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Personal newsletters as a calmer alternative to social networks
- blakesterz 4y agoHmmm, 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 4y agoOP 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 4y agoBut Substack is a newsletter service?
- blakesterz 4y agoTrue, 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?
- raptorraver 4y agoWould there be need for a more personal take on Substack? Newsletter service which works on top of email - nothing gets posted to internet. And you could only invite people to subscribe your newsletter. Maybe some subgroups for your subscribers to manage whom you send your most personal thoughts. Edit: Didn't read the original post with my both eyes. Seems that's describing a service which is quite close to what I had in mind.
- madelyn-goodman 4y agoThis 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 4y agoI'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 4y agoI do exactly the same thing with my family and friends newsletter. I think it works really well.
- lkrubner 4y agoThis 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 4y agoBefore 2000, there were the "shared spaces" of mailing lists. I think of Winer the same way you probably think of Zuck.
- photochemsyn 4y agoOne 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.
- 082349872349872 4y agoThere are indeed private mailing lists, but (for obvious reasons) they're not very discoverable.
- lovvtide 4y agodisclaimer: 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/ https://satellite.earth/
- galdor 4y agoI 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.
- floren 4y agoAfter 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"
- cowuser666 4y agoI 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 4y agoA 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 4y agoYep! You can think of email as a version of RSS that regular people actually know how to use ;)
- nextweek2 4y agoExcept 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 4y agoMaybe 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 4y agoIf you set up an email filter, then it just becomes a push style RSS subscription.
- soheilpro 4y agohttps://kill-the-newsletter.com https://kill-the-newsletter.com turns email newsletters into RSS feeds.
- lasermike026 4y agoNeeds some work.
- cassidoo 4y agoKind 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 https://cassidoo.co/newsletter
- SoftTalker 4y agoNewsletter to me reminds me of the tedious letters that people used to send out in their yearly Christmas card. No thanks.
- philip1209 4y agoBut, newsletters have an unsubscribe button :-)
- stuckkeys 4y agoAnother social platform with extra steps.
- jacobobryant 4y agoThis 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-update-for-our-eu-customers/ 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 4y agoThanks 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 4y agoAh, 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 4y ago> Please provide single opt-in as an option Where it isn't illegal, it is still scummy.
- jacobobryant 4y ago
- forgotusername6 4y agoDoes 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 4y agoFriends of ours do this, and we love receiving them!
- quesera 4y agoI think that's a bulk letter, not round-robin. If it were round-robin, you'd have to mail it to the next person on the list, just like a chain letter. ...minus the dramatic consequences if you failed, although perhaps familial disappointment is both stronger and more likely!
- dumbotron 4y agoPeople used to do them all the time for Christmas, but then got lazy and started sending just a card.
- korroziya 4y agoTried 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 4y agoDunno about that. I subscribe to several newsletters. Dave Pell puts out NextDraft almost every weekday. https://nextdraft.com/ 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.
- dutchbrit 4y agoEdit, 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 4y agoEmail 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 4y agoGood point!
- bradlys 4y agoMain 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 4y agoHow many people would you have to have read it for it to feel useful to you?
- kylecordes 4y agoThis 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 4y agoI 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bilsbie 4y agoIf 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.
- browningstreet 4y agoNot 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.
- znpy 4y agoI 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)
- yieldcrv 4y agoSorry 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
- Thorentis 4y agoSorry to be brutal, but this sounds like they weren't truly friends. I and many of my friends have given up on social media, and now have to make a conscious effort to ring each other and arrange dinners, activities, etc. If your "friends" aren't willing to do this... find better friends.
- joe_the_user 4y agoSorry to be brutal... Yeah, your post seems mean-spirited and unhelpful. I keep up as well as I can with a wide variety of people and some portion of people fall off the map. I keep up enough to know that many of them are in a spiral of isolation and despair that characterizes the present era. Sure, some might not have valued me personally but many "just can't" keep up with friendships generally and suffer from this.
- alx__ 4y agoI'm glad blogs are making a comeback! Personally been happy that Tumblr is thriving and in good hands
- Animats 4y agoBut only with RSS, where you can unsubscribe. Email newsletters are too hard to stop.
- yieldcrv 4y agoIn my area, a lot of people arent giving their phone 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 Reply STOP to unsubscribe
- philip1209 4y agoI've had a lot of people request SMS or messenger-type app support for Postcard. I realize the HN crowd generally is less in favor of SMS, but it seems that there's a big group of people that use SMS/messengers exclusively.
- chadlavi 4y agoThat's like saying books are a calmer alternative to the radio. They're extremely different media.
- gamerDude 4y agoI have written a person newsletter every month for 5 years now. I have people request to get on it. But, this as a business seems very odd to me. Kind of the whole point is to keep it simple. I have 120 people that keep up with me from all different stages of my life, but why would I want a website. The whole point is it is personal and not advertised. Otherwise, I'd use a blog instead.
- nagarjun 4y agoI love the idea in principle but, this is a tough sell. As much as I want to delete traditional social network apps (Facebook, Instagram, etc) from my device, I simply don't see that happening. Most people willing to pay $8 / month will want something out of it and as a result, it will be used mostly by professionals and content writers (as evidenced by the showcase in the home page). IMO, this is better suited to compete with public social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn. I wouldn't use it as an alternative to Facebook or Instagram, which IMO is far more detrimental to society than Twitter or LinkedIn. In an ideal world, I would like my friends and family to get off of FB and IG to use something like this but, I don't see that happening.
- MrDresden 4y agoPerhaps I am simply not understanding, but how would a personal newsletter be any different in a better way then just having a blog? The infrastructure is more complex and those who want to read the content have a higher barrier to cross.
- ploden 4y agoI love this idea, and have been working on something similar. The problem is, how can my mom like and comment on photos of her grandkids without setting up her own account or domain?
- psteitz 4y agoSomewhat comical that the post is basically an ad.