Newsletter’s Road to Platform – #20

Original link: https://geekplux.com/newsletters/20

This is the twenty-first issue of GeekPlux Lab, and each issue will be published on the weekly page of my blog synchronously. At present, 2,517 students have subscribed to this week’s magazine. You are also welcome to subscribe by email . You can receive the update push as soon as possible.

Sorry for the late release this week, mainly to update the theme of my blog , adding a bunch of ugly layouts, but the functionality is better than before, and then slowly optimize the design. The backstage data release after twenty issues that were promised before is coming soon. The next text begins.

During the epidemic, Substack exploded. If you don’t know what Substack is, you may not usually get information from newsletter. Substack is currently a hot startup that focuses on providing a platform where users can easily publish newsletters. After Substack became popular all over the world, domestic newsletter publishing platforms also began to appear like bamboo shoots after a rain, such as the bamboo white I am using, as well as small newspaper boys , Hedwig and so on.

But people who often use or read newsletters know that a newsletter is actually an email, sent from the author’s mailbox to the reader’s mailbox, without any platform or third-party assistance, so what role does a “platform” like Substack play? ? How do they make money? I thought about (nothing) carefully (chat) with these questions, and finally figured it out after I wrote twenty newsletters.

Authoring, reading and distribution platform

Writing newsletters is actually a kind of writing, and in a larger sense, it is a kind of creation. Any writing platform or creation platform is similar, with nothing more than the following functions:

Creation function. Allow creators to upload or publish content, authors publish articles, painters publish paintings, and up masters publish videos
distribution function. Make works accessible to users (consumers), users can receive notifications or updated timelines to browse new works
Browse function. From the user (consumer) perspective, users can browse or consume works

Therefore, the users of each platform can be divided into two types: creators and consumers. Of course, the boundaries between these two types of users on most platforms are very blurred. Any user of the UGC website can be a creator or a consumer.

Algorithms and the Attention Economy

Originally, the earliest platform was to provide a medium to connect unfamiliar creators with consumers, so that creators had a place to display their talents, and consumers had a place to appreciate other people’s works. In the “classical” Internet era , when a consumer pays attention to a creator, his timeline will receive all the creator’s updates. The content on the user’s timeline is completely selected by the user, and the user can control the content on his own timeline by following or unchecking, so the control of the content is in the hands of the user . However, with the explosion of users and the development of algorithms, in the era of traffic , users’ attention is only the nutrient of the algorithm. The content on your timeline may only be 50% from the creators you follow, and 50% from the algorithm. It is recommended. In addition, it is impossible for you to watch all the dynamics of a creator you follow on the timeline, unless you click on his homepage, so the control of the content is in the hands of the algorithm .

Platforms do everything they can to grab users’ attention, creating today’s attention economy. From the user’s point of view, users constantly swipe the screen on a platform, and the content they swipe is very similar. The amount of information harvested is almost zero, and there are only bursts of emptiness.

The Good and Evil of Platforming

Control the connection between creators and consumers

Why has the platform developed to the present, building a user’s timeline with algorithm priority instead of creator priority? The biggest reason for this is wanting to control the connection between creators and consumers .

In writing, the goal of the platform is to control the connection between the author and the reader. We can imagine that if the platform is creator-first, then your timeline depends entirely on the people you follow. You are interested in that person, not the platform. When you establish a connection with a creator, the value provided by the platform is almost zero, and when the creator leaves, you may also leave. Therefore, if the platform does not want users to lose, it will naturally decouple the connection between the two.

The disadvantage of doing this is:

For creators: no way to grasp real users, no way to connect with audiences. The one who actually has the user information (email, contact information) is always the platform, and the creator can only obtain the user’s platform ID; secondly, they cannot control their own content dissemination channels, you never know what the platform adds to your content ( related recommendations, odd-shaped small ads), and you never know whether the pageviews come from the algorithm or your own creative level.
For consumers: it is easy to enter the information siege built by the algorithm, and it is impossible to expand the boundaries of thinking.

Control the creator’s monetization ability

We know that many platforms provide creators with monetization ability, but have you ever thought that if there is no platform, your monetization ability will be stronger. It would be better if the platform took a cut from the sales. Now many platforms use the “reward” or “incentive” model. Such platforms usually use advertising as a profit channel, such as YouTube, Bilibili, Medium, etc. . Many platforms add paywalls to content, but the payment is not for the creator, but for the app or the entire platform. A typical example is: “If you want to read (watch) the following content, please open a membership.” This membership is not for a single creator, but pays for the platform, and you can only watch some of the content if you become a member.

In addition to controlling the monetization method, some platforms directly restrict the behavior of creators or consumers. For example, creators cannot control their privacy, such as readers cannot copy and paste content on the platform (may be paid features), etc.

The disadvantages of the above are:

For creators: it cannot be better realized, it may be a meager “incentive” rather than a share of sales; secondly, if you cannot control the form of your content, you may be “paid (used by the platform to collect users’ money)”, maybe Will be “consumed (used by the platform to sell for money, such as selling to advertisers)”.
For consumers: the platform can add unlimited codes. First, you may pay for some content you don’t want to watch (originally you only want to watch someone’s content, but now you can only pay the entire membership fee), and then you may pay for different content” twice Pay” (a goose, not much to say).

