Online writing platforms all die (probably)

Except for maybe 1

One of the difficulties with online writing is that many of the platforms are impermanent.

• Think about LiveJournal, Xanga, and Yahoo Answers. All basically gone.

• Think about Tumblr and Quora. Still around but in drastically different forms.

• Think about Twitter and Facebook. Lots of confusion and noise. So much different than their peaks.

To combat that, many marketers encourage you to “own” your audience, i.e. don’t build on something you don’t own.

Many people have succeeded by doing this of course, YouTube empires have been created, Instagram influencers have proliferated, and many music stars have their masters controlled by conglomerates. The argument is that they could have made more if they owned their own property, sometimes that works — sometimes it doesn’t.

The same goes for writing — magazines and newspapers (other platforms!) were used to build an audience, and then those same writers/creators transitioned to books (more owned, but not wholly) or now may even have their own newsletter (hello Substack!) giving them more ownership, but not full.

But if you start an email list from scratch, it is true — you own that more than other channels. You can bring the list with you. You can leverage your notoriety from one platform, and then bring it to another.

These reasons are why I started an email newsletter — for normies, the email inbox has proven to be more reliable than all of the other social platforms.

Substack and Beehiiv, and others like Convertkit, have built tools on top of the reliability of the email newsletter.

But if all that is true, why haven’t there been more “email stars” or “newsletter celebrities?”

Email & Newspapers, An Abridged History

Email as a platform has been around longer than any of the most popular social media platforms.

When I google “history of email newsletters” everything that comes up is about email marketing:

And this may be where the problem came in, it was tainted from the beginning. Originally, email was used for one-to-one contact, and that was co-opted into 1 to many, but still was hidden. It had to be personally shared.

The email model was more like one-to-some-to-maybe-more. It wasn’t a billboard. It wasn’t the newspaper. It was semi-private, but also open.

In retrospect, email had(has) the potential to replicate what newspapers used to do, if newspapers didn’t have boxes on the sidewalk or newsstands.

Once you look at it, it’s no wonder why so many old journalists have leaped from newspapers/news/media into this very platform.

Newspapers & Email Distro Model:

1. Delivered reliably

2. Delivered often

3. Delivered personally

Newspapers died slowly, print waned and the system broke.

Now we have dings on our phone trying to do the same thing.

But the modern Internet / web browser distracted us in more ways than one—the distribution mechanism of everything everywhere all at once is beautiful in theory.

There is no subscribing or waiting on delivery, just sometimes a lag for loading.

Like all good things, it’s become corrupted and abused.

Not to say we should necessarily go (all the way) back, but there’s a beauty and simplicity in email that bridges that reliability aspect with the functionality of the Internet.

Not to go all Ben Thompson/Stratechery on everyone there, but once you do take a step back it’s interesting to note the history of writing online.

So let’s do that.

Let’s talk about blogging.

• Remember blogging? Seth Godin still does it. Dooce is still going. So is Largehearted Boy.

• I’m sure they have some email functionality now, but it’s amazing they’ve been going since the early 00s.

• Blogging is hard. How do you create an audience? How do you share your content? (Email lol).

• So you had search. And directories (Yahoo). And once you found something good, you stuck with it and refreshed it every hour to see if something was new. You never knew when it would hit! And when it did, you were elated.

• Then, there were blog rings. You could paste “Other Sites To Follow” in the sidebar and link out to your friends and other people who were doing cool stuff. Amazing. You wanted to be into what your favorite blogger was into.

This was my era of the Internet — I got really into music blogs and got really into NBA blogs of all things. I had my own, but it never caught on, and then the cycle faded.

Let’s talk about writing platforms. (Like Medium)

This was my era of the Internet — I got really into music blogs and got really into NBA blogs of all things. I had my own, but it never caught on, and then the cycle faded.

• It’s where I mostly wrote before this, and still sometimes do. Here I am!

• What Medium presented was a cross between the two, stories that could be long form or short form. Like blogging, originally.

• The platform promised more reach, much in the same way as Substack.

