you publish your article 🙂
I'll do!
First I am going to write another post to gather experiences of people who already succeeded with this way 🤙
I feel you, and I got almost burned out because of this, therefore I unfollowed around 5k users to have my feed clean. In fact, I closed my DMs for a while...It helped.
5K, wow! It should have been really overwhelming on your side!
My strategy was to mute every post's author, aiming at reducing the amount of clutter in my feed. However, instead of processing the information and adapt it, Twitter kept suggesting me this kind of content I did not want to see. This was the straw that broke the camel's back.
My feed was a vomit. It took me three days to delete them manually.
Yes Twitter does that, it keeps suggesting me old connections that I deleted....
If someone can, is better to stay away...
If you remember the Product Hunt alternative please let us know cause I'm also interested in a PH alternative.
I will!
I remember they exchanged with me on Twitter, but impossible to find the name again. I thought it was something like "Amazing Products", but I found nothing with that name on Google/PH alternatives pages.
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How far did you bring this tool before selling it? Did you manage to make it profitable?
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Great! I also tend to create multiple side projects at the same time, mainly because I got too much ideas and I want to make them all 😂
Do you have a list somewhere of all the projects you've created over the years?
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Thanks! It'll be interesting for me to see in what directions you went!
If you want online friends, play MMORPGs. Those people I played with in the past 10-15 years are welcome to call me in the middle of the night. Ask me a favor or whatever. I'm up for it. :)
It's a total no for a person from twitter or ph. Those networks are more on the business side of the things. Everyone leverages them for marketing purposes. Marketing unfortunately doesn't have boundaries so if acting friendly increases the revenue so be it.
Plus how is it possible to make meaningful connections on a global, public chat room. If you are not planning to leverage it for marketing yourself yeah making this change is great for you. But I'd recommend to keep them open for business purposes.
For example, I closed my fb account ages ago. I occasionally regret that I no longer know what opportunities lying there. Recently I read that their ad algorithm is so good and have a great CTR but IDK and need an account to test it out.
"relationships
on these platforms werebased on ever-growing fakeness and hyprocrisy"I think the same in a broader perspective and it surely applies to those online platforms.
What games do you play? I'm curious 😂
Jokes aside, I'm noot even looking for online "friends". I'm just expecting some honesty from fellow users. Not some hypocritical "your product looks amazing 😍😍😍".
Although these comments might sound nice on the spot, you quickly realize these comments mainly come from makers trying to attract visitors by randomly acting nice around. They will never use your product, plus it gives you the feeling that you actually made something great and useful for someone. And that's what I feel is destroying frank interactions online.
I agree there is a FOMO effect to leaving Twitter, Facebook, and all these big social networks. However, by keeping an account on these platforms, I felt like I was indirectly supporting them. So I decided to leave.
What if your product looks astonishing 😍 🤣
I agree on what you say about breaking the trust. But "trust me" we are everywhere.
You gonna make me quit twitter now. I don't really care if I support them or not but in general twitter usually brings me more negativity. With the hope someday something will click and I grow my account to be able tweet once to sell 100 products/subscriptions at once. Considering the time and energy I've spent there. They owe me big time.
Tremendous 😂
I won't lie that is why I stayed until last week 😂 I think I was kinda deluded 😅
Then I decided I've had enough of all this fakeness/corniness ❌
I've been building my audience on Twitter for a bit more than a year now. I'm close to 70K followers.
And it's true. You have to provide a ton of value instead of just promoting yourself or your products. It doesn't work that way.
You have to keep your ratio like 10/90 promotion vs. value. You can change it only after you already built your audience and built some credibility.
That's a nice audience indeed!
True! Most people did not understand that though 👉 that's why I left!
I just posted to gather information and experiences from Indie Hackers who successfully built profitable business without social media 👉 Check it out here: How did you make it without social media?
@ArchieMax @bobburch @Sunny_ @goutham8 @richiejp
Although I'm still on Twitter, and almost never promote my products, I've been tweeting less since doubling down on blogging. Not for the reasons you mention, as I never followed the kinds of users you described. But because I'm essentially invisible on the platform.
I recently started a second blog, a journal for more frequent posts and notes where I share my tech interests and projects.
I'm still invisible, of course. But it feels liberating. And, after just a few weeks, I'm getting roughly the same engagement I have on Twitter after almost two decades on the platform.
Yes, I agree with you that leaving these platforms and start you own "media" can be a relief.
