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- Building your brand out of a domain name
- Maybe indirect revenue is not a thing
- Ghost is federating over ActivityPub
- Micro dot blog
VCP 5 - #Substack: is the honeymoon over?
If someone is following you on Substack, there is no email address, and if you want to switch services, you won’t be able to take the followers with you. That’s not a newsletter. It’s social media.
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I just finished recording the next podcast episode about why I’m leaving #Substack and how ironic it is that #Ghost is opening up by adopting the #ActivityPub protocol while Substack is becoming a social media platform. 🤔 Hmm, the #Fediverse is a good candidate for the main topic of the podcast.
Also on Bluesky
📝 Time to say goodbye to #Substack.
The whole point of having a newsletter is to control the distribution of content.
I don’t know when this started, but I’m almost certain it wasn’t possible to just follow people on Substack before. I also don’t know if they are promoting or stimulating the “follow” option, but the number of people following me without subscribing to my newsletter is increasing every day.
Below is the difference, clipped from Substacks Help Center:
Follower: They’ll see your notes and some reading activity such as post likes. When someone follows you, you won’t receive their email, so they won’t get posts in their inbox.
Free subscriber: They’ll subscribe to your Substack and receive free posts via email and/or the Substack app. They’ll automatically follow you and see your notes in their feed.
In other words, if someone is following you, there is no email address, and if you want to switch services, you won’t be able to take the followers with you. That’s not a newsletter. It’s social media.
In a world where more and more services are embracing to the Fediverse, Substack’s move to a closed system is mind-boggling to me. But just leaving the service wasn’t enough. I had to share this information with you. So, if you have a newsletter on Substack, maybe it’s time to start to reevaluate your strategy.
I’m not sure when I’ll be leaving, but it’s likely to happen sooner than later. For now, if you want to make sure to follow me to my next newsletter chapter and keep getting my monthly emails, please don’t follow me. Subscribe.
Also on Bluesky
Maybe indirect revenue is not a thing
Like most of us, I don’t know much about Twitter’s current situation, but I would like to share my thoughts on the recent shutdown of Revue, a newsletter service the company bought in January 2021.
I understand that sometimes ending services that are not profitable is the only option, but what about the indirect revenue these services might be making? Furthermore, Revue was actually earning some money since there were paid newsletters hosted there.
Like many people, I moved to Mastodon several months ago, but since I was using Revue as my newsletter provider, I knew that I would not be able to completely disconnect from Twitter. In other words, I would still see and click on some ads and maybe even become a Blue subscriber. Anyway, all that is in the past now. Switching to Substack was effortless.
My point is that I was already going to the site less and less, and the only reason I don’t plan to delete my account is because I’ve already been impersonated on YouTube once and don’t want to take any chances on other social media.