I do the same thing on my blog... have a taxonomy for people, countries, trails I hike, and national parks. Custom taxonomies are a good way to organise your blog.
> Switching over to a Substack newsletter, in the summer of 2023, revived my interest in writing online. It felt like rejoining an intellectual community — not quite the same as the golden age of blogging in the 2000s, but something equally as lively, in a way that I don’t think quite gets enough credit in the 2020s.
This makes me sad because I really want to be a part of such a community, but I really don't like how bloated and centralized Substack is, and how much control they take away. Seems that's a requirement for community formation these days though?
That's the harsh reality, first (anecdotally / personal view) it became social media that linked to blog posts - especially Twitter was used as an aggregator for "I wrote a blog post about xyz".
Then Medium took off, and there was a vibe of blog posts being more authoritative if they were published on Medium. It was like the TED talks of blog posts. But also it mean that if you had a blog of your own and its contents were reposted on Medium, the latter would get more views.
I don't have the full picture of the whole issue. I suspect consumers generally want a single website to read stuff on, instead of the sometimes jarring style differences between blog sites - even if that means they have individual personality.
> even if that means they have individual personality
Sadly I think that’s true. People like consistency. Lets them more easily trust. It’s what makes Starbucks and McDonalds so popular even if they aren’t the best options in their category.
I think Medium succeeded at first because it allowed minimal personalization while still signaling to users “this is a legitimate article and not some rando on the web”.
I think this might be a you problem because both Medium and Substack allowed randoms on the Internet to post from day 1. There aren't any requirements, anyone can do it.
Im gonna chip in and say that yes while they allow randos to post to the same extent i imagine the average person views a blog post/article as more legitimate when it has the branding of substack or medium attached to it rather than someones unbranded personal website
>I also (then and now) have no appetite for short-form video content, and still less for the type of history explainer videos — “here’s a two hour deep dive into why this movie is historically inaccurate” or “everything you need to know about such-and-such famous person” — that seem to do well on YouTube.
100% agree.
Whats the difference between the sites "Blog Format" which apparently died in 2023, and what is happening now?
A lot of people expect social media to serve them things to read, rather than following specific sites, and bloggers have a much keener sense of what will be rewarded by subscribers. In the old days, you could make a bit of money just from views, and there were many more places to make money from writing and speaking offline. There were also more long-form musings about academic life which today would be snarky posts on Bluesky. As posting on microblog sites became sometimes professionally useful, academics put their energy into that and let their longform blogs fade (or just got older and busier and were not replaced by younger academic bloggers).
It's getting harder and harder to get eyeballs on text. ChatGPT, AI summaries and social media algorithms all conspire to keep people on their platforms, denying any traffic to external source material.
I guess that there are "content creators" who are not interested by video or click-bait as well as those "content consumers" who are looking for geniously interesting content written in a concise and clear way. Substack seems a good site for this but in general it seems to me that this is sth that is missing in today's internet.
What's with the "everything has to be monetized" or optimized for earning?
Why do people have to earn money on their hobbies?
Why a person can't just publish stuff for others to read?
Why should we be obligated to pay?
If someone has to make a living, maybe they should stick to a proper job not a hobby side gigs. Well I have a friend that makes living from basically making side gigs, but he is not looking to "make it big" - he just values freedom more and if he gets some money to just get by he is happy with it. He is not going to optimize conversion rate of paying supporters. But he is authentic that is why people who drop him some money do so - second he starts "revenue optimizing" I believe anyone who follows him will just drop it and move on.
Turns out I've linked to you five times since 2023! https://simonwillison.net/tags/benjamin-breen/
(A neat thing about having tags for people I link to is that it's easier to spot when I become a repeat-linker.)
I do the same thing on my blog... have a taxonomy for people, countries, trails I hike, and national parks. Custom taxonomies are a good way to organise your blog.
Tried that, ripped it all out. Too much hassle, too inconsistent. Now I just grep -r a pile of markdown.
> Switching over to a Substack newsletter, in the summer of 2023, revived my interest in writing online. It felt like rejoining an intellectual community — not quite the same as the golden age of blogging in the 2000s, but something equally as lively, in a way that I don’t think quite gets enough credit in the 2020s.
