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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

#141

Post by internet_jockey »

rsingel wrote: post #136
cjbest wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you this is an interesting perspective. Substack today is definitely targeted at people who want a full stack thing and don't want to worry about coding one's own template etc. As someone who does want to self host, which Substack services would be valuable to you? What do you feel like we could offer you?

Google Reader, which y'all claim to love, supported reading any blog, not just Google's owned Blogger. You could have done the same thing and built a generalized newsletter app. But instead you built a reader just for Substack, which is clearly built to lock in an open ecosystem, just as medium tried with blogging and Spotify is trying with podcasts.

You can add any RSS feed to the app via reader.substack.com. As long as other newsletter providers support RSS, this should be no problem.

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

#143

Post by mawise »

cjbest wrote: post #61
the_reformation wrote: post #33

Hey guys, big fans of Substack (writer/reader since 2019.) My favorite part of Substack was how it built on top of email, an (actual) distributed protocol. I'm able to access my Substack writers alongside other writers/publication, since everybody integrates into email. I like the reader experience of the new app and the recommendations, but I'm worried it will become another walled garden like Medium. How do you pla…

Thanks! Our goal with the app is to give a seamless upgrade to the email experience -- which is why the home page works just like an inbox -- while having writers retain ownership of their list (which therefore gives them exit rights.) We don't want to be a walled garden. We want to make a great reading experience, with porous boundaries. If you publish on Substack, it goes everywhere - email, the web, other networks…

> maybe things from other places, like RSS etc

This is exciting to hear. When I saw the announcement, but my first thought was "They're making an RSS reader that only reads from Substack". If you're actually building a _better reader_ that's bigger than Substack (and doesn't push Substack content too hard) then you've got my support!

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

#144

Post by shortformblog »

cjbest wrote: post #112
shortformblog wrote: post #102

I’m sure that you probably know my opinion on all this already (given my general loudness about newsletter things in general, as the editor of Tedium), but I’d love to see you offer options to create ecosystem options that don’t rely on having to publish on Substack proper. It seems like creators could use the support of something like Substack without being tied to the publishing platform itself. That seems like a r…

Thank you this is an interesting perspective. Substack today is definitely targeted at people who want a full stack thing and don't want to worry about coding one's own template etc. As someone who does want to self host, which Substack services would be valuable to you? What do you feel like we could offer you?

I think your company has done a lot of work around building resources for up-and-coming writers—legal services, health insurance—as well as educational offerings. Most of those have requirements tied to Substack usage or revenue. If you offered a package that made these accessible to non-Substackers, that would be a useful contribution to the space in general.

I think promotional options within the ecosystem would be nice for newsletter creators outside of Substack, but at the same time, I think the work that you’ve put into building significant resources is a unique offering in the sector that nobody else is doing to the same degree.

A good model to compare this to, in my mind, would be the Freelancers Union (https://www.freelancersunion.org), which offers a lot of services to people who freelance. That I think could be of interest even to people who don’t publish with you.

I’ve been around the block for a bit, and I think a big part of the reason the blogging ecosystem died is because there weren’t any nets. You have done a good job of creating a net for your audience. There’s no reason that net has to be for Substack users alone.

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

#145

Post by sachinmonga »

cyberdrunk2 wrote: post #115

Are there any plans to help writers with discovery? It seems the only way to to build an audience is to already have an audience of some sort. This is one of the things that I like about Medium. They will recommend articles based on interests and have great SEO.

Definitely. The current Discover tab in the app is admittedly pretty basic - just search, the same featured publications from the homepage on substack.com, and categories. We have a lot of ideas for how to improve this tab, as well as other discover mechanisms throughout the app.

One area I'm especially excited about: discovery through the lens of the writers you trust. What are those writers reading themselves? What else are their readers (whose taste you ostensibly share) reading? We have a light version of this already with reader profiles in the app (and on web) - when you subscribe to a publication, you can choose whether to display it on your profile. Lots more we could do though.

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

#148

Post by sachinmonga »

kdazzle wrote: post #142

Lol, not a question, but I love that the first release notes are “minor fixes and improvements”

Technically that was the 2nd release ;)

We submitted v1.0.1 the moment that v1.0 was released and shipped it on launch day as soon as it was approved by Apple.

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

#150

Post by onetokeoverthe »

internet_jockey wrote: post #111
jjulius wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the quick response! Hopefully that trend continues and we can see some of that diversity move beyond the VP-level and on into the C-suite. :)

Yes! So far we have only three Cs and it's the three people who founded the company, so there's certainly room to move...

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