Why and how you should join Substack Notes
Plus, some tips for RSS users
Substack launched its new Notes feature this week, which aims to support short-form, Twitter-like content on the Substack platform. You can sign-up for a reader-only account here. Here is the announcement from Substack explaining how Notes fits in with their newsletter platform. Notes lives in a tab beside Inbox at substack.com and in Substack’s mobile apps.
The Subscribed view shows notes and activity from writers you have subscribed to directly. The Home view shows notes from writers you are subscribed to and writers they recommend, making up your extended network.
I know that some people read this newsletter via RSS to avoid cluttering their email inbox (in case you are unaware, Substack urls also serve as RSS feeds). You might be wondering if it is possible to follow someone on Substack Notes without also signing-up to the newsletter via email. The answer is yes: just click on a Substack writer’s profile and in the three-dot menu select ‘See Notes from [writer’s name].’ Conversely, you can also suppress Notes from individual writers using this feature.
I’m a largely passive user of Twitter, but plan to use the Notes feature for content that I would previously have posted there. If you follow me on Twitter, you will now find that content on Notes. The enthusiastic take-up of Notes highlights the general dissatisfaction with Twitter and the demand for an alternative. As I have noted here previously, Twitter drives very little effective engagement with other content, not least because the Twitter algo discriminates against it.
Many newsletter writers have an exaggerated view of Twitter’s importance in generating subscribers. I was around for the early days of blogging and can vouch for the fact that it is possible to build an audience without the benefit of social media.
While we are discussing Substack features, I should also mention Chat, currently only available in the Substack app for iOS, but rolling out to Android and desktop soon. To take advantage of the chat feature, download the app by clicking this link. Open the app and tap the Chat icon.
Look forward to seeing you all on Notes.