🍪 Twitter just revealed its algorithm
Happy Thursday, friends. Hope your bank accounts aren't hurting too much from payin' those taxes this week.
Let’s get to the good stuff.
In the oven this week:
🗝️ Twitter gives us the keys to the kingdom
🗳️ Poll of the week: is Twitter on it’s way down?
🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines
🍫 Chocolate chips: our 3 favorite finds
😂 Snickerdoodles: Thursday memes
FRESHLY BAKED
HOW TO POP OFF ON TWITTER
You know that person that joins the group project late and blows the whole thing up?
Well, that’s kinda been Elon at Twitter.
Since joining the company, he’s been…. unconventional. Let’s run back the highlight reel:
Firing 80% of Twitter staff
Charging people $8 a month to get verified
For this week’s main character moment, he’s decided to open source the Twitter algorithm.
Yup, he’s sharing the actual code that goes into ranking tweets in your home feed.
Big tech *cough* META *cough* has guarded their algorithms closely for years, so this is a pretty big deal. We dug into the code to see it for ourselves, and here are the 6 things to know to make Twitter work for you:
1. Likes are king. Each like gives a tweet a 30x boost, while each retweet provides 20x and each reply provides only a 1x boost. Images and videos also help, and give your tweet a 2x boost. Kinda surprised that replies aren't worth more tbh.
2. Elon promised more reach for people that pay for Twitter Blue, and here’s his promise in code. Your tweet gets a 4x boost within your network and a 2x boost outside your network.
3. Making up words penalizes your tweet’s ranking a lot. Time to whip out that spell check, people!
4. Posting links will hurt you unless you have a lot of engagement. Basically, only people that are already popular can post links unscathed.
5. Other things that hurt you: mutes, blocks, unfollows, reports etc. The usual suspects.
6. Stick to your niche. Twitter puts everyone into invisible groupings of similar accounts. You get penalized for posting outside your cluster.
There ya have it folks, the keys to the kingdom.
Let’s all pop off on Twitter this summer.
POLL OF THE WEEK
ELON TWITTER: BULLISH OR BEARISH?
Elon's been changing things at Twitter faster than we change our underwear.
With advertisers continuing to pull out, we gotta know: is Twitter going down, or is it here to stay for the long haul? Should we bother investing in that blue checkmark?
Sound off 👇🏽 |
COOKIE CRUMBS
BITE SIZED TREATS
Remember Billy McFarland? Yeah, the guy behind Fyre Festival, a fraudulent luxury version of Coachella that never materialized? Well, he’s finally out of jail for the first Fyre Festival, and what’s his first order of business? Pumping Fyre Festival II. Like bro… 🤦🏻♀️you truly just can’t make this stuff up.
a16z released their second annual "State of Crypto" report and here's the TLDR: the number of active crypto addresses continue to rise steadily (at all time highs), the US is losing its edge in web3 with its proportion of crypto devs declining, and NFTs are back on the rise.
Jack Dorsey's new decentralized social network Bluesky is now providing early access to its private beta if you’re a substack writer. Here’s the signup form.
The circus doesn’t stop at Twitter. Now, it’s ex-execs are suing the company for legal fees they paid related to shareholder lawsuits and government investigations. They really don’t like payin’ the bills over there.
You know that old saying that a glass of red wine is great for your heart? Well, a new analysis of 4.8 million study participants found that drinking alcohol has no health benefits, even for people that drink a small amount. This comes after the World Health Organization announced this year that no amount of alcohol is good for our health. It’s time to put down the White Claws.
CHOCOLATE CHIPS
OUR FAVORITE FINDS
This is gold.. this guy Rashiq created a website that places an order for a McSundae every minute at every McDonald's location in the US to figure out which ones have a broken ice cream machine. Who says smart people don't solve real problems anymore?? Yo Rashiq, you deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for all the peace you’re creating in our stomachs!
A Navy SEAL on the single most important thing to master for elite performance.
You know when you spend a bunch of time reading a finishing a book, only to realize you don’t remember jack about it? Well here’s a 4-step framework to fix that.
For F1 fans: an interesting thread on how Toto Wolff became a billionaire.
SNICKERDOODLES
THURSDAY MEMES
😂
That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!
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