[HN Gopher] Personal newsletters as a calmer alternative to soci...
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Personal newsletters as a calmer alternative to social networks
Author : philip1209
Score : 80 points
Date : 2022-12-21 19:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.philipithomas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.philipithomas.com)
| floren wrote:
| After the last few years, when I hear "newsletter" my brain
| translates it to "poorly-proofread overlong blog post with lots
| of pleas to subscribe to a Patreon"
| Animats wrote:
| But only with RSS, where you can unsubscribe. Email newsletters
| are too hard to stop.
| cowuser666 wrote:
| I hate newsletters. I don't want them in my inbox. I want them in
| my RSS feed where they belong. Thankfully substack has feeds.
| philip1209 wrote:
| A good platform should support both email and RSS, and give
| users the choice.
|
| (Postcard, which I discuss in the submitted post, does support
| both.)
| jacobobryant wrote:
| Yep! You can think of email as a version of RSS that regular
| people actually know how to use ;)
| nextweek2 wrote:
| Except email for news is a waste of resources, it is a push
| which fills bandwidth and inboxes regardless of if the
| bytes are read.
|
| RSS is pull, it only fetches the data if it's needed.
|
| And rarely do I see people using an inbox correctly,
| they'll have 1000+ unread messages and have missed
| something important.
| _Microft wrote:
| Maybe that's opening up a new space for you then: did you know
| that you can access a Mastodon user's feed via RSS by appending
| ,,.rss" to the address of their profile?
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| If you set up an email filter, then it just becomes a push
| style RSS subscription.
| bradlys wrote:
| Main issue I see with this form of trying to keep people up to
| date with your life is that it requires a more intense attention
| span and willingness to know what's going on. I think social
| media as it is thrives on short form content because people who
| do care will call you or message you or whatever.
|
| If you're a very popular person - celebrity, executive, or
| otherwise some form of a status holding person in a community - I
| think something like this could be useful. For normies and the
| 99%+ of rest of folks - I don't think this is really that
| relevant. I can't really think of many normal friends who would
| use such a thing.
| patch_cable wrote:
| How many people would you have to have read it for it to feel
| useful to you?
| browningstreet wrote:
| Not sure if it's just age, or if it's truly a sign of times, but
| many of the friends I kept up with on social media -- and who are
| no longer active on social media (none of us are on Facebook) --
| are nearly impossible to keep up with in real life either. It
| feels like digital communication has been completely abandoned by
| my social cohorts. And with no one wanting to talk on the
| phone... or message via texts, it's hard not to feel that the
| social media / digital lifestyle tribulations have negated the
| "keep in touch" proclivities of a certain subset of people.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Sorry you're disconnected right now, its been a challenge for a
| lot of demographics
|
| Maybe go old fashioned with mailing people about this dilemma
| and interested in remedying it
| znpy wrote:
| I am effectively using Telegram as my main social network, and
| it's working very well.
|
| If you create tour own channel where only you can post, you can
| effectively have a blog.
|
| And its privacy features (who can see your phone number, who
| can add you to groups, who can see your profile picture etc)
| are very good.
|
| I basically only keep whatsapp around for my family, otherwise
| I'd be 100% on Telegram.
|
| (Also IRC, some nerdy university friends)
| blakesterz wrote:
| Hmmm, I like this idea. It's more or less rebranding good ol'
| blogs that do the same thing (more or less) as "Personal
| Newsletters" which I'd imagine have a wider appeal and may get
| wider adoption/traction?
|
| Telling people "I have a blog" or "I have a substack" or any of
| the other many alternatives, doesn't sound quite as nice as "I
| have a personal newsletter".
|
| And I've been telling people I have a blog since the 90s!
| philip1209 wrote:
| OP here.
|
| Blogs have a permanence about them. I think that permanence
| make people hesitate to write - almost like the posts are
| academic papers.
|
| I prefer "newsletter" instead because it sounds more ephemeral
| and personal. You can delete or hide them in the future.
|
| (For Postcard specifically - I'm working on the ability to add
| better privacy controls to individual posts - so that they can
| be public, unlisted, or private.)
| waspight wrote:
| But Substack is a newsletter service?
| blakesterz wrote:
| True, I guess I'm lumping in anything that's even close. I
| have read many things written on substack and I'm only
| subscribed to one or two. I suppose I'm just counting
| anything with an email side and a web side?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Newsletter to me reminds me of the tedious letters that people
| used to send out in their yearly Christmas card. No thanks.
| philip1209 wrote:
| But, newsletters have an unsubscribe button :-)
| yieldcrv wrote:
| In my area, a lot of people arent giving their ohone numbers
| anymore but instead having you text their events list phone
| number
|
| They may seem like event managers or socialites (because it
| works) but really individuals are just trying this approach and
| telling people theyre going to be at a certain place, bar, hike,
| swanky hotel lobby, party, mixer
|
| And you know that you know at least one person there
| stuckkeys wrote:
| Another social platform with extra steps.
