Definitely agree that Substack has got the creator side of the equation right. The piece that’s still out of reach for me in my admittedly early use of Notes is the role of curation by power users who are not creators. Twitter became the go-to platform for journalists because that it is where you could find “news in the noise”. Twitter was addictive to power-users not because of the original content you could post and profit from, but because it was a meta-layer of discovery of “the moment”. Tools like Tweetdeck became critical to the 1% of Twitter users who created the vital curation meta-layer. Twitter could have incubated a Substack-layer if it understood the true value of its creator power base (Twitter’s leadership always resisted the design of features for power-users which didn’t appeal to 100% of its user base). Substack can be even better than Twitter if it can lean into power-users engaged in the curation of the “archive of now” - that wonderful serendipity engine that connects people with great ideas to those who relish the discovery of great ideas. Early signs are promising (the stack quote is a great example of curator-friendliness). More please!

Substack Notes could be the Twitter killer we've been waiting for
Apr 13, 2023
at
8:28 AM