• You could get followers, yes, but it could also be grouped by topics. It also had SEO capabilities, meaning you could be found in search.

• For reasons, I’m not so sure of, users flocked to it for self-help and productivity articles, more so than their heavily curated editorial content.

However, Medium's evolution has been a rocky one.

The platform has gone through multiple changes in direction, including pivoting to a subscription model, laying off editorial staff, and offering voluntary buyouts.

Many writers have expressed frustration with the platform's algorithms, which can make it difficult for their work to be seen by a wider audience.

Let’s talk about social media (Like Twitter).

…And Substack Notes(?)

I always had a soft spot for Twitter, not sure why.

I liked that Ev Williams (also created Medium) was into blogging (he created Blogger!).

Then it got passed to a former comedian (Dick Costolo!), then it got passed to the former kinda punk rock programmer (Jack Dorsey!) and it kinda halfway succeeded but didn’t before it was handed off to one CEO and now the next, really famous one.

It’s a good story, maybe someone will do the Air/Moneyball/Social Network version of this book.

• The reason I liked Twitter was because it did seem more for writers, not really for social networking like Facebook. This is why it probably fostered a more creative community and why so many journalists were interested in the platform.

• Twitter is words-first, words-to-people, not as much social “networking”¹.

I’ve traditionally used Twitter for 2 things:

• Hack-y things: Marketing hacks, growth hacks, writing hacks, SEO hacks

• News-y things: Long-form journalism links, culture, religion, stocks, and NBA of course

Enter Substack Notes: Email + Social Media

Substack, this very platform, has been catering to writers even paying them premium rates to move over from those other well-established homes. (Substack has paid writers to help them get started, especially big-name ones to help them generate revenue and subscribers).

They’ve now made a play for Twitter, offering Notes as short-form updates. There’s a lot to be desired still (how did I start following this person? How about lists?) but it’s been a good start from what I can tell and it seems to meet my 2nd use case for Twitter: News-y things, especially for news analysis and culture.

I’m not interested in how popular Notes gets, but I’m more interested in that Substack is combining the previously reliable and steady email newsletter with the potentially volatile nature of social media.

This seems problematic — especially since the email inbox offers some type of control. The feedback loop for newsletters is a rhythm we’ve generally grown used to: it’s not as fast as social media, it’s not as slow as newspapers.

A lack of agreed upon rhythm for receiving and responding to news isn’t foreign to us. TV blasts too many, but the audience can’t respond.

Email has the potential to blast too many with commenting and responses, but it seems more moderated by its very nature. In that regard, it may not die but because it was built differently — outside of the modern internet.

I’m trying out Notes and I like it so far.

I’m confused on how you follow people or don’t follow people — I’m getting Notes from people I’ve never heard of, but it’s the most Twitter-like thing outside of Twitter (Mastodon, Bluesky, Post, T2 or something hasn’t caught on).

Will Notes take over or die?

I was hesitant to sign up for Facebook (always have a minimal presence on there) because I remembered the rise and fall of Friendster, and the rise and fall of MySpace. I thought the same would happen to Facebook. It has fallen in some ways, but not in the same way as those sites. I no longer think that they will all die, but they will lose their potency in some way.

Can Notes take Twitter’s thunder? Yes. A portion of it. But more in the way Snapchat took Facebook’s, Instagram’s, and Twitter’s. A little bit, but not all the way.

Are you interested in Notes? Sticking with Twitter? Does any part of the Internet not make you sick? Would love to hear about it.

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There were lots of articles about Substack Notes this week, this was one of the most bullish, followed up quickly by why he shouldn’t be so bullish:

Substack Notes could be the Twitter killer we've been waiting for

Was I too bullish on Substack Notes?

Last Week

read classics? maybe, maybe not

non-required reading, age of average, daisy jones, perry mason, of course succession

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Last Last Thing

• “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down”― Oprah Winfrey

• Enjoying the newsletter? Send it to a friend.

• Find me on Twitter. Or Notes.

Keep going,

Josh Spilker

1. Writers both live by and loathe networking, esp journalists