One of the reasons Svbtle is hard to understand is that it's a work in progress. At its current fairly fuzzy resolution, it's what I'd guess a traditional magazine evolves into when it hits the Internet: a loose confederation of lightly edited writers with their own individual reputations. Beyond that few of the details are figured out. But costs are low and traffic is growing steeply, so although in most cases I'd be nagging founders to figure out more details, in this case I've advised Dustin to let this grow and see what it turns into.
I encourage neutral observers to do the same: let's see what this turns into. And as for the haters, it's fine with me if you want to keep hating. Though this was not a deliberate strategy by Dustin (he is actually confused and hurt by all the hate), being controversial is actually a good thing for a publication.
But I've followed more than a few links from Hacker News to articles on Svbtle over the past months and came away with the strong sense that they're of unusually low quality. Maybe I'm just not the target audience, but the articles I've seen have been vacuous without exception. I went to the home page just now and scrolled down and found more of the same. Having been the editor of a print magazine in a past life, I'm a fan of the curated approach, and I like much of the front-page content on Hacker News, so this surprised me.
It looks like saved stories aren't public here, so I can't use them as a constructive example of content I think is good. But I use reddit for similar purposes
http://www.reddit.com/user/clumma/liked/
and here are my Google +1s (from Reader)
https://plus.google.com/115045287509032322837/plusones
If I had to describe the Svbtle content direction, I'd say it's like somebody is randomly scraping longer comments off of TechCrunch articles and putting them into a blogging system.
I couldn't agree more. I guess I'm out of the loop of the drama involved, but every article I've read seems very light/thin, and had no real substance, outside of the standard SV gossip. I actually kinda go out of my way to avoid reading them when I see a svtle link on HN...
On one level I get it. It's not about what it actually is, it's about the feeling, the aura, this attitude about it that makes it feel special. On the other hand, it's just another blog network. To me, I see it as the difference between Newsweek and the New Yorker. It's all about the public sentiment. Or maybe I missed the mark completely but when I hear things along the lines of "well people are haters and it's kinda hard to get but you'll see" they seem kind of like cop-outs to me.
There's nothing wrong with Suvbtle at all though. No one should have a problem with the basic idea. What I, and I think others, have a problem with is the sneaky feeling that this is just another blog network and we're being told it's somehow more and special. Like we're being served hamburger but someone's calling it filet mignon. I've eaten my share of beef and I've read the Svbtle network blogs and I know when I'm being fed ground beef.
It was clear to most that Dustin was expecting adoration and when that didn't happen, the conversation changed.
I don't know how many tweets, posts and "thoughts" I read where Dustin was "abandoning HN" or laying claim to "the downfall of HN"[2], only to end up back here posting some other ego-laden[3] dribble.
"You're welcome", I believe is what used to be on the footer of Svtble. Really gets me thinking about how modest he is.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3749035
That and the air of superiority within the announcement: svbtle would only be used by people who are "intelligent and witty" implying that everyone who couldn't, wasn't.
Unfortunately, like you allude to, most people also saw his reaction simply to being a stolen theme, and don't appreciate that it was intended to be much more than that.
The network's introduction introduced Dustin's concept and site. If you ever visited his blog before that, it's clear he was building the site before. Part of the introduction was sharing a novel approach to the blogging workflow and get a glimpse of the CMS. If it's "just a theme," you'd imagine that people would steal some of the more interesting things, like his approach to editing, or build on it. Instead, people insisted on duplicating the theme -- some just to spite Dustin.
Dustin was explicit about his goals in the beginning - to create a great publishing/blogging network. If yoiu look at how it's panned out, people are making Svbtle their personal blogs and the theme is the differentiator. writers were willing to forego a complete branding of their website and demonstrated they were willing to accept this brand. When you're working to build a brand and key piece is plagiarized (and subsequently insulted by people who don't understand the work that goes behind it), the reaction is a bit more understandable.
I'm being polite. I recognize that it interpretations may differ
I'm slow to adopt new words, but I think "hater" is a useful addition to the language, and not simply a pejorative version of "critic." The difference is that a critic is what you're called as a byproduct of being critical in a particular instance, whereas being a hater is an ongoing state of mind. So for example it is reasonable to say "he was sometimes a critic of the administration's policy" but not to say "he was sometimes a hater of the administration's policy."
"Hater" is not a pejorative version of "critic" so much as a negative version of "fan." In fact the distinctive thing about a hater is how uncritical his responses are.
It reminds me of pg's response to the Airbnb case.
