Another point: Substack Notes is a great example of the power of network effects. It's an interesting product not because the software is special, but because writers I like are already there. It's all war of the networks imo.
(PS: Do a growth bro a solid and make the share to Notes comment checkbox default-on)
Really? Why would you want that? I have looked at that and considered using it, but it just seems that it would lead to sharing comments out of context and wouldn’t be comprehensible to the reader. Am I wrong?
I think it depends on how you structure your comment. If it's just "LoL!" then yes, but if you know you're sharing it outside of the context of the post, if reference something specific that you're responding to, it might trigger another reader to want to see what you're talking about.
That’s a good point. I’m curious if also sharing to Notes includes a link to the original post. I’ve never done it so I don’t know.
Still I’m not sure I’d want all of my comments on posts to be reshaped to Notes automatically. I can be a bit of a troll and I like to limit who can see that.
Anything done by Zuckerberg is going to be heavy on censorship, which is why I would never use Threads, nevermind all of the user data that it sucks up too.
Would you ever consider giving Taegan MacLean the power of short form video on Substack Notes? Would you consider him being given access to something like Reels in this space to be a net positive or negative for the entire world, the future of humanity, and our hopes of one day becoming an interstellar civilization?
I know this is controversial, but I'd expect for Notes and all of Substack to support more and more types of content over time: text, video, audio, live, events, etc. I don't know when or in what order or anything, but I do think there will come a day when Taegan's wonderful videos (and many others) are better-supported both in Notes and all around the platform.
And while you're joking, I do in fact think of "adding features to platforms" as being distantly but meaningfully connected to becoming an interstellar civilization, and Taegan's work is absolutely part of that!!!
All I aspire to do is be a small force in the right direction amidst the massive dynamics that lead to human flourishing of whatever forms. (Well, actually all I aspire to do is hang out and be left alone). The main way I've managed to attempt this is: to try to accelerate information exchange by working on big old platforms that let more and more people post, read, earn, connect, etc. I know a lot of people think this has been bad for the world, but I think they're mistaken. All these trends were bigger than any company, anyway; but you chip in wherever you can, I think, and this was where I could.
Information exchange is probably one of the most general dynamics governing the rate of various kinds of progress. Almost everything I consider "good" for humanity —and much of what people who disagree with me about what's good for humanity consider "good"— entails information exchange, so making it more efficient, or accessible to more people, or cheaper, or faster, or less wasteful, or less unpleasant, or whatever else just seems "generically good."
Now I'll permit myself some insane nonsense. To be clear beforehand: I think "design is a job," as the fella said, and my people and I sling rectangles and call it a day often. This really isn't some huge deal. But all of us, in whatever jobs we do, enable the function and expansion of a system which to date is the only knowledge-generating, entropy-and-suffering reducing phenomenon we know of. If one of my designers makes it so Taegan can share his videos in Notes, and one day someone sees it who might not have, and it goes into their psyche and makes some minute difference to them in a moment of crisis, and they don't drop out of their Ph.D program or whatever; or they mention something it inspires to a friend, who then shares it with a partner who needs to hear it; or they share it and muckety-muck sees it and contacts Taegan, who earns enough from the subsequent business project that he donates to a charity that's present at the moment someone might otherwise not make it, etc. etc., I'm very pleased.
If you extend that line of reasoning far enough: a lot of what we do ladders up into interstellar travel lmfao, including e.g. "buying potato chips." But I think this is actually as consequential as e.g. our political beliefs —both not very and very, somehow— and I wish it were possible to actively feel one's "representative" import to the system despite one's literal inconsequentiality as a matter of scale. At both Substack, I regularly witness what appear to be decisive encounters between individuals and some form of information —knowledge, wisdom, art, story, dream, image, whatever— that seems to set them on a new trajectory. Such encounters are the stuff of biographies of the sorts of people who might take us to the stars: "I'll never forget coming across X in the public library" or "I must mention Mrs. Y, the teacher who first introduced me to a love of Z," etc. Every platform, at its stochastic best, will produce some of these moments.
