What's New: 2021's most popular Reddit and Twitter posts
(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
Reddit, Twitter, and Google have all released 2021 recaps:
- The most popular Reddit posts, business tweets, and trending searches are out, and some of 2021's most popular posts tapped into millennial nostalgia. Here are the top insights!
- The "fairycore" aesthetic is soaring, with the hashtag hitting 1.1 billion views on TikTok. Fairycore's escapism and accessible magic craze opens up new opportunities for founders.
- Founder Aaron Francis is bootstrapping two products while juggling a full-time job and 7-month-old twins. Below, he shares how he finds the energy to get everything done, and why he's okay with going slow.
Want to share something with nearly 85,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
🎉 2021's Most Popular Posts on Reddit and Twitter
from the Growth & Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko
Reddit, Twitter, and Google have all released a 2021 recap of the most popular posts, business tweets, and trending searches, respectively. Let's dig into the top insights for founders!
2021's most popular
What's trending? Reddit's most popular Q&A of 2021 was with a lobster diver who recently survived being inside a whale. 2021's most popular brand tweet leaned into Nickelodeon nostalgia for millennials:
In this feel-good viral Tweet, Nick Jr. tapped into the nostalgia for millennials everywhere. Our old friend Steve from “Blue’s Clues” stopped by Twitter to catch up in a touching video for the show’s 25th anniversary.
Although his return was brief, the powerful message resonated strongly with the kids who grew up watching him. The seemingly small act of saying "I never forgot you" sparked an emotional exchange on Twitter, and gave many fans the closure they didn't know they needed.
Finally, 2021's most popular TV show search on Google was (predictably!) Squid Game.
The opportunity: What better way to create viral content for your business than to be inspired by what's already working? This is especially true for Reddit, where founders often make the mistake of being overly promotional in their posts. Dip your toes into the inspiration pool, and watch the results pour in!
What makes TikTok so addictive?
The news: The New York Times obtained a leaked document that reveals the science behind TikTok algorithms.
TikTok optimizes for these two metrics:
- Retention: Whether a user comes back.
- Time spent: How long a user looks at a particular video.
TikTok's recipe: TikTok employs a combination of things to get people hooked.
- Highly personalized feed: TikTok's AI takes into consideration all kinds of things, from what the people you follow are watching, to how long you watch something. It combines this information to show you content that you want.
- Open the app, consume immediately: On TikTok, instant gratification is immediate.
- Videos are purposely shown on an endless loop: Compare this to Netflix or YouTube, for example, where you have a pause before the next episode starts.
- Quick and short is the name of the game: It's not just about instant gratification, it's about frequent instant gratification.
The opportunity: Can you take any of these principles and apply them to your app? In SaaS, there's a principle called "The Aha! Moment" that could help you convert free trials to paying customers. TikTok has nailed The Aha! Moment by immediately showing videos.
The app shows videos on an endless loop in order to remove friction. There are endless opportunities for removing friction within your app. Hint: One of them is on your signup page.
Apple's A/B split testing
The news: Last week, Apple released two new features to skyrocket your App Store product pages:
- A/B test your product pages: This feature will allow you to try out alternate versions of your app's product pages. You can try different icons, app previews, and screenshots, and learn which version gets the best results.
- Custom product pages: You'll be able to create more versions of your app's product page, and highlight specific content or features. These product pages will be discoverable through unique, shareable URLs.
The opportunity: A/B testing is powerful. Test meaningfully different things and you'll (usually) get meaningfully different results. If your product page converts at 2%, but suddenly starts to convert at 5%, that makes all of your current acquisition channels far more powerful.
Which 2021 recap insight stood out most to you? Let's chat below!
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Growth & Acquisition Channels for more.
📰 In the News
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
🤐 Instagram recently hit 2B users, but won’t disclose it to the world. Here's why.
🌳 Malta is the first European nation to legalize cannabis.
👟 Nike has bought a virtual fashion firm to sell digital shoes in the metaverse.
💸 Barbados unveiled plans to adopt universal basic income.
👋 You can now hire a celebrity to quit your job for you.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
🧚♀️ Fairycore for Founders
from the Exploding Topics newsletter by Josh Howarth
The "fairycore" hashtag on TikTok has grown to over 1.1B views, and the craze opens up new opportunities for founders. These ideas could be the fairy wishes of your dreams!
Fairy land for founders
The aesthetic: From flower crowns to glitter, fairycore is an ethereal aesthetic that draws on forest imagery and other natural themes. Think enchanted lands and unicorns. Nylon noted that there is an air of magic involved as well:
Fairycore is accessible magic. [It] builds on the idea that as complicated and scary as life feels, there are small talismans we can hold or wear to make us feel better, or at least able to face the world without being overwhelmed by despair...
Unlike its cousin, goblincore, fairycore leaves a more romantic, whimsical taste in your mouth.
The fairycore trend has seen search growth of over 99x in the last two years:
It also shares many similarities with the cottagecore aesthetic, which plays up traditional cottage fashion and lifestyles. These ideas can get you started in the space:
- Champagne wall: A decorative display for storing glasses or bottles of champagne, typically at a wedding. Often, the design incorporates living wall elements, adorned with foliage for aesthetic purposes.