I am curious as to what their business plan is, especially for a blog network that strives to minimalism, having an ad presence would seem anathema.
And to that end, I am curious why anyone would fund them -- what is it that they offer in terms of being able to generate income that makes them more viable than say, any old "webring" that uses the same CSS?
Or makes them different from various other focused blogging sites: science 2.0, freethoughtblogs, pjmedia, etc., none of which seem to be doing especially well as far as I know.
My problem with svbtle is that unlike Salon/The Atlantic/ArsTechnica/JUST ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE/ since there is no masthead, or links from one svtble writer to another, so at this moment, I don't see a real difference between svbtle the company, and svtble the CSS design sheet. So I don't see how they build up brand, or how they build on top of network effects since they don't link from one author to another. (And should ads be added and mastheads and footers added well will social toolbars and unother unsubtle widgets be far behind?)
And while I read svbtle when I come across it, I find their content not much better, not much worse than anyone elses.
(I will say, I am much less put off by svtble writers once I had adblock plus block their 0-click kudos.)
But you know, there's really nothing wrong with that! The problem I have is that so many want to pass this off like it's something new and special when really it's the same old shit with a new name. Maybe if someone would just say "yeah, DCurtis is creating a blog network and it's cool because of who he is, who he knows, and the stylesheet" then I'd be happy and say "cool, I'll read it".
shrug
Looking at the front page and at Ethan Kaplan's posts in an unscientific way it appears as though everyones posts on Svbtle make the front page (although I could be wrong and if so please say so - I didn't take a particularly large sample). I'm not sure where the curation is.
It seems that anyone can apply to join svbtle, but it's not clear why they'd choose to versus hosting their own blog or writing online for traditional print outlets.
Is there an editorial process for posts on Svbtle?
I ask this because I want to get my head around what makes it special compared to other blog networks. I don't really care who Dustin is (one of the benefits of not being in the valley I guess) or what he's done/not done.
I suspect that a good chunk of hate comes from that Kudos widget not having an Undo. It comes across as cocky, hence the backlash.
Very true. I am sure Dustin has a vision which obviously we don't fully see yet. Still, it seems a bit absurd for a blog to raise. But hey, let's all wait and see what comes. After all, the investment was probably in Dustin and team, and not necessary in Svbtle.
That said, I couldn't care less about Svbtle, frankly, though I certainly understand what it is. Good luck with Y Combinator's investment is my sole commentary on this news: I'm smart enough to divide between Dustin Curtis and Svbtle and realize that my thoughts on and the trajectory of one don't necessarily impact the other.
I'm guessing that pg's comment was at least partially in response to my own below[0], and you've exactly stated my issue with Curtis and the Svbtle network. There's nothing horribly wrong with the general concept behind Svbtle - perhaps it'll work, perhaps not. It's definitely legitimate enough that it's worth a shot.
But the way dcurtis went about it - the way he worded his initial post on Svbtle, his responses to the Svbtle theme being cloned, and so on, were very off-putting, to say the least. Moreover, the fact that he was so fixated on people copying the theme suggests that he was placing value in the wrong things in Svbtle.
To use a newspaper analogy, is it the layout of the NYTimes that gives it prestige and distinguishes it from your average tabloid rag? Is it the font? Is it the type of paper they use, or the size of the paper? No, it's the content, and the people who create it.
By stirring up such an enormous shitstorm over some people copying the Svbtle theme and creating RoR[1] or WP[2] clones, dcurtis gave up his reputation (which is actually important for running something like Svbtle) in a futile attempt to preserve the uniqueness of the Svbtle theme (which isn't all that important). His best hope now is to spread Svbtle outside the tech community, to people who aren't familiar with him, and thus don't have any impression of him at all yet.
0: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5027577
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/6531610/America...
Telling an unfamiliar company to "fire designers" he hadn't interacted with wasn't helping a brand. It was being a douchebag and demonstrates an astounding lack of maturity and experience at best.
Edit: Dustin responded to a sibling post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5027792 .
I can't help but laugh at this. All Svbtle does is slap a pretty, unified design on the articles of people that have interesting stuff to say. It's very good at doing that and I appreciate it for doing that.
Like Curtis intended, when you see the Svbtle design you can expect something interesting. Most of the articles I've read on it were indeed interesting. However, these articles would also exist without Svbtle, they just wouldn't look the same.
Svbtle's got a good thing going, but future of journalism? Please.
In other words, what they build next could be "the future of journalism".
I just don't think Svbtle is that container. At least not yet.