You can also tell that sort of story precisely inverted, fully negatively, incidentally; and that does indeed weigh on me. But again: I think all these trends are bigger than any company, or any nation. They're going to build roads; you can try to make roads better, or you can just spend your life going "no, these are too dangerous, we shouldn't do this." You might even be right! But I think it's better to try to make them better, safer, etc.
All these people looking for Elon to be the one that takes us all to Mars when really it’s some video guy in Canada. Who knew that the hopes and dreams of all of humanity could depend on One Word.
Apparently, you have also been recommending The Beginning of Infinity. I picked it up almost by accident in a small English-language bookstore in Tokyo years ago and have raved about it to whoever would listen, which is a much smaller set of folks than yours, I’m sure.
This has nothing to do with your post, and I’m okay with that.
It's the book I recommend when people in my field ask me "what should I read for my career," which is a bit of a stretch but I think BOI is a great demonstration of how fundamental epistemology is to all human endeavors. Tons of us read it at Quora, and it's gone around a bit at Substack too!
Do you use ML to derive connections and make recommendations on Notes? I remember reading somewhere that the algorithm that drove feeds on Twitter and Facebook was no longer completely knowable by engineers. I realized it had to be ML and some form of AI at that point. It's no longer a simple set of conditionals.
Between myself and another software engineer at work we own the knowledge of about 20 services and it's nearly impossible to remember what they all do exactly. I can't imagine at the level of social media without automation.
The situation gets chaotic, yeah. So far my understanding is that we're using fairly simple (and presumably relatively interpretable) models for these things (and others, e.g. filtering spam). I've been very curious to see how this area develops for us over time! My last company was so ML-obsessed, and Substack is quite different!
Hmmm I don’t know, I struggle with this in a few angles:
1. I don’t think software is that commoditized at the quality level we are playing. Sure, anyone can do a B2B software because the software doesn’t matter much, but consumer social engineering is still very hard from a product POV. (Substack can create a twitter clone or an X clone, but finding a superior offering – however defined – seems hard)
2. Perhaps the difficulty is moving upstream. With TikTok or Can of Soup, there are serious engineering challenges (of the FB type you describe) in creating the feed and the mechanism for content creation. This is akin to the DD “I don’t think about heating in Oxford but I’d die without it dynamic”
3. It is yet unclear whether these variations on a product (twitter clones being the zeitgeist example right now) are going to be adopted at all! If the big network players still own 99-95% of the market… can you say no more winner-take-all?
How much or how often do you “look to nature” for your design inspiration in social media? For instance the construction of the wing and airplanes. Those obviously aren’t the same as birds but you can track the progress if you squint.
Be curious as to how you think about it on the “friend” making front and the moderation front. We have things we do in meat space today that don’t have clear analogues on social media.
In a certain mode, it's the main thing I think about! That mode is the sort of open-ended generative mode, thinking about "what might be possible," etc. I love the work of people who stay in that zone, but I'm not one of them.
In my primary mode, thinking about "what might be pragmatic," I do much less of this, because it's much less common that innovation in design (of the kind that might be inspired by observing how friendship IRL works, for example) is what users are seeking. Rather, they're seeking something roughly familiar.
For example: I think one of the first proofs of friendship most people experience is gossip. Someone tells you something they would not want to say in public about someone else. Perhaps when designing Notes, we could've considered how to use this in some way... but most people actually want posting to feel like posting has felt before, just with some small improvements. That is: the appetite for innovation is limited by the reality of switching costs / cognitive burdens.
This basically means I'm often a "best practice" trafficker. I'm not trying to do anything especially profound or novel in user interface or interaction or product design; I'm trying to put those things into the service of something larger that's profound (for me, anyway; that is: Substack). Often, what's novel will not work for our users! So, sadly perhaps, exogenous inspiration isn't a major part of my practice now, something for which I would accept criticism!
