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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

#301

Post by nindalf »

briandear wrote: post #268
wpietri wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That philosophical stance is very common at the beginnings of a platform. E.g., Twitter being the "free-speech wing of the free-speech party". Or Christopher "moot" Poole, who created 4-chan. But over time, tensions develop between the theory and the practice. So what sorts of things do you folks find personally odious but see it as important to support? From your terms of service, obviously porn isn't in that catego…

[flagged]

This might be the most low effort whataboutism I’ve read in a while. I’m not sure if you even tried to be relevant with your examples. Please put more effort into your comments.

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

#302

Post by pbreit »

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?

I've stopped clicking on reddit links because it pushes its app so hard.

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

#304

Post by secondo »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #243
cjbest wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By "read in their email client" (presumably on mobile) I will assume that people view but do not read. Attention spans on mobile are atrocious (notably, the fulcrum is screen size having a neurological impact on ability to pay attention - this is a biological fact) – very little real reading takes place. I can imagine Substack is more of an "aspires to read X" platform than a place for actually reading X. This argume…

> Attention spans on mobile are atrocious (notably, the fulcrum is screen size having a neurological impact on ability to pay attention - this is a biological fact) – very little real reading takes place.

If you have any further reading on this please share.

n=1 with exception for scientific papers I do essentially all my reading on my phone and I do not experience any attention difference. I also have my phone on perpetual DnD so notifications and other distractions are not a thing.

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

#305

Post by gnicholas »

pbreit wrote: post #302
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?

I've stopped clicking on reddit links because it pushes its app so hard.

I think there are browser extensions (including for iOS, since it now supports them) that will redirect all reddit links to avoid these annoying nag bars

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

#306

Post by brigandish »

edmundsauto wrote: post #264
scott_paul wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for starters Gab is banned from the App Store for their near-absolutist stance on free speech. More than that is the general culture of suppression of the "wrong" view of reality. Most people who were merely to the right of center moderates in the 00's are now accused of being absolute evil if they voice any opinions. I've been told by well more than a dozen former co-workers that they're afraid to say anything…

> I've been told by well more than a dozen former co-workers that they're afraid to say anything or let anyone at work find out about their political opinions because they're afraid of getting fired In fairness, there are multiple explanations that don’t involve this being objectively true, while also being how these people perceive their situation.

True, but as long as people are willing to self censor then it doesn't matter if they would be punished if they spoke out, because they won't. Perceived risk is indistinguishable from actual risk if that risk is avoided by total avoidance.

Aside from that, there are a lot of "cancellations" in the news, even if they're exceptional and only highlighted as a result of sensationalist reporting (or, more conspiratorially, behavioural control) the risk may still be actually too high. You only probably only have to be de-personed once for it to have a lifetime effect.

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

#307

Post by gnicholas »

sachinmonga wrote: post #155
kndjckt wrote: post #138

love love love substack. I'm fully hooked and spend over 1 hour a day reading on it. The app looks good, I've been waiting for something like this! A few comments; - The font looks quite small (on iPad). Have you considered adding the ability to change font and size? - Now that all my subs are in here, I don't really need to bombard my inbox. Is there a way so that I can mute sending to my email inbox? - I love to re…

Thanks! - The iPad experience is admittedly not as amazing as it could be, and something I'm excited to improve big time down the road. For now, the app should respect your dynamic type settings (in case you have your font set larger at the iOS level) - Yep, there's a toggle you can access from your Profile Tab > Notifications - Right now the offline experience is so-so but not perfectly optimized. If you refresh you…

Dynamic Type is nice, but sometimes it results in surprisingly large differences between apps.

Apple realized this and in iOS 15 there's now a way to adjust the text sizing on a per-app basis, using Control Center. Full instructions here: https://www.theverge.com/22580423/ios-15-iphone-text-size-ho...

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

#308

Post by gnicholas »

insickness wrote: post #72

Please include an option to increase the font size. I love Substack. I typically read articles through the web in Safari's reader view which allows you to increase the font size. The app looks great. Love the dark theme. Just a larger font would be more comfortable to read.

In iOS 15, Apple made it possible to adjust the text size for any app that uses Dynamic Type (like Substack does). Instructions here: https://www.theverge.com/22580423/ios-15-iphone-text-size-ho...

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

#309

Post by hackernewds »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #243
cjbest wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By "read in their email client" (presumably on mobile) I will assume that people view but do not read. Attention spans on mobile are atrocious (notably, the fulcrum is screen size having a neurological impact on ability to pay attention - this is a biological fact) – very little real reading takes place. I can imagine Substack is more of an "aspires to read X" platform than a place for actually reading X. This argume…

> " aspires to read X platform then a place for actually reading X "

This assumes this is goal for Substack founders and leadership. The null hypothesis absence of other evidence, is that the goal is active reader/subscriber growth

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

#310

Post by jdasdf »

sachinmonga wrote: post #95
jdasdf wrote: post #86

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…

> Also, for a "quick win", have you considered adding the ability for authors to generate unique URLs for sharing posts? Ideally with separated analytics. That's a cool idea! Is your intended use case being able to easily spin up different URLs so that you could share them in different places and see which ones drive the most traffic / subscriptions?

That's right, the current origin system just isn't as granular as I'd like it to be. IE: it tells me I got X views from reddit, but if shared it in 3 subreddits, I don't know which ones were more effective.

Being able to share it with a single person and know if they actually opened it or not would be another use case.

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