If you are a Twitter blogger, you have been experiencing abnormal phenomena for nearly half a year.

Specifically, your traffic and interaction data suddenly plummeted at a certain point, and the nature of viral content has become strange—deep analyses get dozens of views with zero interaction, while posting provocative or sensational content leads to a surge in followers.

The main content of this article is about why this phenomenon occurs. In other words, how did the clever design of the X platform ruin the vertical audience you worked so hard to build?

Platform Weakens the Following Page, Defaults to the Recommendation Page

This is caused by two measures from the platform:

· Weakening the "Following" page and defaulting users to the "For You" recommendation page; this has become so severe that some bloggers have to write custom scripts to force a switch back to the Following page.

· Phasing out the chronological display of followers' content in favor of algorithmic recommendations.

The reason is that last year, the platform introduced Grok as a weighting factor in algorithmic judgments. Without delving into the complexities, the result is: This makes posts either completely silent or suddenly blessed by the algorithm, going viral with no middle ground.

The motivation behind this is easy to understand: if users only see content from accounts they follow, platform ad insertion would be very awkward. For example, it would have to insert ads abruptly, like on WeChat, and then fabricate comments and likes from friends below the ad.

This seems to enhance the platform's commercial value in the short term, but in practice, it doesn't work out that way, especially in the casino-like atmosphere of the crypto circle.

@supermao has an incisive discussion on this in an article: Everyone says CT content is declining? What is the root cause? Have you been to Las Vegas? Have you seen high rollers in casinos needing to read newspapers or books? What they need are presidential suites, luxury, and beautiful women. The crypto circle is essentially too heavily narrative-driven around gambling, with everything revolving around gains, losses, and bets. More and more smart people realize that if your entire life is tied directly to market trends, it's hard to maintain long-term physical and mental health and clear thinking.

The result of these two measures is that a large amount of paid promotional content, such as AI-spun articles, suggestive images, borderline content, and political sensationalism, dominates users' recommended timeline. Rogue matrix accounts have become mainstream.

You probably understand how algorithms work better than I do: the more users click on this type of content, the system automatically judges it as your interest, and you get more of it. Eventually, the recommendation feed is full of this stuff.

The Destruction of Deep Content

The result: Many niche bloggers find their tweet traffic incredibly strange. They spend a long time writing deep content that gets dozens of views and zero interaction, but posting a sexy picture or some anti-social rant suddenly gains them hundreds of followers.

In reality, the attention channel for their vertical content distribution has been hijacked by the recommendation mechanism. Their followers haven't seen what they've been posting for a long time.

The following image depicts a common scenario:

In the end, vertical bloggers are forced to post content that pleases the base audience to survive, or else they should leave the platform and find a new one.

This leads to a massive loss of high-quality creators. Social platforms rely heavily on atmosphere. Weibo, Zhihu, and Bilibili have at times turned into public toilets, filled with misogyny, misandry, political sensationalism, and various anti-social, hostile content, all stemming from a loss of control over community atmosphere. After all, content that creates conflict and suggestive images are the most attention-grabbing. While this increases interaction in the short term, it leads to a dual loss of quality content and commercial value in the long run.

Many bloggers, like @nic_carter and @notboringco, are gradually moving towards Substack.

Rebuilding Your Influence with a Network Value Strategy

All week, Dan Koe's "One Day to Reset" long-form article became a viral hit.

This article had over 150 million reads. For a non-celebrity, non-president, non-billionaire to have traffic at this level, it must be officially boosted. Elon Musk's retweet and the million-dollar new concept essay contest are telling, and it also somewhat supports Nikita Bier's product-driven growth strategy.

I wrote about his thinking in a profile of Nikita Bier. It essentially revolves around one point: network value.

· Increase interaction between nodes in the network—content that stirs controversy, recommendation feeds.

· What kind of content increases network value?—Deep articles, preferably professional鸡汤 (chicken soup for the soul with expertise).

· Increased network value—Subscriptions + ad revenue up.

Increasing network value is necessary. Although major advertisers like Apple and Disney have returned, and subscription numbers have grown, Twitter still reported a net loss of $577 million in the third quarter of last year. This effort needs to be intensified.

Thinking about it this way, our action guide can be divided into three parts:

1. If you can't beat them, join them:

· First, buy a Premium subscription. You need the article writing function, right? Traffic now revolves around Blue V checks. At the very least, it allows paid promotions to reach more users.

· Wait for the algorithm's blessing. Mix deep articles with high-engagement hooks (like questions, hot takes).

2. Customized Service: Once traffic comes, build WeChat/Twitter/Telegram small groups or a Newsletter to ensure point-to-point reach. I have already developed the habit of reading deep content in my email.

3. Wait: Do nothing, just keep posting content diligently. I have a feeling that @nikitabier will probably start solving this problem soon.

I can't write any further here. In short, it's that slogan:

Let's grow our accounts with dignity!