Homogeneity of style: A Substack newsletter can have an About page, but that’s it. There will never be anything like Nadia’s notes which are a regularly updated half-baked stream of consciousness, or Guzey’s list of Tweets or even Nintil’s categories.
The role of curation has been eliminated as the majority of value is captured by the platforms so it is no longer economically viable. With fewer and weaker intermediaries, we also reduce the amount of independent points of views or windows to the world.
Curation as the internet matured was seen as something in the shape of “directories” or “algorithm based feeds” all which end up being gamified, and in these cases the removals of friction tend to lead to the ultimate destruction of the inherent utility of these aggregations in the first place. Curation can be viewed as necessary friction that is n... See more
The number of people who are willing to start something is MUCH smaller than the number of people willing to contribute once someone else starts something.
You may have noticed that the credit card number has moved from the front to the back of the card. This makes it easier for users to share photos of their cards on social media as an additional signaling distribution channel.