| madelyn-goodman wrote:
| This is an interesting idea, however, I find it difficult to find
| time to even sit and scroll through Twitter and read news-based
| newsletters. It would be nice to have long form updates from
| friends and write my own as well, but I think with the pace of
| living this is not possible - which is unfortunate!
| philip1209 wrote:
| I'll write a separate post about how I use a newsletter. But,
| addressing some of your points:
|
| - I write a personal update every month. So, there's a cadence.
|
| - When I write a post, I still share it on social media. So,
| people who prefer socials can still receive updates.
|
| - My philosophy is "Write once, share everywhere." Email is
| just one way to get content - but Postcard even has full-text
| RSS on it.
| patch_cable wrote:
| I do exactly the same thing with my family and friends
| newsletter. I think it works really well.
| jacobobryant wrote:
| This looks really nice. I've been fiddling around building
| newsletter-adjacent products for a few years, and I've been
| wanting a simple Substack-alternative* that's good for casual use
| so that I can recommend it to users.
|
| Can I make one request? Please provide single opt-in as an
| option! v2 invisible Recaptcha is effective for stopping bots,
| and most of the time people won't even be shown a challenge.
| Double opt-in confirmation emails only have about a 70%
| conversion rate in my experience (and that's counting only people
| who get past Recaptcha), so you lose a big chunk of subscribers.
| I almost started using Ghost a while ago for my own newsletter,
| but no single opt-in is just a deal breaker for me.
|
| See also https://mailchimp.com/resources/why-single-opt-in-and-
| an-upd...
|
| *Substack _is_ good for casual use, but I have various beefs with
| them, the main one being that they're trying to build yet another
| platform instead of being part of an ecosystem.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Thanks for the note!
|
| I just ran a query, and 93% of email signups on Postcard have
| completed the email confirmation step. A quick look at the
| incomplete signups shows a lot of obvious fake emails, too.
|
| I'm trying to minimize my reliance on big tech, so I want to
| avoid Google's captcha product. But, hCaptcha and Cloudflare
| both seem to have more privacy-focused alternatives that I'll
| check out.
| jacobobryant wrote:
| Ah, well that's encouraging then! Perhaps you can add that
| query to an automated report/dashboard in case the conversion
| rate decreases as the service grows.
|
| Thanks for making this in any case!
| Tomte wrote:
| > Please provide single opt-in as an option
|
| Where it isn't illegal, it is still scummy.
| jacobobryant wrote:
| Out of the many complaints I've seen leveled at Substack, I
| honestly can't think of a single time where someone was
| complaining about their default use of single opt-in. That's
| not to say you're wrong--however, as best as I can tell, it
| doesn't seem to be much of an annoyance for most people.
| lasermike026 wrote:
| Needs some work.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| Does anyone else still receive round robin letters? Multi page
| letters from friends or family that were the same and sent to
| everyone at this time of year. I remember one person's in
| particular that was basically just a recap of this year's misery
| including their various health problems etc. It would be read
| aloud at the Christmas dinner table while the family would all
| giggle at their terrible experiences. My wife's family had a
| terribly dark sense of humour.
| ftio wrote:
| Friends of ours do this, and we love receiving them!
| korroziya wrote:
| Tried doing a newsletter in my final year of highschool, around
| the time of the 2008 financial crisis.
|
| Got a couple classmates and a few bemused teachers signed up, and
| once a month wrote up 500 words talking about what was going on
| in our small little town.
|
| Turned out to be a precursor to my career in journalism. But
| still, it's an obsolete method of news. No one wants to click an
| email to see a wall of text anymore.
| themadturk wrote:
| Dunno about that. I subscribe to several newsletters. Dave Pell
| puts out NextDraft almost every weekday.
| https://nextdraft.com/. Also available on a website and via an
| iOS app.
|
| There are several others I subscribe to, not all of which
| release daily (though I wish some of them did). So "no one" is
| the wrong term to use here.
| [deleted]
| lkrubner wrote:
| This is what I liked about the open blogosphere of 2000 to 2008.
| Whereas something like Twitter is optimized for the fast-take and
| the brutal one-liner, blogs allowed actual conversations. You
| could write something serious, develop the idea, and maybe some
| other people would engage with it, also at a serious level. But
| then the walled-gardens began to gain ground (Facebook, Twitter,
| and then later Instagram) and the era of the blogs came to an
| end. (Yes, they still exist, but they most exist as standalone
| essays, not engaged in conversation with other blogs.)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Before 2000, there were the "shared spaces" of mailing lists. I
| think of Winer the same way you probably think of Zuck.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| One of the problems I recall with such mailing-list-based
| discussion groups was that participants had an expectation
| that the discussions would stay in the group, and that
| members wouldn't dump such semi-private conversations (which
| might have included various controversial takes, etc.) onto
| the larger web - but in many cases, that did happen, with
| resulting blowback for individuals whose comments were taken
| out of context.
