The obvious objection is that Twitter also has public follower counts but still manages to host vibrant subcultures.

In financial terms, blog posts have asymmetric returns with capped downside but unlimited upside. If you write a bad post it won’t get shared and no one will see it. If you write a great post and it goes viral, everyone on the internet thinks you’re a genius. Since content is shared organically, your best work gets way more exposure than your... See more

RSS is a civilized way of following updates from disparate sites you like, aggregating them in one central place that's separate from the mailbox where they can be saved to be read later, organized by source if need be. Newsletters —stuff that hits your inbox— strike me as barbaric.

Isn’t this normal? After all, no writer can be expected to cover every topic. In an age of disaggregation, we should read from experts instead of casual polymaths.

Nintil is not written for an audience I carefully cultivate. If you like Nintil you are free enjoy it (no paywalls here) and if you don't you can read something else. Because of that, I don't have a pressure to keep writing blogposts all the time, or feel the urge to squeeze a post out of the random daily occurrence just to be able to push the... See more

It’s better for authors to think persistently and write occasionally than the other way around.

If this all sounds overly theoretical and not at all applicable to your lived experience, then fine. But how often have you gone back to read an old edition of your favorite newsletter? Why bother when you’ll have a new one tomorrow?

The difference is that status on Twiter comes from who follows, likes and retweets you, not just how many of them there are