You guys have something really magical in this in place and I encourage you to push the envelope and have giant ambitions. If you ever want someone for Friendly User Testing, I’m a Product Owner at a bank. While not a social media company by any means, I know the pain.
Tacit permission to ask Mills questions about social network design as related to software… I am here for this! I will probably come back to this all throughout the day to add new questions.
Do you feel that Substack should consider some type sorting algorithm (beyond the existing— you follow this person, they recommend that publication, etc.) as more and more platforms adapt ML-powered For You as a way to determine what users want to see?
To me it seems like an ML-powered version of For You could not only surface more content people want to see, but do so in a way that conforms to Substack’s use of the limited ‘Follow-stack’ algorithm you guys currently use as a form of quiet moderation. Am I wrong? Do you have thoughts on this?
I am totally agnostic on methods. Many in the field aren't, so e.g. you'll hear people say "I oppose algorithms." But of course, it's *all* algorithms, even what editors think and artists dream (to some extent; I won't go into my crypto-dualism here!).
If a fully-algorithmic system brought the most growth and sustained income to the most writers, I'd support it wholeheartedly. What I want is: every person who would want to read / pay for someone connected to any person they'd want to read / pay for. If ML can get us there, I love ML. But if ML is going to suck, like it very often does, no thanks. Right now, I think Substack lacks the scale and the expertise to do a 100% "FYP" feed with any success. On the other hand, what I love about ML is that it lets you tune for the long-tail too: that is, systems can evaluate content and elevate it beyond its reputation would suggest on its own. You don't need to be "already famous," although it'll always help.
I badly want that for Substack! Time will tell how all this evolves.
So helpful, Mills, I haven't ventured to THREADs for fear that it'll suck me in as another social network that I can barely understand let alone use; e.g. still trying to understand Instagram--I guess that makes me a dumb dumb in this age of the Internet. Notes, on the other hand, has been fab for me--as has Substack. I must tell you how much I've loved this platform and I'm no biggy here. Kudos to you and your colleagues, Mills. I guess I have to at least take a look at THREADS??? OMG and xo. So glad you did decide to post this essay. ~Mary
I have an issue with your analysis. You seem to presume that Threads has staying power, but I doubt it. It's funneling a bunch of Instagram whores into a twitter-like environment. Get back to after it's been around for a few years. Everybody is always interested in the new, shiny toy, but will they stay and will the platform survive over time? Verdict is still out on that one.
As far as Twitter goes, it is what it is and it's not my cup of tea. But some people still seem to like it, and I don't see the ones that do moving over to Threads if Threads starts to be a ghost town after a while. We've seen this before with other platforms that launched, got a lot of hype, then died off slowly as usage dwindled. I wouldn't write Twitter off just yet.
I've been reading the comments here and some of the conversations on Notes the last few days and I've come to the conclusion that Threads has been a blessing. I sort of took Notes for granted before. Having played around on Threads, I’m more convinced than ever that Substack is doing something unique and profound.
I was never a Twitter user, but I got really into Instagram when it first launched on Android in 2012ish. Long story short, I gained a few thousand followers, which is nothing in the grand scheme, but for a 25 year old who couldn't get it together long enough to write more than a caption, it was a huge motivator. That experience both lifted me up as an artist and, later, destroyed my creative confidence for years.
Not because it went poorly, but because it went well. Every social media space has a vibe, and IG, especially early on, was sickly sweet. Whatever one did was met with praise.
While they were creatively fulfilling, I began to find answering comments anxiety-inducing. Within a year, I stopped wanting to post because I’d have to answer 20 or 30 comments, which would take up an hour or two of my time. Also, the meaning dissipated from the effort.
By the end of my time on IG, I would create something I found no meaning in and be met with instant and unrelenting praise. That feedback loop completely disillusioned me for years.
There's lots of talk about how social media influences communication, but less so on how it influences creativity and art. Maybe it’s implied, but I view the creative mindset as different than, say, tweeting about politics or snapping a photo of brunch and writing “Breakfast with Bae.”
