Alright, since I wasn’t able to fall asleep tonight, here’s my vision for the future Chat/Notes ecosystem.

• Chat

  • Chat is for literal group chats. One doesn’t “subscribe” to a chat, they “join” it

  • Each Substack has a chat associated with it, but every writer can create any number of chats and invite people (including non-writers) there

  • Use cases:

    • Writer collectives, when authors join forces to cross-promote each other

    • Groups formed during Office Hours

    • Specific subsets of subscribers (in my case, collaborators who don’t have their own substacks)

    • Substack’s own chats for writers piloting new products

    • Topical, for people who write about similar stuff

    • Geographical

  • No threads! A chat is a conversation without a beginning or an end. It’s a stream of messages. To respond to specific messages, use quote-replies

• Notes

  • There should be a name for a single publication’s notes feed (equivalent of “Telegram channel”). Unlike with chats, one does “subscribe” to such feeds

  • By default, notes are cross-posted in the publication’s chat, but this can be disabled

  • Comments are organized the way Chat looks now (note is a conversation starter, comments belong to individual notes), but threads can be turned on or off by the owner

  • The goal/dream is to let a whole number of genres for these “note feeds” to evolve and for the medium to acquire its own feel to it, its own culture, and its own value — something that’s not available on other social networks. The most interesting thing is the kind of writing (likely posts under 250-300 words) that will happen in notes — there could be rough ideas, thoughts on books/movies/articles, gossip, debates, etc. — but there’s also links/memes/art curation, news reporting, whatever else emerges naturally

• Essential features

  • Cross-posting (!): notes from one feed into another, notes from a feed into chats, Substack posts and podcast episodes into chats and notes feeds

  • Private chats

  • Ability to edit notes/messages

  • Ability to easily mute/unmute notifications: from the entire app, from individual chats/feeds/newsletters, forever or for periods of time

• Future evolution

  • Honing the interface. It has to feel great and be very intuitive, on mobile and on the web. There’s a lot of work here, but also great potential

  • Ability to upload short videos into Chat & Notes

  • Desktop app for all dimensions of Substack