I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society,.
I'm blue
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tl;dr – I've decided to delete all my Twitter posts, lock down my account, and leave the platform. And I'm going all-in on Bluesky, which (in the last month) has become 1,000x more fun than X. I've been on Twitter since 2008. Since then, I gained 40,000 followers, posted over 50,000(?!) times, and built countless relationships. Twitter was my favorite place on the internet. It felt like where everyone hung out (bootstrappers, creators, tech people, devs). It was our water cooler. BTW – this newsleter is a long one, you can read it on my blog if you want! Why Twitter sucks nowWhen Elon took over, I was worried his leadership would ruin it. To me, it feels like the verdict is in. The experience kept getting worse:
For me, Twitter has degraded significantly since Elon took over. That's why Bluesky's recent momentum has been such a breath of fresh air. Bluesky is having its moment.There's real momentum building on Bluesky: in the last month, numerous indie hackers, bootstrappers, and Laravel folks have switched. When I tried it a year ago, it felt dead; today, it feels alive. "But Justin, I don't have the energy for another social network..." I get it! Over the past year, I've tried Mastodon and Threads. But neither gave me that "nostalgic Twitter feeling." But Bluesky is different. It reminds me of how Twitter felt in 2010-2012, before algorithms rewarded engagement farming. Why Bluesky is better"It's weird being on a social media platform where people just post about the things they like, have fun, and make jokes. That's what I've been appreciating about it." – Josh Wood, Honeybadger Here are a bunch of reasons I'm having more fun on Bluesky than I have on X in years:
And because of all this good stuff, Bluesky is growing like crazy. A lot of this is because of a feature called Starter Packs that allows you to find people in your community to follow. For example, here's one I made featuring "Founders and Makers:"
And here's another one for the Laravel dev community. Right now, Bluesky is a great place to build an audienceBecause of their explosive growth (they've been adding over a million users per day over the last 4-5 days), and these Starter Packs, active users on Bluesky are gaining a ton of followers right now. Here's my follower graph over the past month: I think people are hungry for something different. They're actively seeking genuine interactions. This is why engagement is high right now. Instead of people mindlessly scrolling a rage-inducing "For You" feed, folks are actively looking for interesting people to follow. Getting started on BlueskyIt's pretty easy to get started:
There's already a bunch of great resources for switching to Bluesky:
Bluesky: it's different this time 🤞Bluesky is built on an open protocol. Technically, this should mean that no single company can take control and ruin the experience. The team at Bluesky is led by an incredible female CEO, Jay Graber. By every account, she seems principled, fair and committed to the open web. Her team is small (about 20 people), but they're executing incredibly well. They've added features like custom feeds, advanced moderation tools, and more. For me, Bluesky represents a chance to start fresh: to build a social media experience that's actually social again. My advice? Don't be performative; hang out and post fun stuff. Feel free to be weird and real. Cheers,
PS: if you've been wanting to start a podcast, Transistor is doing a Black Friday sale. 40% off 4 months of podcast hosting! PPS: my friends Josh and Ben over at Honeybadger did a great episode on Bluesky. You should listen: |
Justin Jackson's SaaS marketing experiments
I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society,.
I didn't expect the last newsletter to generate so much debate! It ended up getting posted to Hacker News. Aaron and Ian talked about it on Mostly Technical, and many other folks responded in comments and emails. Some folks felt the tone was too pessimistic/defeatist. Others felt like I was discouraging older founders from starting companies. (I also had quite a few folks who responded and resonated with the spirit of the post). I recorded a response to all this feedback here: A few...
I recently listened to three podcast episodes, all with bootstrapped founders over the age of 40: Paul Jarvis has retired from Fathom Analytics Matt Wensing steps down from Summit, takes job with Customer.io Brian Casel and Jordan Gal talk about building SaaS at this stage of life It's interesting to see how differently this stage of life is compared to our 20s and 30s. (I'm 44). An Evolving Definition of Success: "I've been at Summit for 5 years. My last company took 15 years, and I didn't...
Every day in Transistor's #marketing channel in Slack, we track our new trial signups: Like most SaaS companies, our growth relies on new people finding us every day. Whenever I see these numbers, I ask myself: "Where are these signups coming from?" There's this idea in marketing that we'll be able to find a magical channel that brings in thousands of customers. But, when I look at where these signups come from, there's never one dominant source. Here's what we saw in August: Search (40%):...