I can only talk about my own experiences here. Most of what I would call “the creative work” I’ve actually finished has been done because of a social platform I was using at the time. And I consciously adapted the creative work for the platform.
For example, I wrote little stories on Instagram along with a photo because that’s what the platform demanded. On Substack, I write long-form pieces because the audience is here to read them. Once I learned Substack had a burgeoning video feature, it influenced my decision to try to create videos for the written memoirs.
This might not even be a novel idea at all. Maybe the artist always starts with the platform — with the space an audience will congregate?
Either way, older platforms — magazines, zines, newspapers — had a person at the helm. Algorithms are the gatekeepers of today and, most likely, tomorrow.
So, if Substack did add vertical 60 second video, I’d use it differently than YouTube Shorts, Reels, or TikTok because this platform and its algorithm demands a different input from their artists.
TLDR; If I had to boil all this down to a question for Mills, it would be something to the effect of: Do you think about how the platforms you work on effect the output of the artists who use it? Does creative work you experience on the platform ever push your designs into new directions?
I loved the people, the mission, the culture, and the platform (often; not always)!!! Very fun place to work and made some of the best friends of my life there. I think Quora was extremely good at giving people reasons to write, building writing habits, informing people what others wanted them to write about, and distributing older content to people who found it valuable / interesting (freeing authors from the treadmill a bit). All of that would be great for Substack!
Another point: Substack Notes is a great example of the power of network effects. It's an interesting product not because the software is special, but because writers I like are already there. It's all war of the networks imo.
(PS: Do a growth bro a solid and make the share to Notes comment checkbox default-on)
Really? Why would you want that? I have looked at that and considered using it, but it just seems that it would lead to sharing comments out of context and wouldn’t be comprehensible to the reader. Am I wrong?
I think it depends on how you structure your comment. If it's just "LoL!" then yes, but if you know you're sharing it outside of the context of the post, if reference something specific that you're responding to, it might trigger another reader to want to see what you're talking about.
That’s a good point. I’m curious if also sharing to Notes includes a link to the original post. I’ve never done it so I don’t know.
Still I’m not sure I’d want all of my comments on posts to be reshaped to Notes automatically. I can be a bit of a troll and I like to limit who can see that.
I'm not a person who jumps on something when it first comes out.
I like to watch it a while, then stick my toe in, almost as if it's water in a pool
Then again, I've had dealings with being banned from Facebook and Almost got banned from Insta for saying that men can't be women.
When you can't tell people the truth, there is no reason even gracing them with your presence.
Anything done by Zuckerberg is going to be heavy on censorship, which is why I would never use Threads, nevermind all of the user data that it sucks up too.
Did I say the thing you foot@‘d me about? I don’t remember
No lol but now whenever I detect a *possible* pun I blame you (FB “de-FANG’d”)!
Oh in that case I graciously accept all credit
Would you ever consider giving Taegan MacLean the power of short form video on Substack Notes? Would you consider him being given access to something like Reels in this space to be a net positive or negative for the entire world, the future of humanity, and our hopes of one day becoming an interstellar civilization?
I know this is controversial, but I'd expect for Notes and all of Substack to support more and more types of content over time: text, video, audio, live, events, etc. I don't know when or in what order or anything, but I do think there will come a day when Taegan's wonderful videos (and many others) are better-supported both in Notes and all around the platform.
And while you're joking, I do in fact think of "adding features to platforms" as being distantly but meaningfully connected to becoming an interstellar civilization, and Taegan's work is absolutely part of that!!!
Tell me more about how adding features relates to venturing into the stars.
All I aspire to do is be a small force in the right direction amidst the massive dynamics that lead to human flourishing of whatever forms. (Well, actually all I aspire to do is hang out and be left alone). The main way I've managed to attempt this is: to try to accelerate information exchange by working on big old platforms that let more and more people post, read, earn, connect, etc. I know a lot of people think this has been bad for the world, but I think they're mistaken. All these trends were bigger than any company, anyway; but you chip in wherever you can, I think, and this was where I could.
