Woah! That serious take on Substack latest offering. For now, I'm not paying too much attention to the Reader app as I'm one of those "writers" trying to get noticed. Most of my reading happens outside of Substack's base... and I love reading my other newsletters in Hey.
Nice yeah I'd love to dig into how people are using Hey/Superhuman to solve this same problem. Feels like a relatively good solution there would basically undercut any effort to create it on a separate platform.
A really strong takedown/breakdown. Having just spent a few rounds of perusing the Reader, I’m right there with you on this rendering. Here’s hoping for the best past beta.
Interesting breakdown. Do you have thoughts on how substack compares to medium or blogger, in it's history/cycle. I "feel" like there's definitely some similarities, but I'm not sure what the exact difference is this time around and if it's stronger or just temporary.
For example, some folks have reached out to my substack to connect me with advertisers and that feels they are trying "extend" a biz model on top of substack.
Yeah there's probably a lot to unpack in that question, and I haven't done a full analysis of the development of Medium and Blogger in their early days. One similarity which seems to be true is that while Substack pitches writers on the fact that they can take their audience with them, they're working hard to make that a pretty unattractive option (which to be clear, makes sense). In Medium and Blogger it was more obvious because you literally couldn't take your "follows" with you and with Substack it's more subtle, small things like you can't take your analytics or comments with you but also bigger things like this reader app which if successful would mean that leaving would be turning down a lot of new subscribers.
The ads business is of course different because since it was Medium's initial revenue it pushed them towards maximizing engagement and all of these discovery features, and then eventually to slapping a subscription on top. Which basically made Medium's brand feel very much front and center because Medium is recommending things to you and also you're subscribing to Medium. My bet is that Substack allows writers to find advertisers (via sponsorship) but doesn't support it natively at least for a while given their clear focus on subscriptions and a high % take. Which will be interesting when products that are more "platform-y" facilitate integrations with advertising partners. Most writers want to make money and own their audience, fewer want to or can put up a paywall.
Happy New Year. I haven't thought about this topic at all, unless I read your article, so more gut responses. I am asking someone who is trying to build/aggregate an ad's network/business on top of substack, what his thoughts/learnings are.
Thoughts
1. re: ad's business. Ad business seem to always optimize for engagement, like you said for Medium. This type of engagement can quickly turn "negative", which pushes out what I think are higher quality content (I think). I sense there's a cyclical event happening because I recall there was a time when PayPal, Blogger, there was the concept of micropayment transactions. You read an article, you contribute a few pennies. That concept never took hold, not sure why. I did a quick google search, and came upon this article from 1998 talking about micropayments and subscription: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/
2. Subscription and audience have their own problem, as demonstrated by the content wars. Do you want to pay individually for Netflix, HBO Max, Disney Streaming, Hulu, ... Now, take the same issue and apply it for substack. Do you want to pay $5 for 10 substack writers? It's going to run into the same issue at scale, which means aggregators will come to play. I've not been on Substack long, but noticed this in Medium, with something like towarddatascience, which aggregates writers across Medium focused on DS writing, which drives engagement and then advertising. For some degree, the reader app is an aspect of this aggregation, in addition to exploration. I could argue the NYTimes is just an aggregation, curated selection of substack writers, given the different sections.
3. Then again, perhaps the internet is now diverse enough, you can have more niche and make it sustainable. But then, the content/creation has to be ever more niche and specific, so maybe you have either aggregators, that curate a bunch or specialists, that create very niche content. The middle dies...kind of like in business. You either grow to be really large (to big to fail) or stay small and nimble. Medium size businesses have hard time as not gaining the benefit of either side.
Anyway, those are initial thoughts. I'd love to see a deeper analysis/historical perspective, if you ever go down to write one. There's something cyclical about this, as businesses sometimes consolidate and other times separate.
Woah! That serious take on Substack latest offering. For now, I'm not paying too much attention to the Reader app as I'm one of those "writers" trying to get noticed. Most of my reading happens outside of Substack's base... and I love reading my other newsletters in Hey.
Nice yeah I'd love to dig into how people are using Hey/Superhuman to solve this same problem. Feels like a relatively good solution there would basically undercut any effort to create it on a separate platform.
Hey does help in my consumption of newsletters, wherever they come from.
A really strong takedown/breakdown. Having just spent a few rounds of perusing the Reader, I’m right there with you on this rendering. Here’s hoping for the best past beta.
Time will tell!
Interesting breakdown. Do you have thoughts on how substack compares to medium or blogger, in it's history/cycle. I "feel" like there's definitely some similarities, but I'm not sure what the exact difference is this time around and if it's stronger or just temporary.
For example, some folks have reached out to my substack to connect me with advertisers and that feels they are trying "extend" a biz model on top of substack.
Yeah there's probably a lot to unpack in that question, and I haven't done a full analysis of the development of Medium and Blogger in their early days. One similarity which seems to be true is that while Substack pitches writers on the fact that they can take their audience with them, they're working hard to make that a pretty unattractive option (which to be clear, makes sense). In Medium and Blogger it was more obvious because you literally couldn't take your "follows" with you and with Substack it's more subtle, small things like you can't take your analytics or comments with you but also bigger things like this reader app which if successful would mean that leaving would be turning down a lot of new subscribers.
The ads business is of course different because since it was Medium's initial revenue it pushed them towards maximizing engagement and all of these discovery features, and then eventually to slapping a subscription on top. Which basically made Medium's brand feel very much front and center because Medium is recommending things to you and also you're subscribing to Medium. My bet is that Substack allows writers to find advertisers (via sponsorship) but doesn't support it natively at least for a while given their clear focus on subscriptions and a high % take. Which will be interesting when products that are more "platform-y" facilitate integrations with advertising partners. Most writers want to make money and own their audience, fewer want to or can put up a paywall.
What's your take?
Happy New Year. I haven't thought about this topic at all, unless I read your article, so more gut responses. I am asking someone who is trying to build/aggregate an ad's network/business on top of substack, what his thoughts/learnings are.
Thoughts
1. re: ad's business. Ad business seem to always optimize for engagement, like you said for Medium. This type of engagement can quickly turn "negative", which pushes out what I think are higher quality content (I think). I sense there's a cyclical event happening because I recall there was a time when PayPal, Blogger, there was the concept of micropayment transactions. You read an article, you contribute a few pennies. That concept never took hold, not sure why. I did a quick google search, and came upon this article from 1998 talking about micropayments and subscription: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/
2. Subscription and audience have their own problem, as demonstrated by the content wars. Do you want to pay individually for Netflix, HBO Max, Disney Streaming, Hulu, ... Now, take the same issue and apply it for substack. Do you want to pay $5 for 10 substack writers? It's going to run into the same issue at scale, which means aggregators will come to play. I've not been on Substack long, but noticed this in Medium, with something like towarddatascience, which aggregates writers across Medium focused on DS writing, which drives engagement and then advertising. For some degree, the reader app is an aspect of this aggregation, in addition to exploration. I could argue the NYTimes is just an aggregation, curated selection of substack writers, given the different sections.
3. Then again, perhaps the internet is now diverse enough, you can have more niche and make it sustainable. But then, the content/creation has to be ever more niche and specific, so maybe you have either aggregators, that curate a bunch or specialists, that create very niche content. The middle dies...kind of like in business. You either grow to be really large (to big to fail) or stay small and nimble. Medium size businesses have hard time as not gaining the benefit of either side.
Anyway, those are initial thoughts. I'd love to see a deeper analysis/historical perspective, if you ever go down to write one. There's something cyclical about this, as businesses sometimes consolidate and other times separate.