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Substack now lets writers paywall their 'Chat' discussion spaces | TechCrunch

May 1, 2024 10:21 PM0


Substack is launching the ability for writers to paywall their entire Chat or specific threads to paid or founding members only, the company announced on Wednesday. The rollout of the new feature comes 18 months after Substack launched Chat as a way for writers to communicate directly with their loyal readers.

The company believes paywalled Chats will help keep conversations intimate and free of trolls, while also acting as a paid perk for readers. Substack says its data shows that active Chat participants are 12% more likely to retain their subscriptions.

Writers can choose to paywall a whole Chat or individual Chat threads. Once a writer paywalls their Chat, free subscribers and non-subscribers will be prompted to upgrade to view the Chat.

Image Credits: Substack

Substack is also upgrading the Chat interface to make it easier to navigate large groups. The company is launching the ability to search Chats to make it easier for people to find old threads. Plus, it’s introducing thread notifications and new reply badges to ensure people don’t lose their place in a conversation. Substack is also upgrading its back-end systems to load new Chats and replies in real-time, making it easier to stay up-to-date on conversations when discussing live matters.

When Substack first launched Chat, the company hoped to capitalize on Twitter’s upheaval in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover. Substack still sees Chat as a viable alternative to Twitter (now X), as it noted in its latest blog post that “many readers prefer the simplicity of Substack Chat to other platforms.” The company then highlighted a comment from a paid subscriber saying chat is a good substitute for X.

Chat isn’t the only Substack feature looking to take on X, as the company introduced a Twitter-like “Notes” feature a year ago. The Notes feature lets users share posts, quotes, comments, images, videos, and more in a Tweet-like format. The short-form content is displayed in a dedicated Twitter-like feed.

Substack’s Notes feature is getting more Twitter-like capabilities


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Substack rival Ghost confirms it will join the fediverse in 2024 | TechCrunch

April 23, 2024 12:22 AM0


Ghost, an open-source rival to Substack’s newsletter platform, has confirmed it will this year officially join the fediverse — or the open social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and, more recently, Instagram Threads, among others. Last week, the company teased its plans by surveying its users about how they may want federation to work.

Founder John O’Nolan had explained in a post on Threads that there are many potential ways that Ghost could leverage federation in its software, but wanted to know how users would expect things to work.

According to some replies, the hope was that Ghost’s blog and newsletter authors would become fediverse accounts, while each of their posts would be federated to the fediverse. This would allow users to follow Ghost’s authors from their preferred app, as well as like and reply to their posts from the fediverse. These replies could then be posted back on the author’s site as a blog comment. Ghost said it expects to add tens of millions of users to the fediverse when integration is completed. In total, the fediverse is expected to reach 170 to 200 million users by this summer, when including Instagram Threads in the total.

This setup is similar to how WordPress federated with ActivityPub, the protocol powering the fediverse, after acquiring an ActivityPub blog plug-in. When enabled, WordPress blogs can be followed by people on apps like Mastodon and others in the fediverse and then receive replies as comments on their own sites.

Ghost’s announcement last week set off a flurry of activity, including outreach from Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput who offered to help out with the ActivityPub integration.

On Monday, Ghost officially confirmed its plans to federate its service in 2024 and detailed how it would work.

The company explained that Ghost publishers would “soon” be able to follow, like, and interact with one another in the same way as they normally would on a social network, but from their own website. Plus, they’ll be able to follow, like, and interact with users on other federated services like Mastodon, Threads, Flipboard, Buttondown, WriteFreely, WordPress, PeerTube, Pixelfed, and others.

Meanwhile, an ActivityPub-powered feed will be built into Ghost so users can follow the people, publications, and topics of interest to them from around the web. They’ll also be able to subscribe to these sites via ActivityPub, in addition to RSS. And when Ghosts’ authors publish, their posts will appear on networks like Mastodon and others.

Ghost’s announcement detailed the benefits of an ActivityPub integration, noting that each platform could design how it wants to present its content while still being compatible with other services. Readers will also have more choices in how they want to subscribe to an author’s content — via email subscriptions, RSS, or ActivityPub. Gated access for sites with paid subscriptions can also be managed through ActivityPub, but Ghost hasn’t yet shared exactly how this aspect would work, only that it will do its best to “create a seamless experience.”

