For now substack isn't there yet (although you start to hear the first sentiments in that direction), and their focus on subscription helps avoid it to a degree too, I also see more often people point to "their substack" from elsewhere. But if they go the path of putting the platform more in the foreground, i.e. not "foobars newsletter, which happens to be on substack, but you don't really need to know or notice that", but more "go to substack to find cool content!", that risk increases. Again the medium-comparison: medium was and is big on finding other stuff on medium. Which means even if you read a good article, right next to it medium will push you to read more fluff, because their algorithms have no clue how to promote relevant high-quality content.
Medium tends to routinely be broken for me, be it because of my efforts to bypass the paywalls and run adblockers or just because of how the site is built. I find the article itself often isn't worth the effort.
For readers - yes, there is something on Substack you will absolutely love. We don't do a fantastic job of surfacing all the content yet, but we're working on it.
For writers - depends on what you want. If you want to self-host or customize every bit of design - we probably aren't for you. If you want it to be super easy to publish a free or paid newsletter - Substack is great.
If you are wondering if the field is saturated yet - I don't think so. I see new successes on Substack popping up every week.
Once they start promoting and monetizing the PLATFORM itself too much (aka "doing a fantastic job of surfacing all the content"), then the brand will lose its prestigious shine. It will become associated with "Twitter randos", rather than "former columnists at Rolling Stone and The Atlantic", etc. It will become more like Medium.
That in and of itself isn't the death knell. But that nail in the coffin will come as soon as competing turnkey-monetization alternatives emerge with fresher brand reputation. And I'm sure those competitors will emerge once Substack opens up the door by dialing down its prestige to promote itself more broadly.
Honestly, I don't know why people invest so much in online content. The early "hot new brand" stage has the shelf life of milk. Some of these brands stick around forever (Slate, Salon, etc), but it seems like they're slashed to skeleton staff after the first 5 or so years when the hotness cools. I guess the long tail of that white dwarf remnant stage trickles in enough revenue to justify keeping them around after people have moved onto the next thing?
Paid news letters aren't new and didn't wait either Onlyfan or Medium to be a thing.
If we are missing a feature you want, come help us build it!
Is it a blogging platform mixed with a newsletter tool?
Either I missed it entirely, or the landing page assumes I know what it is before I get there.
Even the about page is buried in "link soup" at the bottom of the page and just leads to hand waving and eventually a short story about something in 1833.
I don't know what needs to be built, but I do know that I don't know what this is.
If what you want to publish is text in their allowed lengths, and allowed formats, in the way they're set up to do, maybe it's worth it.
I'm just a reader who finds that many of the most interesting written opinion pieces on the Internet are on Substack these days. So, for readers it is definitely worth it!
edit: ...in 2022.
As a reader, I like how I can find relevant blogs to read without subscribing and no doubt it is better than medium in every aspect.
