@iroughol In fact, inspired by you, I spent a little time finally stripping out anyone who hasn’t opened an email in a year. A few hundred subs down, but hoping that’ll make those open rates look better… :-)
@baekdal Oh, God, yes please.
Yay! 💉in my near future… 🤞🏻 thetimes.co.uk/article/people…
@alisongow Thank you! And I hope you do.
@sofiavictoriad @baekdal @MarcelaKunova @callummarius Yeah, assuming all cultures and communities use social tools in then same way is an easy trap to fall into.
@baekdal @sofiavictoriad @MarcelaKunova (who then take their brand and get a Substack deal… 😉 )
@sofiavictoriad @baekdal @MarcelaKunova @callummarius But, yeah, it’s not a place I find attractive to spend much time in.
@sofiavictoriad @baekdal @MarcelaKunova To be fair, I gather it’s big in certain communities: it seems popular in Germany, for example, and @callummarius had some interesting things to say about its use in the black community.
This is a good piece on the Ben Smith/NYT piece about newsletters and the creator economy:
journalists, sex workers, & politicians by @TheStefanSmith thestefansmith.substack.com/p/journalists-…
@baekdal @MarcelaKunova @thetimes @tortoise Them VCs do love their “moats” don’t they?
@iroughol Yeah, I periodically do the same. It gives you a better sense of genuine open rates, plus it does minimise the risk that you have people repeatedly marking you as spam.
@baekdal @MarcelaKunova Yup, in full agreement there. Arguably, you could use it to provide an enhanced relationship with members, for example, where the live audio experience is a member benefit. An audio version of @thetimes member events, or @tortoise’s thinkins. But is Clubhouse the best place?
@baekdal @MarcelaKunova It’s the combination of “shiny new thing” and “zombie innovation” we need to be careful of…
@baekdal @MarcelaKunova Well, building audiences on platforms is fine, just as long as you have a strategy for making that audience useful to the business in some way from the start. There’s a growing number of people whose job it is to do that — including many of my former students.
I think the obsession with newsletters is obscuring the bigger story: that the growing prevalence of publishing platforms with built-in member support is going to change the dynamics of publishing over the next 10 years — and more than we expect. onemanandhisblog.com/2021/04/mornin…
@MarcelaKunova There’s an interesting question about how sensible it is for journalists to be using a platform that is only available on iOS devices atm, unless you have solid analytics data to suggest you have very few Android users in your audience.
What the creator economy — and newsletters in particular — will mean for journalists and their relationship with media companies: onemanandhisblog.com/2021/04/mornin…
(Hint: it’s not really about newsletters, it’s about integrated subscription stacks…)
@JosephStash Time-lapse time…?
I throughly recommend both Medialyte (medialyte.xyz) and @inkcapjournal by the way. I’m a very happy paying subscriber of the latter: inkcapjournal.co.uk
Noting: @MarkStenberg3’s Medialyte and @sophie_yeo’s @inkcapjournal have or are moving from @SubstackInc to @Ghost.
This is good and important — if you leave Twitter or Facebook, there’s no direct competitor you can go to, and take your audience with you.
Right now, with the web/newsletter intersection you can move around relatively easily. Competition is good, and will drive innovation in the space.
Let’s hope these platforms (and others, like @buttondown) don’t makes moves that will hamper that portability.
While pulling together this list of weekend reading I remember thinking how often I was linking to Substack in it.
And then I remembered feeling the same about Medium a few years ago.
This too, shall pass, and the web will endure. onemanandhisblog.com/2021/04/sunday…
@wildpark Yup, exactly. This is… irritating.
Anyone else using a Mac found that their rate of genuine emails filtered to spam has shot up in recent months?