|
| The expectation of any kind of clearly attributable group
| discussion on the web remaining private appears to be long-
| gone. Even with closed, in-house corporate or institutional
| discussion groups, it's likely everything is logged and
| recorded for review by management at their whim. It's all
| depressingly Orwellian these days.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| To my mind, the blogosphere had a lot to do with political
| polarization. Once you added a comment widget to a blog it was
| easy to build a following of very devoted fans who would argue
| on the blogger's behalf, amplify them diligently etc. Certainly
| blogs _could_ foster thoughtful discourse with a wide variety
| of inputs, but they were just as likely to foster combative
| tribalism. One interesting example of a blog that followed this
| path only to later reverse course:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Green_Footballs
|
| When Twitter, MySpace, and FaceBook came along, they were
| initially considered 'microblogs' that had the potential to
| democratize personal publishing (no need for complicated
| mechanics) and foster better discourse by getting people out of
| silos onto a common platform where there would be a greater
| diversity of opinion.
|
| Of course, you could have said the same thing about gopher v
| usenet, web pages v blogs, blogs v social media, social media v
| defederation etc. A new medium becomes available that is less
| centralized, early adopters hop onto it (either to gain a voice
| or amplify an existing voice in a new space),
| followings/fandoms/communities emerge (and often clash), and
| eventually a meta-tribal identity develops around the new
| medium as being in tension with the old one.
|
| Over the longer term there's a huge move away from centralized
| mass media publishing and the huge capital pools required to
| establish and compete in that market. This increases autonomy
| and opportunity and fosters greater diversity, but in the
| absence of clear market signals rhetoric is often substituted
| for reliable information, and influence by capital (political
| or financial) persists while being less visible or accountable.
| lovvtide wrote:
| disclaimer: self-promotion
|
| This is the exact reason I started working on Satellite. To be
| a platform where I could have a blog that talked to other
| blogs. If you have feedback I'd love to hear it.
|
| https://satellite.earth/
| Rayhem wrote:
| I've spent about ten minutes poking around that link and I'm
| still not at all sure what kind of tool Satellite either is
| or wants me to think of it as. Front page:
|
| > Satellite is an alternative space for writers and the
| beginning of an entirely new kind of network
|
| O...k? Alternative _to what_? New _how_? Presumably
| "alternative" here means the space is an alternative to other
| spaces (not a space for alternatives) and "new" means "there
| are features other things don't have" (not "we made it a week
| ago") but it's very vague branding. What are the commonly-
| known alternatives so I have an existing idea to latch on to?
| What are the new features? Moving on, it appears that wasn't
| actually the front page - clicking through to the _named_
| front page:
|
| > a free, open, and unstoppable network better aligned with
| the interests of humanity
|
| _To do what!_ I gather this is a writing platform, but is it
| akin to blogging where individuals regularly put out
| articles? Scientific publishing that enforces a web of
| citations? Both? Can I have friends /subscribers of sorts? If
| so, do they also have to be Satellite members? Do my posts
| appear on any sort of front page anywhere? I'm still very
| befuddled at how the tool wants me to use it. Mastodon seems
| like the closest competitor, what does Satellite bring to the
| party?
|
| > Open protocols and data ownership
|
| Great! I like those things. But I'm only going to choose to
| use a tool if it has those things _after_ it satisfies my
| primary use cases. Using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail is
| stupid if you do it just because the screwdriver has an open
| source CAD file somewhere.
|
| I'm sorry if this all comes across as harsh -- I'm trying to
| be as straightforward as possible. I'm not at all certain if
| I'm Satellite's target audience, but if I am I am already
| disinclined to try and find out more. Tech bro hype over
| trivial things (or even stupid things) has completely burnt
| me out on new web stuff that tries too hard and doesn't
| respect my attention. I very much appreciate tools that are a
| little opinionated and a lot forthcoming about their intended
| uses so I don't feel like my attention has been hijacked or
| co-opted. If the tool is for me, great. I know what my pains
| are and it's not difficult for me to imagine what it might
| take for them to go away and you'll win me over if I can fit
| you into that thought. If the tool is not for me, that's also
| fine! It might be for someone else. But I'm not going to
| spend the effort to figure that out. If I have to, it's
| already not for me.
|
| That said, the website is very pretty. I'm always a fan of
| those dynamical network images, and the layout &
| typographical styling is very appealing.