The popularity of champagne walls on sites like Etsy shows the mainstream growth potential of this trend. PartyTouchesUK, a party supply brand, currently sells two different champagne walls for around $20 each. The store has made 159.5K total sales, and one of the champagne walls has been listed as a bestseller over the past six months. Higher budget walls are also sold on Etsy, including a champagne holder currently selling for ~$370.
Some event organizers offer champagne walls, but for the most part, the product is still largely confined to the handmade sector. You could beef up champagne walls in the event organizer space, as they can be difficult for an organizer to obtain and build. Champagne walls to-go could be an option to explore.
- Nap dresses: Nap dresses are light, flowing frocks reminiscent of Victorian fashion. They are marketed as an option for both sleep and everyday wear. Global searches for nap dresses have increased by 875%.
There is one major complaint about the nap dresses currently on the market: They tend to lack support and structure, and some fashionistas are hilariously calling for them to be outright banned. You could create nap dresses that have more structure, and work for a particular season (whether hot weather or cold). Creating nap dresses that incorporate principles of deep pressure stimulation could catch on for those who want more from their nap attire.
- Home decor: Fairycore is exploding in the decor space as well, with Gen Z'ers decking out their rooms in enchanted elements. DIY boxes for college dorm rooms, school lockers, and cars could have success in this space. You could also offer DIY boxes for events such as high school proms, birthday parties, and themed events, partnering directly with schools or event spaces.
What’s next:
Related topics with strong growth include Fate: The Winx Saga, a live-action young adult remake of fairy cartoon Winx Club, and Christy Dawn, a vintage style dress brand aiming to "honor Mother Earth."
Would you build in the fairycore space? Share your thoughts below!
Check out the full post to see this week's other three exploding topics.
And join Exploding Topics Pro to see trends 6+ months before they take off.
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Exploding Topics for more.
🧠 Harry's Growth Tip: Conversational Copy
from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry
Ditch the thesaurus. You're not impressing anyone with unnecessary wordiness.
Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.
Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.
🛠 Aaron Francis on Bootstrapping With Twins
Hey friends! I'm Aaron Francis, a developer and bootstrapped founder working on two products.
The main product I'm working on (with my two partners!) is a visual query builder for Laravel, Rails, Vue, React, Livewire, and more. It's called Refine, and it lets your users build complicated filters to find data, without being a pain for you to build.
We've been working on it for almost two years now, and just started onboarding our first users. The other product, a syntax highlighting API called Torchlight, came out of building Refine. I built this to help make my own life easier, and decided to open it up for other folks. It has a few hundred uses, and is in the low hundreds in terms of MRR. It's a great product, and I have big plans for it.
Most importantly, my wife and I have seven-month-old twins! A little boy and girl. It's been a whirlwind of a year, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I also have a full-time job at a property tax company in Texas, where I do some programming and manage a team of two programmers and ~25 non-programmers.
If you want to follow along, my cofounders and I also run The Hammerstone Podcast.
AMA!
How do you juggle all of your responsibilities?
During paternity leave, I had an explosion of creativity. I feel like I was able to turn off my work brain for a while, and all sorts of fun stuff came out. That's when I wrote Sidecar, when Torchlight became a thing, and when I proposed the concept for Laravel Octane on Laravel Vapor, which they eventually adopted.
I've slowed down a bit since I've gone back to work, but still, I feel like working on the side stuff gives me an energy that full-time work doesn't.
I think I've still got it pretty easy because the twins don't do too much. Over Thanksgiving break, I was able to work on a ton of stuff because they just kind of hang out, roll over, and then go back to sleep. I'm still in the sweet spot of getting to spend time with them while still having some free time of my own. I think that will change soon.
I'm desperately trying to get as much done now as I can, so that when they want to spend more time with me later, I can do that. I've taken my fair share of PTO days to knock stuff out, too. We also have half-day Fridays from August to December, so that gives me a bit of time as well.
And finally... I'm okay with just going slow! I wish I could move faster, but alas, here we are.
How do you work with your cofounders?
Having a cofounder (now two) has been amazing. Early on, we were able to separate our areas of focus. I was on the Laravel backend and Sean was on the Vue frontend. Then, we had a client come along and offer us a sweet deal to build out the product in Rails. The client was able to take that on, and helped coordinate with a contractor who eventually became our third partner.
Now, the three of us have very separate roles. Colleen is working almost full-time on the client's project and getting lots of amazing experience with the problem space. Sean is finishing up the Vue frontend, and will soon be focusing on our traction channels. I'm working on the Laravel backend and gaining a foothold in that community.
It would be super tough to do this alone!
What's your user acquisition strategy?
A lot of tweeting.
Seriously though, people seem to really be glomming onto the idea. I tweet about it a fair amount, but it seems like people are always reaching out to ask if they can buy access to it.
We would've been done a long time ago, but we landed a big client that wanted to pay us to come and build it custom for them. That was a huge signal; it's such a painful issue for them that they were willing to have us contract with them for about a year to build it out from scratch in their tech stack (Rails/Hotwire).
That's really given me a lot of confidence that this is a huge, painful problem. I have people messaging me about once a week asking to get on the early access list, or telling us that they're willing to pay to be in the beta. It's a good feeling!
Discuss this story.
🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?
Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.
Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.
Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Darko, Priyanka Vazirani, Josh Howarth, Harry Dry and Aaron Francis for contributing posts. —Channing
