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We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

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Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#81

Post by jjulius »

Meekro wrote: post #63
Mindwipe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Censorship happens when a writer is de-platformed, and has nowhere to turn to re-platform themselves. People on HN then give snarky, insincere advice about creating your own web hosting company or whatever. On the other hand, there are lots of platforms catering to nudity and sexual content, so I don't think this is going to be a problem there. In a society where the government isn't allowed to censor, the greatest f…

Given your comments about deplatforming, how do you feel about OP's point about how Substack doesn't take too kindly to sex workers and similar content on it's platform? You seem to have missed that point and took, IMO probably too much, umbrage around the phrase "racists and abusers".

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#82

Post by internet_jockey »

Mandatum wrote: post #73
vosper wrote: post #46

Will there ever be bundles? Or some kind of bulk discount? Pay-per-article? I'm a paid subscriber to a number of Substack writers, and I'd like to subscribe to more, but it can rapidly run into the hundreds of dollars per month - so I really have to pick and choose. I can imagine bundles aren't really your model, and maybe aren't in your authors interest either. But I'd love to get like an Economics bundle and a New…

++ The Kaka https://thekaka.substack.com/ Also The Pragmatic Engineer: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/

+++ to Bernard/The Kaka, and go Kiwis.

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#83

Post by [deleted] »

internet_jockey wrote: post #58
jjulius wrote: post #48

>This is Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi, the founders of Substack, with Sachin Monga, the head of product. Are there any female top brass at Substack?

Yes. VP of Partnerships, VP of Communications, Head of Talent are all women at the top table.

[deleted]

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#84

Post by Ologn »

klabb3 wrote: post #32

A popular sentiment on HN is "don't make an app when you can just have a web page". Reading articles is an an almost perfect fit for the web. What are your reasons for having an app?

> A popular sentiment on HN is "don't make an app when you can just have a web page".

I have yet to hear a user data analytics team say that.

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#85

Post by hihihihi1234 »

native_samples wrote: post #19

Firstly - love love love Substack. It's so simple but it's so rapidly become a place where I do so much reading. I have a few questions (mostly not about the app though, I'll have to wait for Android support to try that). 1. How did you guys manage to attract writers? I know you have been signing fronting agreements. Superficially, Substack is a (fairly basic?) blogging platform + email + payment processing system. T…

I have a follow-up question to #3. Like the parent post I commend your stance on free speech, but recognise you host some controversial figures that other platforms have been happy to ban. The range of opinion that Big Tech deems permissible seems to be getting narrower and narrower, and as Substack gets bigger it's naturally going to attract more attention, both from those who call for increased censorship, and from those who others might want to censor. The particularly controversial writers are naturally going to gravitate to Substack if it's the only place that will let them have an account.

So do you ever worry that you might end up like Parler? What happens if AWS, Cloudflare, payment processors etc. decide to kick you off the internet because of whom you publish? Right now it seems unlikely that they'd become that intolerant, but a lot of unlikely things have happened in tech in the last few years.

Are you worried about this eventuality, and are you preparing for it?

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#86

Post by jdasdf »

Hi!

I love substack, and have been writing a weekly blog on it for over a year now!

Do you have any plans to give more granular data on traffic/emails? Stuff like being able to see specific posts views over time, etc... What's currently available is ok, but I'd really like to be able to get as much data as possible and then export it into a BI tool.

Also, for a "quick win", have you considered adding the ability for authors to generate unique URLs for sharing posts? Ideally with separated analytics.

A forward/backward button at the bottom of a post that would lead to the next/previous post would also be great

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#87

Post by cjbest »

Mandatum wrote: post #68

About fuckin' time! I've been a subscriber and spend about $2K/yr on Substack subscriptions thanks to a generous Enterprise educational budget/policy (and then cheat/steal all my other media/news content). This is great news.

Thank you for your business!

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#88

Post by klabb3 »

cjbest wrote: post #54
klabb3 wrote: post #32

A popular sentiment on HN is "don't make an app when you can just have a web page". Reading articles is an an almost perfect fit for the web. What are your reasons for having an app?

Reading articles may be an almost perfect fit for web, but we see a really clear pattern among the 70% of our users that read in mobile: they discover stuff to read on the web through links that get shared, but once they sign up they overwhelmingly read in their email client. Email is actually pretty great for this, and email is especially powerful for giving writers direct connection to their readers. But there are…

> developing for email is still a pretty big pain.

I hear you, it's a shit show! I'm gonna have to do that myself soon and I don't look forward to it.

> But there are limits to what you can do [in email]

But email will still be a very common entry point for readers (unless you expect to change the behavior of your users), so you still need to link to the app or website from the email.

As a user I don't mind an app from a technical perspective. It gives me more options! But what are the things the app can do that the web cannot?

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#89

Post by jamil7 »

The_rationalist wrote: post #62

I hope the app is using Ionic/capacitor so that it can reuse parts of the web frontend code.

The app is written in Swift, they could pretty easily use a webview to reuse some of their existing frontend without bringing in a framework.

Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA

#90

Post by sachinmonga »

cgb223 wrote: post #30

Hi Chris, Hamish, Jairaj, and Sachin! I'm a huge fan of your platform, and love that its empowered some of my favorite journalists and other others to write freely while continuing to be able to provide for themselves. One question I have is as a small time blogger, I currently use Medium as my platform. The reason I do so is because it has an audience baked in, so I'm easily(-ish) able to attract new readers to my b…

To answer your question a bit more specifically, one thing that's starting to work as a nice discovery loop in the app is being able to tap on a commenter's profile and see what other Substacks that person is subscribed to. Reader profiles existed before the app, but since comments don't render in emails (but do in the app), this discovery loop was pretty constrained.

We have some other exciting ideas in the works for helping readers discover more writers through the lens of the writers they already trust, that the app will provide a nice canvas for.

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