Nesters Kovalkovs

Social media is dead. What frustrates many (me included!) on X is that the platform no longer feels social. We tend to complain about specific communities becoming 'not worth engaging in'. But the shift is much greater. We've transitioned from 'social' media to 'interest/algorithm' media. This is true across the board for almost any platform. It's no longer about connection. It's about you as an individual, both as a consumer and a target for others to influence. Followers mean increasingly less, because it's not about following anymore. Your brand and familiarity still drives narratives, but it's not because of followers. Now small accounts can have the reach, if they play the algo/interest game right. However, it's always fleeting, now more than ever. Before you were borrowing distribution from a platform to talk to your followers. A social circle. Now you are borrowing the distribution to talk about trends and interests to individuals. It has completely flipped. And you need to decide, whether this is something you want to participate in. If we strip everything down to individualistic desires, engagement is much more selfish. For most: we'd rather tune in on an algorithm-driven TV channel and consume. Getting people to contribute back becomes harder, and it's that contribution that leads to connection, a sense of community. It's not surprising that a small subset of people are leaving for private communities. Returning to what existed 2 decades ago with forums. It had that tight-knit community feel, many times stronger than social media ever did. And it's not that the new reality is all bad. Your chance to reach people with similar interests is greater than ever. Reach in this case is not the issue, if you package the message well. It's the transition to something more. Because now you might only have a single shot to leave an irresistible impression to that one individual. Algo will decide whether your other posts are relevant to them.

@JayVander_ The YC model.

@nestersk Lmao the end

☠️ First confirmed ant death 95 hours into the livestream. 😥 Turns out when ant queens first set up their colony, they are very limited on resources (food and lack of workers), so the very first few eggs contain budget workers called nanitics. They're there to jump start the whole colony, but many of them will die within the first few weeks to months. (For reference: the average lifespan for a worker is 1 to 2 years) We were quite worried at first, that there's something wrong with the colony. Sad day regardless. But it's also an important lesson why you shouldn't join YC.

Bro, I didn't ask you to deploy it. It's also public facing with a domain an everything set up. It sneaks into your server using your private SSH key and does whatever. AGI is here.

@sunglassesface tanktown.xyz by @KBezbailis is one of the favorites. It has some potential, despite it being quite frustrating with level design. :) We also had fun playing it where I was controlling the tank and my daughter was shooting and vice-versa. Aesthetically pleasant.

@nestersk Which one is your favorite

After playing 100 Vibejam games, I have a deeper understanding why so many vibecoded weekend projects are stuck at $0 MRR.

@asaio87 Considering his name is from The Matrix, probably not very.

I get one of these emails every single week I mean, I am sure there are bugs in every app thats out there, but I am sure most of these are fake. How legit is finding a bug then asking for money to show it to you ?

@icanvardar @grok read the tweet for me

are we even reading docs anymore?

@DanKulkov Underrated approach. Unlimited tokens force you into the comfort zone of doing things that feel productive, but provide no value.

downgraded by claude code max back to $20 tbh $20 claude + $20 codex is still unbeatable combo enough token + forces me to do marketing

@JayVander_ I wish I was.

@nestersk I hope you're joking about the amount you played

Basically, most of them have a "works on my machine approach" to the product (game), both in gameplay and technical execution. There's nothing wrong with making a product for yourself, but the art of selling is in building the bridge for others to understand the value of it. It took a lot of effort to get into some of the games. No visual guidance, a lot of text. Quoting my daughter: "too much to read, next". For technical aspects, for example, some games worked on a touchpad, but not with a mouse. Similar with mobile vs. computer. Very few captured attention. Not because they were executed well, but because they captured attention / were fun to get into.

@nestersk What do you mean?

It's great to hit a 72-hour mark on a livestream, but I should finally take it down for a bit soon to adjust camera, add some overlay, and figure out the settings to bring more crispiness to ants.

@PixeIUIs Well, it's something to start with.

@nestersk Thank you for sharing this.

