When Twitter announced that it had acquired the email newsletter provider Revue to create a Substack competitor, I tweeted a smartass response:
Some people thought that wasn’t a nice thing to say, and, honestly, they’re kind of right. The tweet makes me sound like much more of an asshole than I am in real life, but – what can I say? – I did it for the internet points.
And then it leaked that Facebook was also getting into paid newsletters. Again, my twitchy tweeting fingers invited trouble.
As brash as those tweets might seem on first glance, however, I swear there was some thought behind them. I genuinely believe that Twitter and Facebook getting into paid newsletters is good for writers and a positive development for the media ecosystem. We need more initiatives that give power to writers and reduce the force of the attention economy, just as we need more electric cars, more solar energy, and less burning of fossil fuels. The Bolt, after all, is a great car, and it’s good for the world that it came when it did. Just look at what General Motors is promising now: a full transition to electric transport.
GM isn’t acting out of concern for the environment. It has realized that its gasoline cars aren’t as good as their electric counterparts. The internal combustion engine, an invention as old as the phonograph, is reaching its limits. At the same time, battery technology is improving rapidly and getting cheaper every day. Later this year, all going to plan, Tesla will release a full-sized sedan that accelerates from zero to 60 miles per hour in under two seconds and drives for more than 500 miles per charge – better performance than a McLaren with greater range than a Honda Civic. GM can’t compete with that by releasing a next-generation Bolt. It has to reinvent its entire business.
Perhaps Twitter and Facebook are realizing that they may need to take similarly radical action to be on the right side of history.
One of the reasons we started Substack is that we were concerned about the effects of the attention economy on the human mind. That might sound grandiose, but it is undeniable that our addiction to social media is having negative effects on both individual and collective thought. As individuals, we fret about doomscrolling and watch in hopeless horror as we become rage-monsters in the digital public square. As a society, we wonder how it has come to pass that a conspiracy theory-addled mob can overrun the Capitol. Not all of these things happen because of social media, but it does play a significant role. We are feeding our minds with a poisoned information supply.
However, we at Substack have never thought that the solution lies in simply shouting about how engagement-based business models lead to media products that are superficially compelling but underneath are eroding the foundation of society. Instead, we have set out to show that platforms that put writers and readers in charge are just better.
Substack is designed to be a calm space that encourages reflection. You read Substack posts in your inbox or on a web page that is free of advertising or any other distraction. There are no addiction-maximizing feeds, autoplaying videos, or retweetable quote-retweets to suck you into a psychological space you never asked to be in. You make decisions about which information to put into your brain based on how well certain writers reward your trust, not based on a dopamine hit gained by refreshing a feed packed with performative posturing.
But it’s the calmness of the model that’s the real killer feature. Perhaps this is giving away too much, but I often find myself telling people: “Our real product is our business model.” On Substack, writers succeed when readers feel that their trust is being rewarded, and we, the platform, succeed only when writers do well. There’s nothing sophisticated about this model. We’re not hoping you become addicted to our feeds or that you will trade sleep for content consumption so we can sell your attention to advertisers. Instead, we hope that readers find amazing things to read and that the writers who produce that stuff make a ton of money.
There are now more than 500,000 paid subscriptions across Substack, and the top ten writers collectively make more than $15 million a year. It’s still early days, but this thing is happening.
If Facebook and Twitter are earnest in their pursuit of this opportunity, I implore them to go all in. They have enormous influence and can make a big positive difference in the world by taking the lessons from Substack to heart. This is about more than just doing the right thing for writers; it’s about improving the entire information ecosystem.
In particular, Facebook and Twitter should do their utmost to give power to writers and readers. That means letting writers own their relationships with their readers and giving them the ability to take those relationships off the platform whenever they want. It also means letting readers fully control what they see in their feeds by avoiding ads and disincentivizing culture-war superweapons like retweetable quote-retweets (such as my mean tweets above).
I sincerely hope that Facebook and Twitter take this approach and apply it to more than just newsletters, because the world’s information ecosystem is at a crisis point. People are losing trust in each other and losing faith in public institutions. Otherwise-intelligent human beings are being led to believe outlandish conspiracy theories instead of the truth. We need a global effort to unpoison the well.
But if Facebook and Twitter only go in for half measures? Well, I don’t mind that, either. There’s a reason I reacted so strongly to the news of their entry into this market. After all, they have announced very plainly that they intend to take our business.
All very well. They’re in our sights too.
