Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a question here?
Just seemed like good advice to me. Did you interpret it as a question? What caused you to interpret it that way?
[deleted]
We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
211–220 of 451 posts
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a question here?
Just seemed like good advice to me. Did you interpret it as a question? What caused you to interpret it that way?
The top comment in an "Ask Us Anything" post would usually be a question. (I personally don't have any problem with the top comment being something else, but that's the answer to your question.)
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#213love 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…
Thanks!!
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#214Hey Substack team, I am excited to see the app published and try it out!
I’m curious - what are some of your goals with the app in terms of reach, retention, engagement and activation of users?
I’m also wondering - does this new channel set up yourselves (and writers) to be at the whim of Apple?
For example, if the app begins to drive any of the metrics above, and Apple someday comes to see it as untenable, would you be comfortable sacrificing it?
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#215It looks like the app supports Apple's Dynamic Type, which adjusts the text size based on the users' iOS-level setting. That's good for accessibility and usability more generally.
Do you consider letting users customize other readability-related features, such as column width, line spacing, etc.? Like text size, this is good for both usability and accessibility.
Glad to see Dynamic Type supported in your v1.0!
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#216Substack is a pyramid scheme in terms of "payments" - I am sure they will start up a "search" for the newsletters and then paid advertisements. To all the HN regulars here - own your medium instead. Own your content. There's no need to stick to yet another VC funded "writing experience". Many potential readers will eventually hit a subscription fatigue. There are several proven strategies to monetise your content (an…
This take doesn’t make sense. Creators still own their mailing list and could move away from the platform if it isn’t suitable for them.
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#217Substack is a pyramid scheme in terms of "payments" - I am sure they will start up a "search" for the newsletters and then paid advertisements. To all the HN regulars here - own your medium instead. Own your content. There's no need to stick to yet another VC funded "writing experience". Many potential readers will eventually hit a subscription fatigue. There are several proven strategies to monetise your content (an…
I don't know how the fees stack up (no pun intended), but I assume Substack charges some amount more than if you used Stripe or some other payment processor to manage subscription/donations. In exchange, you get (1) some amount of discoverability and (2) marginally lower friction for users to signup (people aren't as worried that you're going to defraud them if they enter their CC details, and if they already have an…
they provide:
hosting platform, promotion, backend, frontend, spam control, whitelisted mail server with high inbox rate
not a bad deal for having to pay 10%
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#218Substack is a pyramid scheme in terms of "payments" - I am sure they will start up a "search" for the newsletters and then paid advertisements. To all the HN regulars here - own your medium instead. Own your content. There's no need to stick to yet another VC funded "writing experience". Many potential readers will eventually hit a subscription fatigue. There are several proven strategies to monetise your content (an…
I think you're wrong (I'm ignoring the inflammatory rhetoric and taking the core of your argument in good faith).
The good thing about substack compared to most centralized apps is that writers maintain control over their audience address list. This aligns incentives since leaving is possible. It makes them more of an actual software platform for their writers which is a good thing imo. As long as this remains true, the risk is low.
It’s probably the best outcome you can realistically get on the non-urbit web outside of niche providers like ghost which have their own trade-offs.
I suspect the hardest thing for substack will be the moderation position they find themselves in. If they do anything to try to help increase readership (even if they don't) they will eventually find themselves in the same difficult situations as every other platform, this is just an unavoidable fact of being a centralized service with this power and capability (and choosing who you will not allow as customers is a form of substack's speech). Having this responsibility is not easy and with continued success and scale becomes messy.
This (imo) just isn't something that can be solved by a centralized system effectively, even though it sounds like they'll do the best the can: https://on.substack.com/p/substacks-view-of-content-moderati...
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#219Earlier 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…
Quoted post unavailable.
Even if you're right (not a point I'm conceding) you're being unnecessarily hostile about it.
Re: We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
#220Earlier 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…
> 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 fr…
Here's hoping the emails don't become "There's a new article from $NEWSLETTER! Click here to read it!"