A simple way to 'unlock' indexing on new sites. Quite a few people have posted their struggles indexing more pages. While it's usually a combination of: - lack of authority (relevant backlinks) - lack of internal links pointing at pages - duplicate content (pSEO re-using content from other sites) - thin content (either almost empty pages or too much duplicate content in them) It also comes down to crawl quota budgets and manipulating recrawls. If your pages are not indexed and you don't see the crawler visiting them (GSC -> Settings -> Crawl Stats -> Open Report), you need to get Google's attention. Figure out, if it could have been duplicate/thin content issue or there are simply not enough internal links to your content. Fix it. For content issues easiest methods are: - adding remixed data from multiple sources (transforming it into something Google could consider 'unique'). - adding supplementary sections like FAQs etc - transforming some of the numeric / text data into charts, graphs, and visuals It generally fixes thin duplicate content issues. For links: - create pillar pages for overarching topics - link similar context pages together: point long tail pages back to pillar pages, use pillar pages to highlight your high value pages for the topic - make sure you have outgoing links from homepage, navigation, and footer Initially, the links should be to pages you definitely want to see indexed. Worry about the rest later. Once it's done, go and manually request a recrawl on the key pages that you link out from. Homepage, category pages, topical pillar pages etc. If you identified the issue correctly, you might get Google to recrawl those few pages you submitted the same day, and if it looks good, have the other pages crawled as well. This is one way to get pages indexed within 24-48 hours for sites that seem to be stuck in the void.

Clipping is run as undisclosed ads. They currently pay <$1 CPMs in most cases, so those are largely creators in the US outsourcing to South Asia to manufacture your reality on the feed. Because these are, in essence, undisclosed ads, the creator should be suspended on any platform these campaigns are run.

🐜 Teaching my 8-year-old the fine art of guerrilla marketing. 🐜 We’ve got some QR codes placed outside, and she also handed a few out to other kids. The codes are individually tracked for unique scans too! We'll see how this goes.

@lastFitStanding YT is one of the biggest search engines in the world + Google provides a lot of AI citations for YT. You might have noticed that YT videos often pop up as recommended results for various long-tail queries. Reddit is very similar in that sense. promptwatch.com/data/google-ai…

@nestersk Okay, wow! Quite a detailed response. Thanks! I wonder why you say YT gives decent SEO benefits. Isn't similar for other platforms? I'm not sure I fully get the difference.

Despite some people on X quitting their blogs over the years to focus on the platform because it leads to higher engagement numbers, I think it's a mistake in many cases. Blogs are high intent. You're building super-loyal fans. People, who are willing to spend their time to read your posts. Besides, it's a repository of the very finest content you can create. The important bits. Ones worth reading. That's what your fans will share with others, when they want to introduce someone to you. X is just junk food 95% of the time. You're not building those same relationships in replies. Not in 2026. Most of the people who engage with my posts (or I engage with theirs) are people I either met in some community or have interacted with in some other way outside posts. For quite a few it's been Spaces on X, which actually can replicate that community vibe quite well. The attitude changes. People are not attacking each other or trying to ragebait. A few have unblocked me after joining a Space I was a speaker in. X is not a bad platform for reaching people. It's a bad platform to be a part of something meaningful. Find what you're looking for and move on.

I read them at my own convenience. Most of them are now newsletters / substacks, not blogs, so you have a point about the present landscape. I read what a few industry people write a few times a month at least, but I don't follow the large (mostly motivational fluff) writers anymore. But let me turn it around. If you tell someone 'Pieter Levels is a great example of solopreneurship' and you point them to his blog, there isn't even anything since 2022 on there. While it's likely more relevant for people starting out to read his origin stories, it feels abandoned. If you point them to his X account, they might just visit it in the middle of some unhinged rant, and the timeline is all over the place. Even worse introduction. A curated introduction to you that people can also pass on via word-of-mouth is very important with cold leads.

@nestersk Am I the only one with zero loyal blogs? I.e. I don't read anyone s blog? Which one do you read?

With platforms it always depends on: a) what your goals are b) where your audience is c) *what you're good at / enjoy doing For example, if you want to just speak to your audience + get decent SEO benefits, YouTube is amazing. If you want to be more involved in discussions, Reddit can do the same as well. X/FB/IG/LI/TT/Threads all have its place, but you need to know your target audience. However, on any of these platforms you are essentially renting your audience. You bring them eyeballs, they provide semi-reliable distribution. You should always consider, if newsletter or a community is possible outside these platforms. Even if it's just for your most dedicated fans.

@nestersk When it comes to platforms, is there any better option you would recommend?

@mdnlabs 22, married, quitting X. They grow up so quick these days.

I'm quitting X. It's been a good run. There's a lot of transitions happening in my life right now and just showing up to overly consume and post just to post isn't helpful right now. Life is good - don't get me wrong. Just need more time to think. I've made over $5,000 since Jan. 2026 from being online. $0 from digital products. I'd like to change that. So much learning, so little time to process and execute. AI is evolving way too fast. It's quite dangerous imo, but I'm not afraid of it. I'll be back when things are figured out. Keep going with your dreams. You'll make it.

@yorudan Some cheaper (maybe local) AI model with computer use could do manual removals... Writing a script will do it faster, but more likely something gets flagged.

@nestersk Ya. I don't mind too much the going down, but realistically how to do it... My count can even be flagged for doing it too fast