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Open for everyone

blog.svbtle.com

261–270 of 281 posts

Re: Open for everyone

#261
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to clarify my comment as some people has misinterpreted what I actually meant. I think Svbtle is great, but at the same time, how is it any different to that of other blog platforms that tout themselves as having a clean interface for writing content? We have Medium, Ghost, Tumblr and even Quora. The competitive edge that Svbtle had was its exclusivity, an edge they've now lost by opening it up. I wasn't…

Unfortunately, the word 'elitist' has pretty strong negative connotations. It's definitely enough calling someone an elitist to be considered personal invective, though I recognise that this was not your intent.

Unfortunately, the word 'elitist' has pretty strong negative connotations.

There are various flavours of elitism, and frankly the political ones are pretty remote from the run-of-the mill business strategy that inspires many, including the likes of Svbtle. You can read up all about in this look at the marketing[1] of nightlife in NYC.

http://static.ow.ly/docs/Marquee%20Harvard%20Business%20Scho...

[1] Elitist, by some standards. Run of the mill, by others.

Re: Open for everyone

#262
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Svbtle and Medium both started out as invitation-only exclusive clubs; you could submit your email address to a sign-up form on Medium, but invitations were prioritized by, essentially, how recognized your writing was to start with. There's nothing wrong with this, but I think people imagine a greater gulf existed between the two services than there actually was. The difference is mostly that Medium opened up faster.…

there's a rather unrelating sameness starting to manifest itself in the web design world--the pastels, rounded corners and dropped vowels of a few years ago have given way to monochrome color schemes, large text, and vast swaths of whitespace To their credit, they were on this trend early. But, I agree...it has lost any sort of cachet it might have had, designwise. Unfortunately, for them perhaps. The social-cachet-t…

cachet

Re: Open for everyone

#263
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pick software based on your opinion of the attitude of the authors, rather than its actual qualities, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. Do you have any opinion about Svbtle itself, incidentally? Have you tried using it? What do you feel are its advantages and disadvantages compared to Medium?

>If you pick software based on your opinion of the attitude of the authors, rather than its actual qualities, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. Isn't this what you do for a living?

Hahahaha, wow.

Re: Open for everyone

#264
post #124
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this for a long time. But the problems start right away when you want to add some navigation between pages. And then you want to have a chronological display of posts, or a master index, or tags. Then you want some consistent style, headers, menus. Then you figure you'd like comments. And search. And analytics. Then you realize you're half way to writing your own half assed blog engine and go check out Wordpres…

Any half assed blog engine would be better than wordpress.

How fancy does you blog need to be? WP tosses most of the spam, lets you moderate the rest of these comments, makes it minimally painful to post text and images, and works without JavaScript. What more do you need?

Re: Open for everyone

#265
post #250
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get them for free, using a throwaway email and fake identity if wanted. Why is it preferable to get a Medium account?

What happens when Twitter crashes and burns, and now you can't access your blog?

I would bet a small amount of money that Twitter outlasts Medium. And if Medium outlasts Twitter, do you think Medium will just sit by and say "well that sucks that none of our users can access their blogs"?

Re: Open for everyone

#266

Svbtle’s dashboard is designed to work the same way your brain works. It encourages you to dump ideas, links, and thoughts into a flow of draft posts, and then makes it easy to slowly sculpt those ideas into publishable articles. It just feels natural. This isn't the type of marketing copy that makes me want to use the product, and in-fact drives me away from it. Contrast with Medium's more neutral, objective copy: h…

I also read that and thought "Oh, they know how my brain works? Seems a bit presumptuous..." I thought the next section of copy was even more off-putting. "It cares about your identity." Because your name appears on the article and you can use your own domain and avatar. How is that differentiated from any platform that allegedly doesn't care about your identity? Writers shouldn’t be defined by the brands of their pu…

> Oh, they know how my brain works?

That seems like a rather bizarre idea to attribute to Svbtle. It seems clear to me that the "you" in their copy is someone who is likely to be interested in their product. That's an extremely common wording in marketing copy.

Re: Open for everyone

#268
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I acknowledged that and asked you to put it aside for just a moment. Did you even read my comment?

>Did you even read my comment? Uhh... no. Not really. Having read it now, though, I don't care if I've made what someone else considers to be a mistake. My operating system choice suits me just fine.

Err, a) you clearly cared enough to respond this far, and b) the question is how do you know that you have not made a mistake not do you care if someone else thinks you've made a mistake

Re: Open for everyone

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do offer a way of exporting, and in a standard format: an Atom feed. Any blog engine worth its salt should allow you to import them.

Not quite the same. The atom feed will represent the compiled and rendered end content. If I have, say, source code snippets, that leaves me in a position of needing to parse out the original code so I can redo it in whatever new highlighting syntax my new blog uses. I might end up with resized images instead of originals, etc etc etc. It's not a real substitute for a proper backend export. This is why I'm such a hug…

Fair enough. I actually use a static blog generator myself (Pelican[1]), but I write so rarely that I hadn't considered those issues.

[1] http://blog.getpelican.com/

Re: Open for everyone

#270
post #173

Dustin is a little too late on this one. Medium came along and scooped up whatever chance Svbtle had of becoming accepted by the masses. It should have been open from the start, Dustin's elitist attitude got in the way and I think it's only a matter of time before Svbtle dies.

If you pick software based on your opinion of the attitude of the authors, rather than its actual qualities, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. Do you have any opinion about Svbtle itself, incidentally? Have you tried using it? What do you feel are its advantages and disadvantages compared to Medium?

Actually, I take care not to use any quality software, but quality software that isn't written by douchebag(s). This, of course, rules out many great applications, but I the metric ton of smugness I get in return is worth it.
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