| lovvtide wrote:
| I'm so close to the product after building it that it's not
| obvious to me which things are not obvious to other people
| seeing it for the first time, so thank you, this is very
| valuable feedback!
|
| > is it akin to blogging where individuals regularly put
| out articles
|
| Sort of. I think of being modeled after a text-based
| subreddit.
|
| > Scientific publishing that enforces a web of citations
|
| It's doesn't _enforce_ citations, but it does have a
| credibility mechanism. That 's what the "stars" on each
| item are supposed to be doing. When a writer stars another
| person's article, a link gets created to them in the
| constellation. The constellation is intended to visualize
| the web of ideas that connects people. It could probably be
| improved upon to be more functional and not just an art
| piece!
|
| > Can I have friends/subscribers of sorts?
|
| Yes. Other people on Satellite can subscribe to you, and
| people can also subscribe to get new posts sent to them via
| email without having to make an account. In this sense it's
| similar to Substack.
|
| > Do my posts appear on any sort of front page anywhere?
|
| Yes. All posts appear on the front page immediately under
| the "new" feed. Top-starred posts appear on the front page
| under the "top" feed. The subscribed feed just filters the
| posts from people who you're subscribed to.
|
| > I'm still very befuddled at how the tool wants me to use
| it.
|
| Basically the idea is you post articles and comment on
| other peoples articles. Everyone has a their own blog page
| at /@<username>
|
| > Mastodon seems like the closest competitor, what does
| Satellite bring to the party?
|
| The biggest difference is that every post on Satellite is
| digitally signed. Satellite supports signing with a local
| wallet, but it's not required. Another thing Satellite
| offers is data permanence. Every 28 days, all the data is
| archived in a kind of "snapshot" and added to IPFS as a
| kind of insurance for users that the value of their
| contributions won't be totally lost, even if Satellite
| shuts down (which is one problem with Mastodon, that all
| your data depends on being hosted by one instance). Another
| thing thing that archiving does is that makes the network
| "forkable" which I think is going to be an important part
| of how social media works in the future.
|
| > If the tool is not for me, that's also fine! It might be
| for someone else.
|
| In any case, I really appreciate you taking the time to
| engage :)
| galdor wrote:
| I like the idea of building a newsletter in order to interact
| with like-minded people. The hard part is to convince these
| people to subscribe. If you are already well known, it might
| work. If not, you are back to social networks.
|
| Of course one might question the point of trying to be noticed.
| But if you want to connect with interesting people, find contract
| work or grow a small company, building relationships is
| essential.
| alx__ wrote:
| I'm glad blogs are making a comeback!
|
| Personally been happy that Tumblr is thriving and in good hands
| cassidoo wrote:
| Kind of a shameless plug for my newsletter, and also a nod in
| agreement. I love being able to share articles that I find
| interesting, share useful tidbits and stuff, and getting
| responses from folks who actually read it and want to talk more.
| I love the concept and hope more people do it!
|
| Mine is here: https://cassidoo.co/newsletter
| kylecordes wrote:
| This seems great in theory but unlikely to work well in practice.
|
| Your close friends are already in touch routinely via email,
| phone, text, in person.
|
| Your extended network of acquaintances though? Connecting on a
| social media site is much less of a hurdle than: make them aware
| you have a newsletter. Get them to click and subscribe to the
| newsletter, get their email client to route that newsletter to
| their actual inbox so they see it, etc.
|
| A newsletter seems best suited to those with a bit of fame,
| enough to have a bunch of 'followers' - who will seek out and
| subscribe to a newsletter.
| patch_cable wrote:
| I have a newsletter that my extended friends and family have
| signed up for. I did post on social media when I set it up, and
| a couple of times after that. I also added a link to the
| physical Christmas cards we sent out a few years ago.
|
| But now I have 20ish people who are interested and that is
| enough to me.
|
| It doesn't seem people have a problem receiving them in their
| inbox.
| bilsbie wrote:
| If you think about it, it's actually pretty bizarre we thought
| the same people that would want to read our newsletters would
| also be interested in our political opinions and news stories.
| dutchbrit wrote:
| Edit, removed my previous message as it sounded quite negative,
| wasn't well thought out and was also partially off-topic. Product
| looks nice and simple, good job!
| jacobobryant wrote:
| Email isn't terribly expensive to send--a common rate is
| roughly $0.80/1,000 emails. It's absolutely dirt cheap
| ($0.10/1,000 emails) if you can get past the application for
| AWS SES. (I didn't--don't know the magic words I guess!--so I'm
| a happy Postmark user instead.)
| dutchbrit wrote:
| Good point!
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(page generated 2022-12-22 23:00 UTC)