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Substack Notes Launched

on.substack.com

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Re: Substack Notes Launched

#161

Post by drusepth »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #110
rcarr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really needed this to exist about 6 months ago or whenever it was that Musk bought Twitter. There was a mass exodus then to Mastodon, and if they’d have brought this out then I reckon they would have done a good job of immediately dethroning Twitter as I reckon lots of journalists and writers would have jumped on board. Now they’re going to have to do it the long hard way and try and build the audience organical…

was there a "mass exodus"? What percentage of people actually left twitter forever to another system and stayed there? What percentage of audience or "influencers"? Disclaimer - I'm not on Twitter, but my impression is that a few folks made a large amount of noise for leaving but most people shrugged. Other networks mat have seen a temporary large percentage Increase, but a) how much of that stuck and b) a large perc…

With so many sites designed to track activity (and per-user activity) on Twitter, I'd lean towards "no mass exodus" simply from the fact that I haven't seen any gotcha graphs/charts/data literally showing it.

However, anecdotally, my relatively static "following" count dropped from ~1k to ~600 over the course of the back-to-back Elon/Mastodon/Trump/etc events that were supposed to prompt mass exoduses. That could be 40% of the accounts I follow blocking me or getting banned, but deleting their accounts seems more likely in this instance.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#162

Post by yifanl »

pornel wrote: post #73
m_ke wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They raised a ton of money on a high valuation, spent 25mil to make 1 mil last year and are now scrambling to raise a new crowd sourced round because they don't want to get wiped out in a down round. This notes thing looks like an attempt to pivot to an advertising based business model and I'm guessing they think they have "influencers" on their platform to bring in a decent audience.

Losing only 24 million sounds like a bargain. Imagine spending 40 billion to pay 1 billion more in interest each year.

I mean consider also: Imagine being in a position where you can spend 40 billion and it doesn't wipe you out.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#163

Post by Shekelphile »

r053bud wrote: post #11
LegitShady wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

prediction - substack goes nowhere, like they currently are. Suppressing substack when substack is trying to advertise for a twitter competitor is just common sense. There's no need for twitter to advertise for a competitor. That isn't censorship, thats just normal business. If substack was depending on twitter for free data and free advertising they were the ones who were weak and nervous.

Twitter was supposed to be the "public square", even Elon said as much. Restricting which goods and services are sold or marketed in said square is a shift away from that mentality.

Of course. It's never been about free speech, but promoting Musk's personal interests and brand of politics.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#164

Post by tensor »

0xDEF wrote: post #72

Substack is an "absolute free speech" app. They have gotten away with it so far because nobody could see the highly offensive content unless they actively sought after it and subscribed. However now that Substack is becoming more like a conventional social media platform they will have a harder time being an "absolute free speech" app.

One thing that is often lost with the free speech argument is amplification. For example, no one is stopping most people from going and yelling on a street corner. But that doesn't mean that you need to be allowed to speak in a particular venue or platform. Our society is currently not one in which there is a right to "equal volume" on speech, and I think that's a good thing.

The entire free speech movement was a response to government literally throwing people in jail for even talking about a given topic. It was never about allowing minority opinions to be as loud as majority opinions.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#166

Post by charlierguo »

I've been checking out Notes all morning (I write a jargon-free, FOMO-free, AI newsletter). It's kind of a weird product launch? My feed is primarily content that the people I subscribe to post or comment on, but I don't subscribe to that many people.

I'm not sure what the average number of subscriptions a Substack user has, but it seems like a very echo-chambery setup right now. As an author there are definitely things that I want to share that aren't worth of an email, but I'm pretty sure very few of my audience members are going to see it. Maybe this makes more sense for writers with audiences who are on the Substack app all day.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#167

Post by hiidrew »

I have mixed feelings about this and some of the other twitters clones I've been experimenting with: bluesky, mastodon, read.cv's posts, farcaster. They're reminding me of the wave of audio-first social features that came after the Clubhouse hype.

Though I do appreciate the niche focuses of these apps, e.g. posts is primarily designers, farcaster is a lot of crypto people, etc, I still use Twitter for most of my content discovery.

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#168

Post by zikduruqe »

rasengan wrote: post #122
s1k3s wrote: post #104

Does anyone know what software they use to make these short demo videos? I see them in lots of app landing pages and I'm curious how to make them.

On macOS, you can use Quicktime which lets you also select a geometric region within the screen. Then, you can edit, crop and so forth in iMovie. Finally, you can use ffmpeg to convert to gif. The following command works well: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf "fps=10" -loop 0 out.gif To be clear, the loop 0 will make the gif infinitely loop. By setting a number n, it will set the gif to loop n times.

> On macOS, you can use Quicktime which lets you also select a geometric region within the screen.

Or Command + Shift + 5

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#169

Post by phtrivier »

You can now start a timer until they announce that they're going to algorithmically organize the feed of "Notes" because "chronological order is too hard to follow."

Then, they will let an Algo organize the feed of articles.

Then the ads - no, wait, the "sponsored post - will start popping in, etc, etc...

Maybe they won't. I enjoy substack as it is today, and maybe they'll pull it off. But I can't help seing this as the next step towards enshitification. In the words of a 21s century social media author : "so sad".

Re: Substack Notes Launched

#170

Post by hbn »

warning26 wrote: post #103
rchaud wrote: post #97

Wow, didn't exactly stick their necks out on the design did they? Almost zero visual differentiation from the noisy flamewars of Twitter this is supposed to be the antidote to.

DESIGN SPEC: * Make it look exactly like Twitter in every way END OF DOCUMENT

* s/#499BE9/#ED7135
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