Let’s talk about building a community online, not just selling products. Blogs, newsletters, and social media can be used to connect with like-minded people. I’m interested in an authentic and fulfilling way to build an online presence. What about you?

From time to time, I see people complaining on social media about how they miss the old days when blogs were so prevalent. I never reply, but I do have this answer ready to fire.

—Blogs still exist. There are plenty of them being updated every day.

And the second part of the answer would be: —Start one!

I mentioned the above because this blog post you are currently reading was inspired by another blog post from Molly White, which was inspired by a Platformer post. And it was a post on Mastodon that made me aware of all this.

What I’m trying to say is that blogs and social media can and should coexist and help each other. Let’s also add newsletters to that mix as I try to connect all my thoughts to write this post.

A few days ago, I finally left Substack, and Casey’s post on Platformer also discusses his decision to leave. Of course, his newsletter is much larger than mine, but some of his reasons line up with my decision.

Substack was never my first choice, but I needed a place to go after Revue was discontinued by Twitter, and Substack had this seamless import feature. I’m not going into details again because I have already explained it here and here, but like Casey, I love my blog and website, and I use a newsletter to make people aware of my new posts. 

All I’m looking for is a gradual, but real, growth. That’s it. In other words, a community, not numbers. Here’s how he puts it:

“Let’s get into some specifics. As I write this, Platformer now has 190,196 subscribers — up about 35,000 from last year. That’s a much slower growth rate than year three, when in the midst of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, our audience doubled. But it also feels like more honest, durable growth than we saw in 2023. Unplugged from the dark pattern of Substack’s growth hacks, we still managed to grow significantly.”

That honest and durable growth is also the same feeling I have about my social media presence, especially the Fediverse. And Casey also talks about this in his recent post. Ghost, where his newsletter is hosted now, has this incredible plan to convert itself into a fully integrated ActivityPub service, which I’m following step by step. I feel like I’m stocking them in a frequent search for any piece of new news about their progress.

If they can accomplish the vision the CEO shared on an episode of the Dot Social podcast, not only will we be able to comment using an ActivityPub compatible account, but also subscribe to any newsletter. Imagine adding your username to a subscription box and seeing the new issues of the newsletter on your Fediverse app of choice. That’s mind-blowing!

Another thing Casey says is: 

“We also stopped posting to X. It felt bad contributing to a site that had actively dismantled its own content moderation operation and predictably soon filled up with hate speech of all sorts.”

I agree with him, and leaving has also been on my list of goals for a while now, even though I’m only cross-posting to Twitter. Anyway, the Fediverse seems to be the solution again.

Like he pointed out, more and more people are switching to Threads. I would prefer them to be choosing Mastodon, but since Threads is gradually implementing ActivityPub features to the platform, I guess it’s going to be okay. All I have to do is keep following people from Mastodon, like I’m already doing.

If you haven’t, please start educating yourself on the Fediverse. It’s such a great project. And go find some blogs to read. There are many of them out there, publishing top-quality content.