I may have mentioned somewhere - I’m leaning into social three dot oh. I’m going to the dark side, where the attention economy is not welcome. Instead, it’s the PAY-attention economy.
When I create posts like this one, the source code and other deeper insights will typically be concealed behind a paywall. Because I love you guys, I’m dropping the paywall entirely for the following year. But you only have six more days to get this free fifty-dollar bill.
Use this link if you can’t get enough of my shit. And don’t be casting this about the Interwebs; my systems are smart. They will make you look bad if you stuff subscriber list.
Thanks. I went ahead and bit. I’ll have a year to decide if I want to continue the subscription. I wonder if I will be able to deduct it as an expense on my taxes
As much as I like reading your posts, there was just too much friction before. Creating an account on a new platform. Deciding if I want to download an app, bookmark the website, or get email notifications. Hunting up my credit card. And paying a monthly fee while not being sure what I’d do with what I get?
So my laziness worked in my favor. When you dropped the price to zero, that was enough to overcome my inertia.
Now I just get to wonder how you are harvesting the data about what piques my attention. And wonder if this particular initiative will last. Sigh.
I’m a little curious about your decision to pick substack versus all of the other platforms where people monetize their writing.
This is one of the challenges with the pace of innovation. Remember when Twitter opened its doors? It was April 1st, 2004. I was tweeting that day. I don’t get up on the tweeter much anymore, and it’s unlikely I’ll use Substack Notes much either. Hard to say where this will go.
Remember Linkedin? I was member #11,145. 899,988,855 members came after me. This low membership number is meaningless of course unless you want an invite to Reid Hoffman’s Christmas party every year (the first 15,000 are invited; ~5% show up). I went a few times.
Substack might not last, but the business model is sure to stay. The attention economy is in a state of decline. All those who facilitate it and use it will say otherwise. But there’s a sea change. It’s like that day at the beach when you realize the tide is moving out. Ever-so-slight patches of dry sand begin to appear at the water’s edge.
I noticed a lot of really smart tech and AI writers drawn to substack.
Writers can invest in Substack; we can own a piece of the platform.
Elon was noticeably annoyed when Substack Notes emerged.
The third one is very important; it telegraphed that substack was a potential threat to Twitter itself; a clear indication they’re doing it right.