Information exchange is probably one of the most general dynamics governing the rate of various kinds of progress. Almost everything I consider "good" for humanity —and much of what people who disagree with me about what's good for humanity consider "good"— entails information exchange, so making it more efficient, or accessible to more people, or cheaper, or faster, or less wasteful, or less unpleasant, or whatever else just seems "generically good."
Now I'll permit myself some insane nonsense. To be clear beforehand: I think "design is a job," as the fella said, and my people and I sling rectangles and call it a day often. This really isn't some huge deal. But all of us, in whatever jobs we do, enable the function and expansion of a system which to date is the only knowledge-generating, entropy-and-suffering reducing phenomenon we know of. If one of my designers makes it so Taegan can share his videos in Notes, and one day someone sees it who might not have, and it goes into their psyche and makes some minute difference to them in a moment of crisis, and they don't drop out of their Ph.D program or whatever; or they mention something it inspires to a friend, who then shares it with a partner who needs to hear it; or they share it and muckety-muck sees it and contacts Taegan, who earns enough from the subsequent business project that he donates to a charity that's present at the moment someone might otherwise not make it, etc. etc., I'm very pleased.
If you extend that line of reasoning far enough: a lot of what we do ladders up into interstellar travel lmfao, including e.g. "buying potato chips." But I think this is actually as consequential as e.g. our political beliefs —both not very and very, somehow— and I wish it were possible to actively feel one's "representative" import to the system despite one's literal inconsequentiality as a matter of scale. At both Substack, I regularly witness what appear to be decisive encounters between individuals and some form of information —knowledge, wisdom, art, story, dream, image, whatever— that seems to set them on a new trajectory. Such encounters are the stuff of biographies of the sorts of people who might take us to the stars: "I'll never forget coming across X in the public library" or "I must mention Mrs. Y, the teacher who first introduced me to a love of Z," etc. Every platform, at its stochastic best, will produce some of these moments.
You can also tell that sort of story precisely inverted, fully negatively, incidentally; and that does indeed weigh on me. But again: I think all these trends are bigger than any company, or any nation. They're going to build roads; you can try to make roads better, or you can just spend your life going "no, these are too dangerous, we shouldn't do this." You might even be right! But I think it's better to try to make them better, safer, etc.
All these people looking for Elon to be the one that takes us all to Mars when really it’s some video guy in Canada. Who knew that the hopes and dreams of all of humanity could depend on One Word.
I’d take Taegan over Elon nine days a week.
Make that ten.
Great-Grand-Scoots, on Xlobrox IV: “in the beginning was One Word”
nice threads, Mills 🙏🏼
Apparently, you have also been recommending The Beginning of Infinity. I picked it up almost by accident in a small English-language bookstore in Tokyo years ago and have raved about it to whoever would listen, which is a much smaller set of folks than yours, I’m sure.
This has nothing to do with your post, and I’m okay with that.
It's the book I recommend when people in my field ask me "what should I read for my career," which is a bit of a stretch but I think BOI is a great demonstration of how fundamental epistemology is to all human endeavors. Tons of us read it at Quora, and it's gone around a bit at Substack too!
Do you use ML to derive connections and make recommendations on Notes? I remember reading somewhere that the algorithm that drove feeds on Twitter and Facebook was no longer completely knowable by engineers. I realized it had to be ML and some form of AI at that point. It's no longer a simple set of conditionals.
Between myself and another software engineer at work we own the knowledge of about 20 services and it's nearly impossible to remember what they all do exactly. I can't imagine at the level of social media without automation.
The situation gets chaotic, yeah. So far my understanding is that we're using fairly simple (and presumably relatively interpretable) models for these things (and others, e.g. filtering spam). I've been very curious to see how this area develops for us over time! My last company was so ML-obsessed, and Substack is quite different!
