A brief biography of Nikita Bier, Product Manager of X: Why did she clash with Infofi?

Written by: Hongyu

Foreword

I've been following Nikita Bier ever since I started my social product startup around 2023, and I've wanted to write about him ever since he joined X as product manager last year.

His three products—Politify, TBH, and GAS—have all achieved considerable success. His company has only a dozen or so employees, and while none of these products may have reached the point of being "too big to fail," as that requires a perfect storm of favorable conditions. However, he is one of the most insightful social product managers in my opinion, and many in the English-speaking community consider him the king of viral marketing.

Nikita Bier's entrepreneurial journey resembles a sophisticated experiment exploiting human weaknesses: from policy simulation tools on the Berkeley campus to two viral apps that hooked teenagers, and now leading product iterations at X (formerly Twitter). He consistently finds leverage in the subtle psychological gaps surrounding "why users click and why they stay," driving massive behavioral change. At 31, he has already twice turned small team ideas into high-priced exits, and now he's bringing this approach to Musk's platform, attempting to reshape the future of a social media giant. But behind the dazzling success lies countless failed trials and tribulations, and a direct confrontation with the "shameful truth."

Politify: Zero-Cost Customer Acquisition for a College Student Startup Project

(Nikita talks about why he founded Politifi on TED, link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9QTVII_lkg )

Nikita's journey didn't begin in Silicon Valley, but rather in his early tinkering with websites. From the age of 12, he started building web pages for consumer applications, such as a complete e-commerce site. Even then, he pondered why users would click on a page and stay—perhaps out of curiosity, a sense of urgency, or an emotional connection. This early experience cultivated his sensitivity to user behavior.

This sensitivity was evident when he studied at Berkeley.

His first product, Politify, superficially resembled a tax calculator, but it went a step further than similar tools at the time. Around the time of the 2012 election, many competitors were simply tax calculators, estimating individual burdens based on rough tax rates; Politify, however, required details such as family circumstances to simulate the comprehensive impact of different presidential candidates' policies (such as Obama's or Romney's tax reforms and welfare adjustments) on individual, community, and even national finances, including income changes, spending impacts, and government service usage.

This design stems from Bier's observation that most Americans ignore their own economic interests when voting, leading to "self-destructive behavior." Politify addresses this blind spot through data algorithms and visual charts. When users see results showing "Supporting a candidate results in a net loss of $2,000 per year," they are naturally more likely to stay, share, and even reflect on their voting choices.

This logic isn't feature-driven, nor is it about creating a simple clone; rather, it naturally extends from user pain points. This is actually the biggest difference between a product and a tool. I've seen many so-called Vibe coding projects on Twitter (including my own), but they're actually creating tools, not products. A product is an extension and reshaping of emotions; a tool solves a specific problem. I won't elaborate further here.

Politify's influence extends far beyond campuses. During the 2012 election, it attracted 4 million users with zero marketing budget, topped the download charts, and won numerous awards. The Knight Foundation supported its expansion into Outline.com , and it partnered with governments like Massachusetts to promote discussions on "digital democracy." In his TED talk, Bier stated bluntly, "Information asymmetry in voter decision-making is the root of social problems." While there's little data to prove the product achieved substantial returns, it demonstrates Bier's viral talent: tapping into human weaknesses through policy.

Later, he reflected on similar logic on X: "Consumers don't adopt a product because of functional gaps, but because of the feeling it brings ." This insight became the underlying principle of all his products—from Politify's "self-interest simulation" to the dopamine circuit of subsequent apps.

TBH: Viral Growth Among Students

What truly propelled Nikita Bier to mainstream success was TBH (To Be Honest) in 2017. This was an anonymous like-sharing app for high school students, allowing only positive feedback to avoid toxic social interactions. Specifically, it started at a high school in Georgia and, through natural growth within the student community, reached 5 million total users and 2.5 million daily active users within two months. All of this was achieved by just four people—Nikita Bier and its three co-founders (Erik Hazzard, Kyle Zaragoza, and Nicolas Ducdodon).

tbh product illustration

Analyzing the reasons behind the product's popularity, it's highly likely that it tapped into teenagers' primal desire for "social validation": primarily, the excitement young people experience when seeing anonymous compliments triggers a dopamine circuit (Who's interested in me? Who actually likes me? Should I pursue a relationship with them?).