I once started to blog on Tumblr, but like you I was still invisible. I don't really have patience as a quality, so I stopped 😅
I started my new blog on Write.as, a platform with a built-in community. So far I've been posting daily and having a lot of fun with rediscovering blogging.
Oh I know them, but never had a chance to try them. Are you happy with the service?
Yes, I'm very happy with Write.as. It's the happy ending of a challenging quest for a new blogging platform that meet my requirements and preferences.
Yes, it's sometimes complicated to find the right tool. I was considering Ghost at a time, but they were more expensive if I do remember well.
I gave up using these networks for the same reason, especially in my language, Portuguese. The people of the so-called Developer Bubble just want to get attention and create discussions that don't bring value. Today I only participate in a few communities on reddit and here is where I have really learned.
Yes, it's generally better to exchange with people in the same "niche" community/forum!
I recently posted on another forum for entrepreneurs a thread on why I believe that social media is a terrible use of time for most entrepreneurs.
Here it is (it's too long to paste it here):
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/social-media-destroys-entrepreneurs-grow-your-business-without-it.102992/
I think that you'll relate to it.
That has been a pleasure to read your post because I approved everything you said from A to Z.
That's crazy I never saw this under that angle.
That's right, everybody os kinda like begging for a piece of the cake 😂
That was a thing I said somewhere in this comment section. I usely find people outside of social media, not on social media.
That's a big problem nowadays. People tend to think your time investment or dedication to your project is based on your activity on social media. The worse is when they think your success is only tied to it as well!
Yes, platitudes like: "As an entrepreneur, you are the key of your success." Awful.
🤙
Nice conclusion. You said it all. 🤝
Glad to hear the post resonated with you.
I like using those platforms and found some interesting people there too, but they are also a marketing channel for most bootstrappers. If you are interested in making more meaningful relationships with other bootstrappers have a look into a paid community.
I am working on WBE Space and the vibe there is very different than Twitter and IH
Hey that's nice, that's a thing that I wanted to create a year ago, something like a virtual library where you don't feel alone when you're working!
Bookmarked it!
I had issues with Twitter constantly thinking I was a bot, when I had barely interacted with the platform. I tried getting support to help out with the problem but gave up pretty quickly. I guess my phone/wifi is just forever blacklisted for some reason.
I've grown my products just fine without it, mainly by doing what you're doing: seeking smaller platforms, and focusing on developing relationships.
I've never liked Twitter. I was always hesitant to start an account. Same deal with Instagram. Both of them seem to attract "look at me" types of users with no true engagement. And I really hate that grind.
By true engagement I mean: actively developing an interest in others, what they're working on, and getting involved with them. Real conversations.
Twitter/Instagram just seem to appeal to our superficial sides and even worse, they actively support and promote it.
The most painful part of cutting away from them, however, is you basically lose a communication channel with potential partners and customers which sucks. A lot of people use Twitter/Instagram DMs to start the conversation, and that's obviously a hurdle you have to work through.
IH is a breath of fresh air and I'm so thankful for this community. Occasionally things can get a little too promotion-y here lately, but I love seeing real and thoughtful conversations still happening here
I had exactly the same problem when I created my first account! I was labelled as a bot even if it hadn't even posted anything yet!
What platforms are you using? I'm curious.
I feel they keep promoting this type of content because this is the type of "creators" that bring the biggest quantity (even not of quality) of content to the platforms.
I feel you because it's a thought I had when I first considered leaving Twitter. There was clearly a FOMO inside me. Would I be able to find users without social media. But at one moment I kinda said "f*ck it" and deleted them all. I've been feeling better since then!
I more than agree with you! @csallen and @channingallen have done a wonderful job at building this community!
In terms of platform, my main product is built around Airtable and Google Sheets so I go where the power users tend to congregate. The Airtable community site has been good. I've also been working on forming relationships with content creators (a few good related newsletters, YT channels which is my latest target) to get a plug and potentially collaborate with them on some content.
Small niche reddit communities have been good as well - though reddit is very anti-spam, lots of folks don't like receiving PMs, so you have to get a little creative around how you get in touch. Still, the same principle applies, find those that already have a loyal audience and figure out a way you can collaborate and bring value to their channel while still getting your product some attention.
I guess put succinctly: find out who your target users trust, and work your way in from there.
The way I see it is that these folks have a more captive audience that has a much greater attention span than you'd find on grander social media.