Platform advantage

I have said a lot of platform-based evils, but in fact, creators and platforms are interdependent and cannot be separated from each other. There are also many advantages offered by the platform:

Easier to get an audience. It’s hard to cold start as a creator, and getting subscriptions from 0 to 100 is a long process. But if there is external promotion, SEO, internal distribution, and algorithm recommendation of the platform, your subscriptions may soon increase.
The ability of users to recall. This is completely impossible without a platform. The platform can help you wake up and recall users through APP notifications or email notifications. If you are an up master, it is impossible for you to send emails to all fans to say that you have updated (Is it a little bit reflected here? Take advantage of the newsletter, because you have the email address of your followers)
Realization ability. There are obviously two sides to this ability, and the bad side is mentioned above, but for most people, it may be more difficult to monetize without a platform.

Deplatforming Scenario

After talking for so long, I finally talked about de-platforming. After the discussion just now, it seems that the platform is an indispensable thing, but in fact, it also needs to be divided into scenes. What scenario is it necessary to have a platform? The first thing that came to my mind was to deliver food . If you order a takeaway, it is impossible to add your contact information to the delivery guy and ask him: “I just like the meal you delivered, please deliver it next time.” You have contact with the store at most, but it is impossible for him to deliver it to you. The second thing that comes to mind is taking a taxi . Whether it’s Didi, Uber, or directly stopping the car, you rarely go to establish contact with the driver, saying that I will trouble you to send me wherever I go in the future, which is obviously unrealistic. Therefore, there must be tasks on the platform, which can be summarized as such one-time tasks . Once you use it up, it will be over, and you will find new ones next time.

Without the need for a platform, or what are the scenarios of weak platformization ? The first thing that comes to my mind is a haircut . I don’t think I will say much about this scene. Everyone knows it. Basically, if you think a Tony has a good haircut, then no matter which store he goes to, you will always go there. Secondly, there are outsourcing teams (Party A and Party B), business upstream and downstream, partners, etc. These kinds of long-term and continuous tasks do not require platformization. Basically, after you establish contact with the other party, follow-up The process can be done point-to-point.

Newsletter is clearly de-platformed

According to the analysis just now, the newsletter obviously does not need a platform. As a creator, once you establish contact with readers (you have a list of subscribers’ mailboxes), you almost no longer need a platform . Maybe you think you need a platform for sending emails, but there are actually too many services for sending emails. You You can even fill in the recipients one by one yourself, right?

So thinking of this, I think Substack is actually a tool, not a platform, it originally provided the ability to edit and send emails, and that’s it . The main reason why Substack is successful is its ease of use and simplicity, and secondly, it provides users with the ability to monetize. From the analogy of domestic products, the most similar to Substack is the WeChat public account before it was sunk. There is no particularly flashy interface, so far you have clicked into any creator’s Substack page, just the title, article list and subscribe button.

Of course the Substack homepage provides a list of recommended newsletters, but it just recommends some newsletters worth subscribed to, and doesn’t control what you end up with. For readers, this may be the only way to discover which creators are, otherwise you can only reach a creator if you know the link to the homepage of the creator. The domestic bamboo white is more thorough, and there is no recommendation list, so readers have no idea who is writing the newsletter, and can only be reached through “word of mouth”. For creators, the recommendation on the Substack homepage can also be said to be the only official customer acquisition channel, and the rest have to be managed by themselves. For someone without a “fan” base, it might be difficult to start a new creation on Substack.

Newsletter’s Platformization Road

Simplicity means that user stickiness is not very large. It’s not impossible for Substack, both creators and readers, to break free once a connection is made. Therefore, if the “tool” of Substack wants to go to the next level, the most important issue to consider is how to “platform” .

At the beginning of this year, Subtack started to do some positive experiments:

Such as launching their own APP. But I think if you are not a deep user of newsletters, there is no need to download an APP to read the articles separately. The reading experience in your own mailbox is better.
For example, a “mutual push” function has been introduced. That is, creators can recommend some newsletters on their own pages. These recommendations are made by the creators themselves and are not related to algorithms. I think it might be useful for independent newsletter creators to push each other.

However, these attempts are still too small. If I were the owner of Substack, I would directly go a step further in mutual push: mutual push and split . Just click from my homepage and subscribe to other people’s newsletters, I can get 30% or something like that. Many domestic APPs and platforms are no longer playable, the classic distribution routine. I will not be surprised if any domestic newsletter platform launches this feature in the future (can the bosses consider giving me money).

tail

This article is primarily a thought process, as is the case with most of my articles, and clear conclusions may or may not be useful. But in any case, I hope to provide readers with a little useful value, see you in the next issue.

what have you watched recently

Knowledge Wiki – too much content
layoffs.fyi – the recent big layoffs in the global technology industry, including several major companies and a number of start-ups
Library of Web3 – great web3 learning material
Responsibilities of a Senior Software Engineer – what it takes to become a senior programmer

My wiki routine:

Past recommendations:

Disclaimer : This article is from the author and does not represent any institution or company, nor does it constitute investment advice.

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