In the podcast, Bier revealed that they only grasped this point after failing with 14 apps; the team had also tried more negative anonymous ratings in the early stages, but didn't receive much positive feedback because it was just a productization of traditional cyberbullying. So they switched to anonymous positive reviews.

After its launch, TBH quickly caught the attention of an anxious Facebook. From Instagram to Mnus, you know Facebook always tries to solve problems through acquisitions, and this time was no exception.

At the time, Snapchat was capturing the youth market, Facebook was facing an "aging" crisis, and its content ecosystem was rife with hostility.

TBH's positive interaction model aligned with Zuckerberg's shift towards "healthy communities"; more importantly, its viral mechanism proved the potential to leverage young users with zero budget. After the acquisition, TBH operated independently, but shut down in 2018 due to declining usage. Bier joined Meta as a product manager until 2021.

In hindsight, this deal was a win-win situation. Facebook successfully executed its anti-competitive strategy (such as the early acquisition of Instagram), while Bier gained money and experience at a major company. It was probably from this period that he learned to maintain a pace of iteration while scaling.

Gas: We finally made a profit after really going head-to-head with Teenage.

Gas app

In 2022, Bier made a comeback with Gas—which can be seen as an upgraded version of TBH, adding features such as voting, gamification, and paid reveal of who liked the app. It reached 10 million users and $11 million in revenue within three months, and at one point surpassed TikTok and Meta in App Store rankings, becoming the most popular app in the United States.

In detail, it leverages users' curiosity to see who praises them, creating a closed-loop monetization model. The product was acquired by Discord for $50 million in January 2023, citing Gas's understanding of the youth community and his growth hacking skills, which had proven their ability to transform short-lived viral growth into a sustainable, profitable network.

Five years later, it was sold to the next big player.

To summarize his two entrepreneurial models, both relied on small teams, no funding, and rapid trial and error. While the failure rate was high, once a breakthrough occurred, it resulted in viral growth.

Product Methodology: Emotional Leverage and the "Madman" Mentality

Bier's product methodology is actually very simple, yet also brutal.

Serving the interests of the network rather than individual pain points

He repeatedly emphasized that good consumer applications do not solve the pain points of individual users, but serve the entire network; they do not fix the bugs of competitors, but reshape the growth flywheel.

"Don't bother optimizing 10% of messages or photos; WeChat and Instagram have already done that well enough. New players must rely on viral creativity and dopamine stimulation to break into the market from scratch."

His favorite concept is "life turning points"—vulnerable moments like starting school, trading, or starting a new job, when users crave connection the most, and a product that hits these points can explode in popularity.

Bier also bluntly stated that we must acknowledge the "shameful truths" in human nature , such as the primal cravings for praise, status, and social validation. Only by amplifying these emotions can we create addictive products. He views consumers as having "lizard brains": politics or decentralization doesn't drive adoption; only instinctive needs like making money and dating do. Building products requires a "madman's" mentality: 99% of decisions are life-or-death, with an extremely high failure rate, but iteration is key. On X, he abstracted this as "academic honesty": quickly admitting mistakes, embracing feedback, and avoiding the pursuit of illusions common in large companies.

A Cryptocurrency Anecdote: From Consultant to Mobile Ecosystem Driver for Solana

After his two exits, Bier didn't remain idle; instead, he turned his attention to crypto/Web3—but his approach remained pragmatic: not trading cryptocurrencies or building chains, but using his viral growth experience to help top public chains like Solana build consumer-grade mobile ecosystems. In September 2024, he joined Lightspeed Venture Partners as a Product Growth Partner. Lightspeed is a veteran in the crypto space, having previously invested in Solana. Nikita's role here focuses on optimizing viral growth, network effects, and distribution strategies for portfolio companies, allowing him to engage with more Web3 projects at the VC level without being tied to a single chain.

On March 25, 2025, Bier officially joined Solana Labs as an advisor. He publicly stated that while opinions on crypto have been controversial over the past few years, recent regulatory easing, a more crypto-friendly App Store, and the memecoin craze leading to the widespread adoption of Phantom Wallet on millions of mobile phones have made Solana an ideal platform for consumer applications. His specific role at Solana is to assist with the growth of the Solana mobile ecosystem and related projects.