This makes me sad because I really want to be a part of such a community, but I really don't like how bloated and centralized Substack is, and how much control they take away. Seems that's a requirement for community formation these days though?
That's the harsh reality, first (anecdotally / personal view) it became social media that linked to blog posts - especially Twitter was used as an aggregator for "I wrote a blog post about xyz".
Then Medium took off, and there was a vibe of blog posts being more authoritative if they were published on Medium. It was like the TED talks of blog posts. But also it mean that if you had a blog of your own and its contents were reposted on Medium, the latter would get more views.
I don't have the full picture of the whole issue. I suspect consumers generally want a single website to read stuff on, instead of the sometimes jarring style differences between blog sites - even if that means they have individual personality.
> even if that means they have individual personality
Sadly I think that’s true. People like consistency. Lets them more easily trust. It’s what makes Starbucks and McDonalds so popular even if they aren’t the best options in their category.
I think Medium succeeded at first because it allowed minimal personalization while still signaling to users “this is a legitimate article and not some rando on the web”.
I think this might be a you problem because both Medium and Substack allowed randoms on the Internet to post from day 1. There aren't any requirements, anyone can do it.
Im gonna chip in and say that yes while they allow randos to post to the same extent i imagine the average person views a blog post/article as more legitimate when it has the branding of substack or medium attached to it rather than someones unbranded personal website
>I also (then and now) have no appetite for short-form video content, and still less for the type of history explainer videos — “here’s a two hour deep dive into why this movie is historically inaccurate” or “everything you need to know about such-and-such famous person” — that seem to do well on YouTube.
100% agree.
Whats the difference between the sites "Blog Format" which apparently died in 2023, and what is happening now?
A lot of people expect social media to serve them things to read, rather than following specific sites, and bloggers have a much keener sense of what will be rewarded by subscribers. In the old days, you could make a bit of money just from views, and there were many more places to make money from writing and speaking offline. There were also more long-form musings about academic life which today would be snarky posts on Bluesky. As posting on microblog sites became sometimes professionally useful, academics put their energy into that and let their longform blogs fade (or just got older and busier and were not replaced by younger academic bloggers).
It's getting harder and harder to get eyeballs on text. ChatGPT, AI summaries and social media algorithms all conspire to keep people on their platforms, denying any traffic to external source material.
I guess that there are "content creators" who are not interested by video or click-bait as well as those "content consumers" who are looking for geniously interesting content written in a concise and clear way. Substack seems a good site for this but in general it seems to me that this is sth that is missing in today's internet.
Just in time to be scooped up in AI training sets!
Sad that a long time self-hosted writer conceded to Substack. The tyranny of convenience and distribution strikes again.
For what its worth, when you use expressions like 'those halcyon days' you don't need to tell us you're a history PhD.
35 paying subscribers out of 8,000 seems to be very low, especially for 15 years.
Do most people actually pay and support most newsletters? Wouldn't it be more stable income to have sponsors or commercial sponsors?
What's with the "everything has to be monetized" or optimized for earning?
Why do people have to earn money on their hobbies?
Why a person can't just publish stuff for others to read?
Why should we be obligated to pay?
If someone has to make a living, maybe they should stick to a proper job not a hobby side gigs. Well I have a friend that makes living from basically making side gigs, but he is not looking to "make it big" - he just values freedom more and if he gets some money to just get by he is happy with it. He is not going to optimize conversion rate of paying supporters. But he is authentic that is why people who drop him some money do so - second he starts "revenue optimizing" I believe anyone who follows him will just drop it and move on.
Care to share? Or at lease describe to what extent they 'offer the ability to pay'?
I think many would like to live in that world. Good to see what an n=1 example of it looks like in practice.
I mean, at it's extreme, he wouldn't even be on the internet. But dialing that back, it could be as simple as a 'buy me a coffee' link.
It doesn’t seem like making money Is the object.
[dead]
written by https://github.com/beritcheema/BrowserExtension
This is not allowed on HN so we've banned the account. You're welcome to register a new account if you want to post human-generated comments.
Okay