Read on Twitter
I'm glad Twitter bought Revue because I own $TWTR and I think it’s a good long-term investment. This acquisition is shrewd, timed perfectly, and they’ve needed long-form content for a while. They’ll give Substack a headache. But if you are a newsletter creator, I have thoughts. https://twitter.com/revue/status/1354036529367314432
Who's seen The Social Dilemma? The premise is that, right now at least, these "platforms" inevitably editorialize content, driven by economic forces at play.
Remember when Twitter was just a chronological timeline? But when you're "helping readers better discover..." you're not doing that, you're picking winners and losers.
“Nothing is gonna change,” they promise. It's just free now. But then they say this: "Over time, this team will build more discovery..." Record scratch. “Discovery” is just business speak for feeding people from The Algorithm.
They used that word more than once. This word should scare you. Not just as a consumer of content, but as a creator.
Because when this word enters the conversation, the noble pursuit of creating good content is now subject to the incentives of a biased system, a system that’s driven by forces you have no say over. Twitter must grow to maximize shareholder value.
I talked about this with the marketing head for @curatedhq (full disclosure: I own Curated) last week, how Substack, et al are built on a growth model with an inevitable conclusion: to editorialize content, to become a destination for content consumers across a swath of writers.
This attacks the promise of newsletters head on. So I want to call out Mailchimp for making it this long without going down this precarious path, for remaining a utility, not a platform.
Same for @curatedhq, it's just a tool that helps writers create a newsletter. It leaves you in control of your destiny. Engagement on Curated newsletters is really high because readers want the newsletters, and the authors write for people, not The Algorithm.
When we release paid newsletters, we’re thinking of charging a fair monthly fee like we always have, rather than skimming off your profits. What do you think?
