We’ve been using Substack’s platform for some time, but the action these days is bubbling with newsletter startups from Twitter, Facebook, Forbes, and probably every other platform behind the scenes. The newsletterati has weighed in with analysis and positioning, mostly on the other big disruption: Clubhouse (In defense of blocking says Casey Newton) and The Information’s Sam Lessin on the future of Cult-Driven social platforms.) Marc Andreessen just tweeted out a thread containing books and a podcast discussed on tonight’s convo with partner Ben Horowitz. The bundling is fast and furious. In the liner notes for this week’s Gillmor Gang, I suggest newsletters will absorb podcasts and Clubhouse will do likewise with radio.
So Revue does this thing better than Substack, for the moment perhaps but definitely right now. The drag and drop makes changes more elastic, both from outside sources and within the writing and other curated pieces. It’s easier and more fluid to write than to point, even, as debates rage through the media about the credibility, or lack of it, or somewhere in between the tension between traditional (last year social) and this week (postblog and semi-corporate journalism.) Not to pick a fight, but I like the pressure Andreessen and company are putting on the OGs.
Now, I don’t want to get blocked by Clubhouse stars, at least not until I get to lurk in a few of these 5K+ sessions. So meanwhile, I’ll suck up to Marc, which won’t work, and swim in the Wild West feel that’s underway. Though Clubhouse doesn’t record, apparently they’ve got that working in-house.