i came across substack in a series of tweets by balaji srinivasan, a visionary silicon valley VC. his point (he says this in the context of blockchain as well) is that centralized systems are now being replaced by distributed, citizen-run systems. for instance journalism: instead of aggregators such as the NYT or ToI, individual citizen-journalists should be able to build up their own subscriber base.
substack consists of both mailing list(s) and a webpage template, which is fairly attractive and easy to edit.
There will be both free and paid content. ideally readers should be willing to pay for content they value. it is up to the journalist to create compelling content so that subscribers (both free and paid) stay on the platform. ideally, a journalist should be able to make a living on what subscribers pay.
it is also becoming a refuge from journalists trying to escape the #woke #cancelculture environment of mainstream and social media. on oct 29th, i was intrigued to see glenn greenwald, a double pulitzer winner, sign up on the platform exclusively, after he was ousted from the Intercept, a platform he had co-founded, on the basis of editorial disagreements.
at the moment, i am creating no paid content, only free content. i will post all new stuff i write; and there is already an archive here of most of my writing 2007 onwards. what i wrote 1992-2007 is not in this archive. maybe one day i will put it there.
by the way, there’s provision to host podcasts on the platform as well.
i urge other individuals to do their own substacks, and then we have to figure out a way of creating a loose federation.
and oh, please go ahead and subscribe to rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com, and tell your friends.
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My understanding of Substack
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i came across substack in a series of tweets by balaji srinivasan, a visionary silicon valley VC. his point (he says this in the context of blockchain as well) is that centralized systems are now being replaced by distributed, citizen-run systems. for instance journalism: instead of aggregators such as the NYT or ToI, individual citizen-journalists should be able to build up their own subscriber base.
substack consists of both mailing list(s) and a webpage template, which is fairly attractive and easy to edit.
There will be both free and paid content. ideally readers should be willing to pay for content they value. it is up to the journalist to create compelling content so that subscribers (both free and paid) stay on the platform. ideally, a journalist should be able to make a living on what subscribers pay.
it is also becoming a refuge from journalists trying to escape the #woke #cancelculture environment of mainstream and social media. on oct 29th, i was intrigued to see glenn greenwald, a double pulitzer winner, sign up on the platform exclusively, after he was ousted from the Intercept, a platform he had co-founded, on the basis of editorial disagreements.
at the moment, i am creating no paid content, only free content. i will post all new stuff i write; and there is already an archive here of most of my writing 2007 onwards. what i wrote 1992-2007 is not in this archive. maybe one day i will put it there.
by the way, there’s provision to host podcasts on the platform as well.
i urge other individuals to do their own substacks, and then we have to figure out a way of creating a loose federation.
and oh, please go ahead and subscribe to rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com, and tell your friends.