This is the second post in my new occasional column. The first post was about reinventing the golden era of blogging.
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This perspective is exactly why I started my newsletter here. Substack is committed to the integrity of the relationship between writers and their readers, as well as the health of our collective digital idea space. Just glad to be here. Thank you for making this space possible.
"It’s the calmness of the model that’s the real killer feature."
Keep pushing. Their business model is not aligned with Substack's.
This is great. And really like what you're doing with Substack. I do think it is unlikely that Facebook or Twitter is throwing enough weight behind this model. This is their Malibu Hybrid (not even a Bolt) where they just don't want to miss out on the new hotness. We've got a ways to go before they commit their entire business (or even a big chunk of it) to electric. So keep at it. Build the Tesla that forces real change.
If Facebook and Twitter are jumping in the game it means they see the writing on the wall. Premium newsletters are the future of the content world. I only recently moved my blog to substack and it is already abundantly clear to me that this platform has limitless potential. So I say bring on the competition and let it bring new ideas and drive that competition so often does.
we need more folks writing. that's all that matters.
we need more brave writing like this!
yes
agree
Amazing. I love it, and that's what brought me here and keeps me here: its calmness, plus the invitation to reflection. These two are the most important aspects for me.
I've clicked on my Twitter newsletter feature, because I love to test and try - these are my twitchy tweaking fingers 😅.
Haven't issued a newsletter there yet, while here I'm with my second on its way. It feels better here, calmer, and it is for those who are interested. I sense no noise here, but that library feeling of silence and peace.
Thank you for making it possible.
This is all well and good but your entire business model relies on Twitter and FB for reader/writer discovery. I don’t see how that’s sustainable. Also your UI/UX is not as good as Medium, though their subscription model is nearly incomprehensible and yours is admirably simple.
I am considering switching to platforms for a couple of reasons. The first is that I'm paying Substack a considerable sum in fees each month (10% is a lot when you get to a decent number of subscribers). For that fee I do expect a certain level of customer support, and I have not experienced that at Substack of late. Not bothering to respond to tech questions or taking over a week to get back to us isn't reassuring, particularly when it happens multiple times. I'm guessing the bigger customers don't wait for support.
Second, the features on Substack are fine but now outdated in today's ultra competitive market. Analytics and audience segmentation are non existent from a practical point of view (no way to cut inactive email subscribers for example). The pace of innovation on the platform just isn't very fast.
Thirdly, it is extremely difficult to build an audience on Substack unless you have a large social media following already. Revue has a huge advantage here, as does Medium etc.
That being said, I still love Substack. It is a truly innovative company with a beautifully simple business model and design. It is a joy to write on and I don't like the "feel" of other platforms I have experimented with.
To the team at Substack, please talk me off the ledge. I want to stay, I really do, but as of late there are fewer and fewer reasons to do so.
I have discovered this wonderful new invention called magazines. Apparently they bring together writers of a certain level of quality through a process called journalistic editing, and they write articles which I really enjoy reading. Because their article quality is good, I look forward to reading them.
My favorites are The Atlantic, New Yorker and New York Times.
I think this is a really wonderful idea, and I hope that they can get VC backing.
Don't you think this is just a diversification tactic of these social media companies rather than a change of heart from advertising to subscription. Anyway it doesn't make sense for them to go all in on subscription because they are fundamentally advertising businesses. Its like an allopathic practitioner offering naturopathy solutions. He cannot ride both the boats!
1.Using the phrase "right side of history" is often used to foster a sense of self-righteous arrogance that may or may not be deserved. Who decides what the "right side" is? Is it you, me, or some "expert" that magically knows the future? How do we know what the right side is today with so much media censorship and disinformation? If you look at the history of totalitarian movements, the use of "right side" is just another way for tyrants to gain power while using rationalizations to justify violence and subterfuge. Basically the phrase is the secular version of "God is on our side." As a point for proof of rightness, this phrase fails because of its vagueness and lack of evidence. What's right today may fall deeply out of favor tomorrow.
2. Substack thus far, has presented some newsletters that are the opposite of calm. Some of the same ultra-partisanship and know-it-all rants occur, just in longer form. I've tried subscribing to multiple Substacks only to find the same old smug divisiveness after a couple newsletters. That doesn't mean they're all bad or that I can only read posts that I agree with. However the bias runs strong with quite a few Substacks, and I don't feel particularly welcome. Which is fine, but the flowery description of Substack being a calm place, is hyperbolic at best.
