Dirt: Are we post-platform?

In its early days, Substack primarily catered to a certain set of internet-savvy writers and journalists, lured by the promise of monetizing a direct relationship with their readers. But as it morphs from a niche publishing concern into a heavyweight start-up mentioned in the same breath as Twitter and Facebook, its user base is proliferating accor... See more

With this in mind, as with every platform, there exists a constant tension between value creation and value extraction. Substack is no exception to this. Virtually all the large platforms of today started off by initially focusing on value creation for their users and enabling them to succeed. Once users were successful and dependent on the platfor... See more