What’s New: What you need to know about the X algorithm
(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
Here's what you'll find in this issue:
- These tips from successful indie hackers can help you make the X algorithm work for you.
- Along with the latest Gemini AI model, Google also released an AI researcher, coding agent, and more.
- $1.6K+ MRR. 3 days before his wedding, Cory Zue ran into a problem that later sparked the idea for his first product.
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What you need to know about the X algorithm 👀
Alex Finn is an X creator who has made cracking the algorithm his life’s mission. Here's a high-level overview of what he's discovered:
- Profile replies and clicks are worth up to 13.5x more than likes. That's why being a “reply guy” is such a powerful growth strategy.
- You need to be verified to have any chance at growth.
- You should never follow more people than follow you.
- Linking off-platform is a big no.
But the devil is in the details...and the nuances.
From Our Desks: Making the Community Great Again 🧑💻
Welcome to From Our Desks, where the people behind Indie Hackers share the stories behind the headlines. This week, we talk build-in-public leaderboards, drama at Postmark, founder burnout, and more.
Channing Allen, co-founder and editor-in-chief: It's harder these days for indie hackers to contribute to the website. So we've evolved the product leaderboard into The Build Board, a daily leaderboard of build-in-public posts, which is now featured prominently on the homepage.
Stephen Flanders, journalist: The John Rush and Jason Cohen debate over directories solidified in my mind how pointless it is to build B2B software. Think about it. The options are try to validate your idea with directory #100000, or spend months building “valuable” software that has probably already been built a million times before. Not exactly enticing.
Katie Hignett, journalist: I finished up a report this week on transactional email service Postmark. It’s been a favorite among indie hackers for years, but more and more founders seem to be reporting issues with the service. Get in touch if you think you might have some insight into the issue.
Michal Kankowski, journalist: The grind and burnout story hit close to home for me. Over the past few years, I’ve faced burnout 2–3 times. The first time? Man, it nearly broke me.
James Fleischmann, journalist: I interviewed two founders who are, by any standard, wildly successful. Both spoke enthusiastically about the importance of expanding into enterprise clientele.
Google releases the latest version of Gemini AI 🤖
It may be OpenAI’s 12 Days of Shipmas, but don’t tell Google that.
The search giant released a whole bunch of AI heat this week. The headliner? The latest version of its flagship model, Gemini 2.0 Flash, which Google describes as an “AI model for the agentic era.”
According to Google’s testing, Gemini 2.0 Flash outperforms even 1.5 Pro, and it does so at twice the speed.
Here's what else was unveiled.
A printable wedding place cards tool 💍
After serving as the CTO of a successful tech startup, Cory Zue decided to strike out on his own. His first product was inspired by a small problem he experienced three days before his wedding: He and his fiancé needed place cards to indicate where people should sit.
Online, Cory learned that the common solution was to download a Word template. But, as a developer, he refused to manually type in all the names to generate each place card. They ended up writing them by hand, but that pain point stuck in Cory’s mind.
He later built the first version of Place Card Me in about a week, and grew the tool through SEO.
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Stephen Flanders for contributing posts. —Channing
Your blog provides such useful webdev tips! EchoAPI’s API testing features have let me save a lot of time, making it easier to ensure my application works as intended.