Hopefully I can foster a calm & welcoming Substack where others don't feel rejected for not being on "the right side of history."
I also do bristle at the phrase “right side of history” but not sure it rises to the level of “God is on our side.” Perhaps some use it in that manner, but that is their failing. I hear business people use the phrase and think, “we accurately predicted where the market will bend.” Politicians... yeah, you’re right when they use the same phrase. Most politicians want to be preachers... with power. Everlasting power.
But every market is fickle, so what is predicted accurately today may not be so for very long. At best, the “history” will be a scant few years, perhaps a decade or two. AOL thought they were the history of the internet; Facebook thinks it will be around for a lot longer than it will be. Even Substack, as great as it is, will die. Hopefully it will find the balance of calm and welcoming without anxiety, rants and threats where others have failed.
Look at me, going all rant-like....
I also do bristle at the phrase “right side of history” but not sure it rises to the level of “God is on our side.”
It is, in fact, worse, especially if uttered by a materialist. In the latter case, it's the height of hubris to pretend one knows where the world will go, let alone that one is definitively right in what he's doing.
This was well articulated. Also, I didn't have to end up doomscrolling to get to it/find it.
Great post Hamish. Sounds like you've been reading our Creative Dharma newsletter – “One of the reasons we started Substack is that we were concerned about the effects of the attention economy on the human mind. ... We are feeding our minds with a poisoned information supply. ... Substack is designed to be a calm space that encourages reflection. … ”
I hope to hell that you don't sell out to one of those bastard companies. I'm sick of these tech giants censoring free speech. I loved your free speech notice, or terms of service that you published recently. But you NEED to take it a step further and allow us to insert videos from sources other than the YouTube censor machine.
I worry about the eventual business model that has no product except the data if its users. At some point, the data market will become so saturated that nobody will be buying data because there will eventually be services who can give it away... for a product or service. The market will eventually flip on its own head. In the meantime, business — like substack — that have taken the time and patience (a lot of patience and faith!!) to build a product that people can exchange for money will be positioned well. Most people simply want a days pay for a days work; a dollars worth of stuff for a dollar. When you can’t tell how you’re paying for something I don’t have and hold... you’re what is being sold. There will be backlash; the trust economy is coming if it isn’t already here.
This is what happened with fake news, it had nothing to with certain dictators, they wish they had the power. It was the uncool kids in Macedonia making money off of a money-driven corporate model.
BTW content is more important than data, but there are equally opportunistic people in research overhyping data. Gemma Milne wrote about this.
https://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Mirrors-Hype-Obscures-Future-ebook/dp/B07VMW5MM4
If Facebook is creating (copying) something you can be guaranteed it'll be an aesthetic and ethical disaster. The best thing I ever did for my career as a writer was to migrate my site's mailing list over to Substack. I'm wonderfully surprised each time I post new content and then garner new subscribers. If people are respected and treated like intelligent beings they respond in kind.
Respectfully, from what I have seen on Substack and based on what I know of "Fakebook" and Twitter, the business model for Substack presently is not to promote quality but push a partisan political agenda.
https://www.nepaltreksguide.com/
such an incredible blog, Great tip, as always. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. keep sharing, your positivity is infectious.
www.journeynepaladv.com
Substack is "Shibumi" -- a Japanese word that refers to a particular aesthetic of simplicity, subtlety, and unobtrusive beauty. It is a term from the Edo period in Japan referring to places, persons, or things of effortless perfection and understatement. Anything that is Shibumi is noble and fulfilling in a manner that is not shaped exclusively by analytical thought. Simply put, a state of great refinement underlying commonplace appearances.
Thank you for having me on Substack.
Respectfully, from what I have seen on Substack and based on what I know of "Fakebook" and Twitter, the business model for Substack presently is not to promote quality but push a partisan political agenda.
I respectfully challenge you to factually prove me wrong.
Thank you for your time.
https://iamcolorado.substack.com/
If the main place for anything becomes hostile to a sort of person and someone thinks the discrimination is bad and makes a neutral platform, its initial customer base will always be tilted, because it's initially mostly refugees.
That said, subscription models do have the weakness that they encourage diligently catering to the writer's audience to keep as many as possible, and we like things that confirm our biases and worldviews. Substack itself doesn't push *a* partisan political agenda, but subscription services themselves have a pull towards that.
The only real antidote for that, though, is a lack of choice. We make peace with our neighbors in part because we have to. On social media, we curate our feeds to filter out things we don't agree with, on subscription platforms enough of the content of a subscription has to cater to us to be worth paying for, naturally.