Hmmm I don’t know, I struggle with this in a few angles:
1. I don’t think software is that commoditized at the quality level we are playing. Sure, anyone can do a B2B software because the software doesn’t matter much, but consumer social engineering is still very hard from a product POV. (Substack can create a twitter clone or an X clone, but finding a superior offering – however defined – seems hard)
2. Perhaps the difficulty is moving upstream. With TikTok or Can of Soup, there are serious engineering challenges (of the FB type you describe) in creating the feed and the mechanism for content creation. This is akin to the DD “I don’t think about heating in Oxford but I’d die without it dynamic”
3. It is yet unclear whether these variations on a product (twitter clones being the zeitgeist example right now) are going to be adopted at all! If the big network players still own 99-95% of the market… can you say no more winner-take-all?
Potential sperg post incoming.
How much or how often do you “look to nature” for your design inspiration in social media? For instance the construction of the wing and airplanes. Those obviously aren’t the same as birds but you can track the progress if you squint.
Be curious as to how you think about it on the “friend” making front and the moderation front. We have things we do in meat space today that don’t have clear analogues on social media.
In a certain mode, it's the main thing I think about! That mode is the sort of open-ended generative mode, thinking about "what might be possible," etc. I love the work of people who stay in that zone, but I'm not one of them.
In my primary mode, thinking about "what might be pragmatic," I do much less of this, because it's much less common that innovation in design (of the kind that might be inspired by observing how friendship IRL works, for example) is what users are seeking. Rather, they're seeking something roughly familiar.
For example: I think one of the first proofs of friendship most people experience is gossip. Someone tells you something they would not want to say in public about someone else. Perhaps when designing Notes, we could've considered how to use this in some way... but most people actually want posting to feel like posting has felt before, just with some small improvements. That is: the appetite for innovation is limited by the reality of switching costs / cognitive burdens.
This basically means I'm often a "best practice" trafficker. I'm not trying to do anything especially profound or novel in user interface or interaction or product design; I'm trying to put those things into the service of something larger that's profound (for me, anyway; that is: Substack). Often, what's novel will not work for our users! So, sadly perhaps, exogenous inspiration isn't a major part of my practice now, something for which I would accept criticism!
You guys have something really magical in this in place and I encourage you to push the envelope and have giant ambitions. If you ever want someone for Friendly User Testing, I’m a Product Owner at a bank. While not a social media company by any means, I know the pain.
Tacit permission to ask Mills questions about social network design as related to software… I am here for this! I will probably come back to this all throughout the day to add new questions.
Do you feel that Substack should consider some type sorting algorithm (beyond the existing— you follow this person, they recommend that publication, etc.) as more and more platforms adapt ML-powered For You as a way to determine what users want to see?
To me it seems like an ML-powered version of For You could not only surface more content people want to see, but do so in a way that conforms to Substack’s use of the limited ‘Follow-stack’ algorithm you guys currently use as a form of quiet moderation. Am I wrong? Do you have thoughts on this?
I am totally agnostic on methods. Many in the field aren't, so e.g. you'll hear people say "I oppose algorithms." But of course, it's *all* algorithms, even what editors think and artists dream (to some extent; I won't go into my crypto-dualism here!).
If a fully-algorithmic system brought the most growth and sustained income to the most writers, I'd support it wholeheartedly. What I want is: every person who would want to read / pay for someone connected to any person they'd want to read / pay for. If ML can get us there, I love ML. But if ML is going to suck, like it very often does, no thanks. Right now, I think Substack lacks the scale and the expertise to do a 100% "FYP" feed with any success. On the other hand, what I love about ML is that it lets you tune for the long-tail too: that is, systems can evaluate content and elevate it beyond its reputation would suggest on its own. You don't need to be "already famous," although it'll always help.
I badly want that for Substack! Time will tell how all this evolves.