>Svbtle is a curated, invite-only collection of great people who have things to say. ... >Our goal is to make it easier and more natural for interesting people to write down their thoughts. ... >Think you should be a part of the network? Apply for membership below.
The most exciting thing about idea exchanges (whether in oral or written form) is the openness of it. You can go out into the world wide web and read as much or as little as you want. You can have favorite sources of information, least favorite sources and have some of your beliefs confirmed, while turning other ones on their head.
In Svbtle, it seems like everyone is a self-proclaimed "great" person with interesting things to say. Then the Svbtle network invites you, gives you a stark blog theme to share your brilliant thoughts with other people of equal greatness. I guess the quality of content will ultimately be deciding factor of whether this has merit, but for right now I can't get excited about it.
I applied (and got in) to Svbtle because of two things: exclusivity and the interface. Svbtle at least attempts to have only high quality writers there, and it was made clear that sometimes, if posts were of low quality, they'd be asked to be revised. There was also talk of helping Svbtle members with their writing through things like copyediting. I haven't heard of any of those things happening yet, but I can tell you that (generally) I try to keep Svbtle much higher quality as a result. I still maintain a personal blog where I put shorter/news kinds of things, but bigger, more in-depth essays go to Svbtle.
The interface is also really nice. It's good enough that I actually write in-browser, rather than writing in Vim and copying it over.
Oh, and also: I suck real hard at design, and I'm sick of maintaining Yet Another Blog Platform/design. I really like the look and feel of Svbtle. My personal blog is basically just Skeleton default with a few small modifications: http://blog.steveklabnik.com/archive
For example, there are a lot of shitty blogs[2] on this network. Even shitty posts[3]. It's just like any other blog network with some extra-hype and a minimalistic design mixed and matched from theme sites (Trust me, I've seen a dozen themes like this before Dustin came up with this and dismissed anyone trying to create a similar design[4])
A really good quality-oriented network would be something like Quora, but for blogs. The readers, people, us should rate what is good and what is bad,what is ethical, what is unethical, what is right and what is wrong. Not at the mercy of some clown advocating minimalism to emphasize elitism and branding for himself.
[1] This was SVBTLE's pitch initially.
[2] massivegreatness.com [An arrogant, unethical Apple fanboy, writer at Techcrunch who supports anything Apple without proper logic]
[3]http://influencehacks.com/the-stunning-hypocrisy-of-ventureb...
[4]http://howells.ws/posts/view/93/svbtle-vs-obtvse-and-on-copy...
Not everyone gets to send a piece in to the NYTimes, the WSJ, the National Review and get it published as an op-ed. But for someone in political science or macroeconomics it's definitely a status symbol. Note that anyone could just as easily put something on their own blog. In fact, many people who regularly send in pieces do publish on their own blogs. People who have much larger fan-bases, power, and immediate influence than almost anyone in tech still seem to find value in spending a few hours writing a piece for no profit, no ad revenues, no pictures next to their name. Larry Summers, who was the head of arguably the most gate-keeper-ish institution in the nation still wanted to get his views published in the WSJ.
Tech people may not view these venues as worthwhile for their field. What then, is the prestigious place to have your content featured? I think Svbtle could be that. If you own something every influential person wants to be featured in, that would be huge. You'd be a gatekeeper of ideas.
[1]: http://9rules.com
I hope this doesn't happen to svbtle because some good content is coming from it, but as you said it is a difficult balance that will need to be achieved moving forward.
Personally I would like to learn more about how Dustin used the situation to his advantage, even leading to funding.
It's trying to fix 200+ differently-shaped circles into the exact same square.
Dalton is the guy behind App.net. Svbtle is a Dustin Curtis thing, I believe.
Check it out: http://hveem.no/simple-blogging-with-lua-and-git
Is there a directory of all blogs in the Svbtle network? The only ones I've seen have been about technology/entrepreneurs, but I'd be interested in finance topics.
Why be cautious of who you pick to be in your network yet not promote who you've picked to be in your network?
Our blogs are our online identities. Using something like Svbtle take all the personality and brand recognition out of it.
For me, I designed my own blog around my personal tastes in minimalism, and the way I want to brand myself: http://kswizz.com.
Edit: Now says "(including, previously, Y Combinator)"
It was never an artistic -- it was always a branding issue.
If Svbtle is to ever monetize as a "publication" aren't they going to pay the writers? Or maybe they'll take the HuffingtonPost route and not pay them?
Not a hater, just voicing some legitimate concerns.
Curious to see what happens, if nothing it's been an interesting experiment for the web.