Reading this, I feel like I made a very good decision choosing Substack to officially work towards building an audience for my writing. It's part scary and part exciting to see Facebook and Twitter ride this wave. I can't have a pure belief in competition bringing good ideas, but I would like to see what this news will hold for our future. In any case, I'm happy to have read this; makes me feel connected - in a meaningful way.
🖖🏽
I love you guys!
I am new to the platform wished I had found you 1 year ago or days after you started. I plan to be one of your highly paid newsletters and I expect to eventually have a minimum of 4 all doing well for niche audiences in publishing, creative action, wild west diversity, and Biblical lessons. I appreciate your insight about the information industry. Keep up the great work.
Thank you for creating a space that let me be a writer without having to find a publisher and convince them that my writing is good enough 🙏🏼
Great read, thanks, Hamish.
Just one day before I’m about to sign up for Substack, I saw the big news about “Twitter buying over Revue”.
But in the end, I chose Substack, at a 10% cut of the paid subscription fee (Revue charges 5% cut).
The integration features and such, at Revue, are great, but they are overwhelming to me, at this season of my writing life. I think, after a few years of trying to do many things with different platforms, and trying to follow different marketing advice, I just want to focus on one easy-to-manage platform, where it can be a website of sorts (About page, yay!), a place to share my articles, a place to build an audience via newsletter. A platform which would encourage me to go back to writing. Do it well. And connect with people who like to read my stuff.
Let’s hope that as Substack continues to grow, I’ll grow with Substack too. Fingers, toes, crossed!
By the way, I’ve published my 1st issue on 7th February 2021. Check it out if you are curious. https://hopemail.substack.com/p/letsgetacquainted
https://hocuspocusfullmoviefree.substack.com/p/hocuspocusfullmoviefre
https://holidatefullmoviefree.substack.com/p/coming-soon
https://hubiehalloweefullmoviefree.substack.com/p/coming-soon
https://freethenewmutants2020.substack.com/p/thenewmutants2020hd
I really like this perspective. As someone who has spent quite a bit of time, embarrassingly, trying to figure out where to write a newsletter— I went here because of the reasons you stated. And I think many see that. And that in itself is a very important thing in itself.
Doing things right certainly is a competitive advantage in a talent-based business. I just hope you don't take too much VC funding and that it eventually pressures you into doing things that you don't really want to. It's fine for some businesses to not become the biggest in the world and just do what they do really well (ie. Basecamp).
The attitude that welcomes good faith competition is critical to creating and sustaining your own successful business. I appreciate Hamish's post here, because makes an argument not only for Substack's model but for a better media environment overall. If that's a sincere belief, others engaging in similar pursuits should be welcomed, because it makes everyone better off. Substack is attractive for writers (I started my own newsletter a couple months ago and love the format: https://thoughtsandplots.substack.com/welcome) and for readers, too. Good stuff.
It’s going to be hard for either of them to get it right while they are still tethered to the ad model. Scott Galloway has been vocal about how to fix Twitter, but Facebook has no path to redemption.
Here’s my episode that explains the 5 reasons it can’t be “fixed,” along with a collection of other articles if you’re into this topic. https://controlmousemedia.com/podcast/fixing-facebook/
"Substack is designed to be a calm space that encourages reflection." This caught me by surprise because I never associated Substack with calm and reflection. It fascinated me that, I probably receive some signals I perceive as space for calm and reflection but not enough to put the product in that box. Please do more! (This is not to bring down what Substack is, but if I'm understanding Substack's drive... then there's a lot more left to be done to truly create this space to intuitively help people pick this up).
Now let’s remove the like/heart feature on Substack. For the calmness of humanity.
Didn’t Forbes announce a paid newsletter for its writers too?
Loved the swagger tone in the post. I think Facebook will be an easy giant to take down as they are clearly run by knuckleheads. Twitter might be a bit more nimble but I'm not writing off your chances. Go Substack!
Well said. This is a great line: “Our real product is our business model.” Touched on this (and lots more) in my latest Rubesletter: "Why 'the creator economy' sucks for creators" https://mattruby.substack.com/p/why-the-creator-economy-sucks-for
Nice to read your reactions. To my eyes what this move will do is accelerate what's already happening - even within Substack - which is competition for that finite space of what to read and trust. The fundamental issue will still be there. That it's usually the voices with xK Twitter followers that get the chance to be trusted (and make the $). And it's the strongly opinionated, the quirky ones that get attention. Can you find a way to make nuance, balance, trustworthiness, easier to spot? *That*, I think, would be an advantage. And a contribution to what's happening out there.