So helpful, Mills, I haven't ventured to THREADs for fear that it'll suck me in as another social network that I can barely understand let alone use; e.g. still trying to understand Instagram--I guess that makes me a dumb dumb in this age of the Internet. Notes, on the other hand, has been fab for me--as has Substack. I must tell you how much I've loved this platform and I'm no biggy here. Kudos to you and your colleagues, Mills. I guess I have to at least take a look at THREADS??? OMG and xo. So glad you did decide to post this essay. ~Mary
I have an issue with your analysis. You seem to presume that Threads has staying power, but I doubt it. It's funneling a bunch of Instagram whores into a twitter-like environment. Get back to after it's been around for a few years. Everybody is always interested in the new, shiny toy, but will they stay and will the platform survive over time? Verdict is still out on that one.
As far as Twitter goes, it is what it is and it's not my cup of tea. But some people still seem to like it, and I don't see the ones that do moving over to Threads if Threads starts to be a ghost town after a while. We've seen this before with other platforms that launched, got a lot of hype, then died off slowly as usage dwindled. I wouldn't write Twitter off just yet.
I've been reading the comments here and some of the conversations on Notes the last few days and I've come to the conclusion that Threads has been a blessing. I sort of took Notes for granted before. Having played around on Threads, I’m more convinced than ever that Substack is doing something unique and profound.
I was never a Twitter user, but I got really into Instagram when it first launched on Android in 2012ish. Long story short, I gained a few thousand followers, which is nothing in the grand scheme, but for a 25 year old who couldn't get it together long enough to write more than a caption, it was a huge motivator. That experience both lifted me up as an artist and, later, destroyed my creative confidence for years.
Not because it went poorly, but because it went well. Every social media space has a vibe, and IG, especially early on, was sickly sweet. Whatever one did was met with praise.
I enjoyed snapping photos and writing up little stories to go with it. I called them storygrams. Example: https://www.instagram.com/p/PIYVKmDptd/?img_index=1
While they were creatively fulfilling, I began to find answering comments anxiety-inducing. Within a year, I stopped wanting to post because I’d have to answer 20 or 30 comments, which would take up an hour or two of my time. Also, the meaning dissipated from the effort.
By the end of my time on IG, I would create something I found no meaning in and be met with instant and unrelenting praise. That feedback loop completely disillusioned me for years.
There's lots of talk about how social media influences communication, but less so on how it influences creativity and art. Maybe it’s implied, but I view the creative mindset as different than, say, tweeting about politics or snapping a photo of brunch and writing “Breakfast with Bae.”
I can only talk about my own experiences here. Most of what I would call “the creative work” I’ve actually finished has been done because of a social platform I was using at the time. And I consciously adapted the creative work for the platform.
For example, I wrote little stories on Instagram along with a photo because that’s what the platform demanded. On Substack, I write long-form pieces because the audience is here to read them. Once I learned Substack had a burgeoning video feature, it influenced my decision to try to create videos for the written memoirs.
This might not even be a novel idea at all. Maybe the artist always starts with the platform — with the space an audience will congregate?
Either way, older platforms — magazines, zines, newspapers — had a person at the helm. Algorithms are the gatekeepers of today and, most likely, tomorrow.
So, if Substack did add vertical 60 second video, I’d use it differently than YouTube Shorts, Reels, or TikTok because this platform and its algorithm demands a different input from their artists.
TLDR; If I had to boil all this down to a question for Mills, it would be something to the effect of: Do you think about how the platforms you work on effect the output of the artists who use it? Does creative work you experience on the platform ever push your designs into new directions?
Sucks to be you
I am utterly clueless as to design, threads etc. Just came here to say OH MY GOD that Martha Stewart profile !!!
I read it when it came out and I still think about the line I used for a title weekly lmfao.
What did you love about working at Quora? Any elements of that platform that you'd like to see added to the Substack platform?
I loved the people, the mission, the culture, and the platform (often; not always)!!! Very fun place to work and made some of the best friends of my life there. I think Quora was extremely good at giving people reasons to write, building writing habits, informing people what others wanted them to write about, and distributing older content to people who found it valuable / interesting (freeing authors from the treadmill a bit). All of that would be great for Substack!