I didn't fully realize this until I saw how powerful Twitch is for the game development community: these streamers have a much closer relationship with their viewers and fans than some random power account on Twitter, and when they sponsor a new upcoming game it's actually pretty nuts how many of the viewers convert and buy the game. It all comes down to trust.
Oooh, your product is SheetDream! I know it because I created a list of tools that help people building apps, websites and software without code 👉 it's called NoCode 101
I don't really have an opinion on Reddit, only that it is sometimes hard to find interesting content on it, because their structure/UI is a bit labyrithine.
I'd say that an another way to see it, although this is more a B2C audience within the entertainment industry, that is I think another thing. Do you think it could be applied to B2B without losing credibility?
It's definitely a B2C specific thing re: Twitch example, but I think the point I was trying to drive is just how important the element of trust is. And I think that it applies just as much to B2B.
Some random Twitter guy with tons of followers says I should use something, some product, I'll give it a passing thought but will probably not give it any more consideration.
If its someone who I know and trust: like perhaps a certain instructional YT channel or something where I've received a significant amount of value from them already, on the other hand, any suggestions they make to me I'm going to put much more credibility on and will actually check it out
True, I just suddenly assumed we were talking about B2B ahaha
Yes, overall, that's a good think to improve the trust feeling between the two parties!
That's an investment you made in yourself, rather than 3rd parties that benefit from all your energy and give you very little if anything at all in return.
Clearly!
I see that you don't have any social media banner on your profile, do we belong to the same club?
We do my friend, we do!
Nice ❤️
How do you handle your promotion without those platforms?
To some extent, I still use some of their self-serve advertising. I'm of the opinion tho that if you are dependent on them for generating revenue, you'll leave yourself exposed to some serious risks. My best advice is to use them to attract an audience, take that audience off of the platform (via email lists, self-hosted forums, etc.), and then look to grow organically and do independent media buys.
Oh ok, I see, but I don't feel personally that I'd like to support their practices any longer.
Agree and I feel too much information is killing our brain
It’s not even information. Just junk.
And unfortunately it's not useful or interesting information!
I personally don’t agree. I guess it really depends on who you follow and what you use it for. I don’t face the same issues and my experience has been vastly different.
Nice to see positive experiences 🤝
What platforms do you use and how is your experience there?
Oh, I use much the same platforms as you. But I only follow select people and only if I care about what they have to say, so I don't really see all of what you mention.
What I'm saying basically is that you don't only see posts from people you are following. There's a Twitter feature that also shows you tweets that were liked by people you are following, and that is particularly annoying. We were discussing that further in that comment section.
Ah, understood! I actually have noticed that as well. There is the ability to filter to latest tweets, but Twitter doesn't seem to store it permanently and switches back to Home, which is a bit of a mess.
Even I am going to give up to use Instagram and Facebook, many years I am working on both platforms but I could not reach to people, who are expert in my field. I think they are like a show case just for celebrities not for all......
Yes I kind of agree with you! If you haven't been on Twitter/FB/Instagram for more than 6 years and/or aren't posting on a daily basis, it is extremely hard to exchange with people who have the same areas of interest. The networks have become too vast...
Refreshing post. Do agree. For me, the myth that shouting about your product wins ignores the benefits of actually work on meaningful relationships within your network and it's opportunities.
Thanks @richardesigns!
You're right! At the end, this made me a bit "two-faced" for tweeting about my products - not even in a promotional way - so I was only retweeting others' posts, killing the social principle.
But I am just curious if by not using Twitter, Product Hunt, would you be fine with not experimenting with marketing for your product, Sven?
Are you asking if I fear of missing out (opportunities) if I'm not using these platforms anymore?
If yes, I do agree in a certain way, I might lose leads by not showing up on big social networks. But there's a lot of successful businesses out there that are not present on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. So my only focus now is to analyze the strategies of these companies to overcome this broken link. As said above, I'm planning to post something about this to gather experiences from people to succeed without social media.
I hadn't known of this approach till now. Let me have a look on the post you made :)
🤙
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I agree there are some annoying self-promoting posts that do not bring value to the community, but overall it is still way better than Twitter's garbage 😂
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Indeed! And that is part of another problem which is: should marketing have been part of social media?
You're right. It was written.
Hopefully the remedy will come in a positive way and in the good direction!
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Oh you're a forerunner, you actually left when most people were creating their first account 😂
Sometimes it gives me a FOMO effect, but it quicly leaves when I think about the amount of stupidity I'm avoiding 😂
I am not sure it makes life better or not but for me, it's plain simple nothing big nothing small. not a big deal.
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