However, he maintained a certain distance from crypto. Although he served as an advisor to Pump.fun through his connection with Solana and publicly praised founder Alon, he also emphasized that he did not own any equity stake in Pump.fun.

He occasionally commented on memecoins on X, such as sarcastically saying "dropping a meme coin is a liquidation of your brand equity," or complaining that "every single meme coin launched in the last year has gone to zero." However, these were mostly jokes or statements about ethical boundaries, and he never actually promoted any specific cryptocurrency product.

This incident in the cryptocurrency world is highly consistent with his usual style:

• Seize the "inflection point" (here, the inflection point of regulation + mobility).
• Amplify network effects, rather than chasing short-term fluctuations.

After joining X, he was occasionally jokingly referred to as Solana Maxi in the cryptocurrency community, especially recently when algorithm adjustments affected cryptocurrency-related content. However, all of this foreshadowed X's future financial positioning.

Joining X: A Timeline from Self-Nomination to Product Leadership

In late June 2025, Bier officially joined X as the product manager.

In 2022, Nikita Bier publicly offered himself to Elon Musk as Twitter's VP of Product at X.

After taking office, he got busy again, implementing a host of features. Here's a brief overview: early July saw optimization of the core feed, and October brought a preview of community features. January 2026 marked the climax—collaborating with the algorithm team to adjust the recommendation page, increasing the proportion of content from friends, mutual followers, and existing followers; simultaneously launching Smart Cashtags (real-time stock prices + discussions), synchronizing drafts (from app to web), and combating AI spam, among other things.

Why did he do this? It's actually based on his logic:

• The recommendation page targets "network density," allowing users to see familiar faces and reinforcing habits (such as TBH's like loop).
• Smart Cashtags reinforces X’s unique positioning (financial news) by leveraging “turning points” (trading decisions).
• The feedback response speed is extremely fast because he believes that every user is a lever—ignoring them would prevent the network effect from taking hold.

These measures all serve a closed loop: first improve retention, then tap into monetization potential, consistent with his growth strategy. The results were a 60% increase in X app downloads and a 20-43% increase in user time. Subscriptions surpassed 1 billion.

From Politify's viral success to Gas's revenue, and then to X's record-breaking subscriber numbers, he has consistently proven that products are "emotional levers ," capable of stimulating human nature.

Blocking Infofi: This might be what you wanted to see after clicking in.

On January 16, Nikita dropped a bombshell, announcing that X would revise its developer API policy, no longer allowing "infofi" type apps (mechanisms that reward users for posting), and directly revoking the API access of these apps.

Infofi was originally a buzzword in the crypto community, referring to a model that incentivizes users to produce content on Twitter using points or tokens, such as projects like Kaito and Cookie. These apps were once wildly popular, with users earning rewards by "yap" (casual chat posts), but they also generated a massive amount of AI-generated "slop" (low-quality content) and reply spam, polluting the timeline. If you've read the above, you should understand that Nikita's ban on Infofi was a natural consequence. The massive generation of low-quality content not only pollutes the timeline but could also lead to a significant loss of Twitter users.

Nikita has consistently emphasized "serving the network, not the individual," and Infofi content has damaged the quality of Twitter's online content, contradicting his growth philosophy.

Digging deeper, this may also conflict with X's strategic layout in the crypto field.

X is pushing financial features such as real-time asset price displays (including crypto) on Smart Cashtags. The preview version already supports smart contracts and asset mentions, aiming to make X a reliable hub for financial news and trading discussions.

Musk's vision for X is to integrate payments, DeFi, and even the memecoin ecosystem, but only if high-quality content dominates. If InfoFi continues to proliferate, the platform will be drowned in low-quality yaps, scaring away serious investors and builders. The current abundance of low-quality content is already showing this trend.

By banning InfoFi, Bier is essentially paving the way for X's crypto ambitions: eliminating scams and shifting towards sustainable network effects. While this move may cause X some minor growing pains, in the long run it could allow X to stand out and become the "emotional infrastructure" of the crypto era.

In today's increasingly challenging consumer-driven social media landscape, Bier's approach appears both old-fashioned and avant-garde. We've seen too many apps rise to fame overnight only to fall from grace. Now, he has X, a much larger testing ground: if successful, it might reshape the rules of social media platforms; if it fails, it will simply be another example of trial and error. The outcome remains to be seen.