Conversation

Replying to
But one thing I'm not doing is moving home base from blogging like I was considering last year. Wordpress is an aging monster in many ways, but it is still the worthwhile foundational piece of the puzzle.
2
10
This is a good point. WordPress violates my platform point by... simply not being a platform at all. It is featureset optimal, can be low cost (if you self host and have low traffic) and high variance.
Quote Tweet
Funny how bluechecks never ruined blogging, or even WordPress. This is how having a brand cuts both ways. twitter.com/vgr/status/132…
1
7
I think this is because Automattic failed at making wordpress dot com a true platform level competitor to things like Medium. It never outgrew roots as basically an open source product rather than a platform. What it actually competes with are hosted WP players like WPengine
1
8
I've been on WPEngine a long time, happily paying premium to not have to think about the headaches of self-admin'ed WP. But hosted WP is not a platform and can never be. The tech is fundamentally a digital mansion. At most you can create a feudal landscape of mansions. Not a city
1
6
Ok, read it. Kinda meh. The writer kinda doesn't get it I think. The choice to center the kind of writer who is hoping to go to a secure paid gig at the same level of effort, lower risk, and more pay, is not really the interesting kind of writer for the future.
1
10
Like many rearview mirror analysis, the writer is looking at this through the lens of old media and the unexamined assumption that the same people must succeed on the new medium, for the same kinds of value/recognition. Begging the question basically.
Replying to
If you assume the status hierarchies of the old world must self-evidently be sustained in the new world, of course you'll reach the conclusion that that is what will happen. The problem is there may soon be no "traditional" world for people "passing through" substack to aspire to
1
5
If you've been substacking with the hope of getting a NYT op-ed gig... you are kinda missing the whole point. The point is that utopian destination is increasingly not a tenable one at all and its own top people are abandoning ship. So this sort of thing is "it."
1
14
My unsolicited top-3 advice items: 1. Stay the course focusing on writers over readers 2. Avoid cross-promotion 3. Build more individual writer branding tools and push tech into the background. Avoid temptation of making the platform the brand.
2
18
Basically the product would benefit from being more product-driven. True north is not NYT but WordPress. Deeper, more feature-ful product, more customizable for all. Definitely do NOT create 2 classes of writers (rating system is fine, different feature sets starts to get dicey)
2
9
tldr of strategy recommendation for substack: commoditize your complement, ie writers to the tune of 90% but not 100%. Putting all writer brands on an equal level playing field instead of creating *feature* tiers for bluechecks is the key to being a good platform.
2
7
There is no royal road to geometry There is no special iPhone for special people, everybody gets the same price points. No special substack for special writers. But fee tiers for ++ services are okay. Like the extra fee for own domain mapping.
1
5
This is possibly a problem for history-completist readers, but is frankly not a big deal for me. I'd be fine with most of my content just vanishing into random blackholes so long as I've gotten what I want out of creating it.
Quote Tweet
We just need to go back to blogs. This cycle keeps happening, and all of this content is going to end up in abandoned silos. twitter.com/vgr/status/132…
1
8