Loved reading this. I started writing on Substack because I really wanted to move away from competing with the impossible algorithms of Instagram / Facebook.
But perhaps if they see this as a promising business model, maybe they'd considering moving away from advertising where addictive doomscrolling brings in the best value. Then again, maybe not.
I love Substack. Personally I think those companies will move on the likes of Clubhouse before newsletters. Keep doing what you’re doing guys. Simplicity is the key. Maybe add in a spell checker tho ;)
Frugality is the Substack unfair advantage.
Why don't you put the social media buttons (all the social media) on each newsletter and on the platform?
Well said!
Well played...
Beautifully written post. The post appeals to the core purpose, in a very genuine way and with plain cold facts.
Why we do matters so much more than what we do. Love.
I liked the Twitter posts - if it looks like a duck...
Good luck to them. As the saying goes: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
The Facebook and Twitter of today look like the Titanic. The world is changing faster than they are and smart creators need more leverage not distribution. We know what playing with the evil means, the evil always wins at the end.
I really enjoyed your piece. I try to sprinkle the idea of using technology with intention in my writing when possible, you did a superb job of doing just that!
Would be interesting if you had an a la carte feature where readers could make a one-time purchase of an ebook. Could open up an opportunity for those who have a project that doesn't fit well within the demands traditional publishing industry and also allow those with free newsletters to monetize their substack.
Hamish, stay the course. And make sure you hire enough of the right people to make the product improvements and add the features that so many of us are asking for a long time that neither break Substack's positioning strategy nor its brand identity.
Thank you for sharing.
MrGheller
Thank you Hamish.
All support to the calm environment and writer-focus!
Really enjoyed this, Hamish. Well said.
Well said.
Brilliant analysis, perfect response. Keep up the great work.
I love this. And may I suggest that the next step in aligning your business model with the success of users is exploring various co-op and multi-stakeholder shared ownership models with users? The producer-owned cooperative may be your best proxi -- something figured out in the ag business long ago (Ocean Spray, Land O Lakes, etc.). If we writers are the producers on which your success lies, why not make us co-owners? Explore platform cooperatives as well, which represent the cutting edge of shared ownership innovation, bringing democracy into the digital economy.
Hamish, excellent follow-up. I know it has taken me a long ass time to get my newsletter, Thought Grenades, up and I'm not happy about that. But soon, my book will be done and I'll be ready to go. Substack is where I am and where I will be. Substack has grown so much and so quickly I'm so pleased for you and your team. Stay focused on quality and let the other stuff fade away. Cheers, Robert Thompson
Love your brash style. I’m ever so slowly getting started (not laziness, I promise, just a truckload of urgencies). Seems I’m in the right place as I aspire to the same pluckiness.
Facebook and Twitter in my inbox? Why not invite rioters into the Capitol Building? Thanks anyway. Thank you, Substack
Your business model is a much-needed breath of fresh air! Thank you for giving me a superb platform from which to communicate with my customers!
Facebook and Twitter have too much power already. There are many creators and writers that are disillusioned with those mega social media networks. While they'll capture marketshare, the Substack ethos will attract writers that care about individual sovereignty, and those that are right to stay away from digital sharecropping.
Come on the podcast and tell everyone how you really feel. :)
Great read, keep it up
Excellent. What I would like to avoid is the Huffington Post model, i.e., yes! Arianna personally invites you to join the movement, write your heart out let's build this thing together! cut to: let me sell this thing for 300+ mil and give you writers nothing but the "opportunity" for the continued "exposure." Yikes. Anywhoooooo. Willing to give it another go with you serious folks ;)
Writers deserve options. That's what's important.
Love this ❤️
I tried Revue, Substack is better. RIP @angelina, best Twitter handle ever.
You are not being grandiose.
I really appreciate this take, though the idea of Facebook and Twitter creating similar platforms concerns me as a whole. I could see these platforms expanding into larger media outlets, going the way of Fox News for example. Given the expansiveness of Facebook, this could get very ugly. While I don’t think monopolizing a business model or platform is realistic, the longterm implications give me pause. Again, I appreciate your earnestness and I am hopeful the outcome is closer to your take.
The business model is your product, absolutely. You've been a major contributor to realigning information producers and information consumers, and allowing the natural scope and scale of communities to reassert themselves.