“And, because this technology is all open, you remain in full control of your subscribers,” the blog post states. “When you publish a new piece online, your distribution comes from your own website rather than needing to depend on third parties.”

Ghost has generated increased interest in recent months as more high-profile authors have made the switch.

Notably, Casey Newton, formerly of The Verge, left Substack and migrated to Ghost instead over concerns about how Substack moderated — or rather didn’t moderate — some of the content on its platform. Garbage Day left as well. Other popular publishers include 404 Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever, and Tangle, to name a few.


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Substack now allows podcasters to sync and distribute their episodes to Spotify | TechCrunch

April 21, 2024 12:01 AM0


Substack announced on Thursday it’s introducing a few new features for podcasters on its platform. Most notably, the company is rolling out a Spotify integration that will allow podcasters on Substack to sync and distribute all of their free and paid episodes to Spotify’s streaming service. In addition, Substack is introducing new custom audio transcripts and captions, along with improvements to clip sharing and mobile video.

The launch of the new features comes as Substack has announced that podcasters on Substack are collectively earning more than $100 million in annual revenue and that this number has more than doubled in the past year. The number of active podcasters on the platform has also more than doubled in the same period.

The new integration with Spotify will make Substack podcasts discoverable via the streaming service, making it easier for podcasters to reach more listeners. Plus, the integration will allow Substack podcasters’ existing subscribers to listen to paid episodes on Spotify. Substack says the integration with Spotify has the potential to help podcasters earn more, as free listeners will be nudged to upgrade to a subscription.

Podcasters on Substack can set up a Spotify integration by going into their podcast settings, opening the Spotify dropdown and clicking the “Sync to Spotify” option to create a new feed with all current and future episodes. Paid episodes are labeled with a padlock, and listeners need to link their Substack account to Spotify to listen to paid episodes directly on the streaming service.

Image Credits: Substack

Creators can go to their Spotify for Podcasters account to see data about streams, unique listeners, playtime, demographics and more. Substack plans to make this data accessible via a creator’s Substack podcast stats page in the future.

As for the new custom audio transcripts and captions, podcasters can now upload their own transcript instead of using Substack’s automatically generated one, if they choose. Video podcasters can also opt to upload a separate audio track and free preview to distribute to podcast RSS feeds instead of using the default one extracted from the uploaded video.

Plus, podcasters and their listeners can now share a link to a podcast video at a specific timestamp or download a clip to post on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and X.

Substack says it’s making it easier to watch video podcasts on mobile, as video posts on iOS and Android now feature an inline player. This new capability lets users read and watch at the same time, while also keeping their place in a video they watched partway to revisit it at a later time.

The new features are available to all users starting today.

Substack now lets writers curate a ‘network’ of recommended publications for their subscribers


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Substack’s Notes feature is getting more Twitter-like capabilities | TechCrunch

April 16, 2024 8:37 PM0


Substack is adding new capabilities to its Twitter-like Notes feature that bring it more in-line with the social network now known as X. The company announced on Tuesday that users can now post videos directly to Notes in the Substack app and on the web. Users can now also embed Notes on external webpages.

The launch of the new features come a year after Substack introduced Notes in April 2023, during a time when companies were aiming to attract users who were fleeing Twitter after Elon Musk took the reigns of the social network in late 2022. Notes let users share posts, quotes, comments, images, links and ideas in a Tweet-like format, The short-form content is displayed in a dedicated Twitter-like feed.

Starting today, users can post videos directly to Notes by recording a video or selecting one from their phone’s camera roll or their desktop. The company says more writers and creators are using its video tools and starting new shows on the platform, so it wants to make it possible for them to share their work on Notes, too. Given that apps like X and Meta’s Threads allow users to post videos, it makes sense for Notes to offer the capability as well.

As for embedding Notes on external pages, Substack says the new capability will allow writers’ content to travel widely across the web beyond Substack. In an example given by Substack, a writer’s Note could be embedded into a news article, which happens with X posts quite often. Users can find a Note’s embed code by clicking on the three-dot menu in the top right corner and selecting the “embed note” option.

Substack announced on Tuesday that Notes has generated more than 3,000 paid subscriptions and 230,000 free subscriptions for writers and creators on Substack in the past 30 days. In its blog post, Substack explains that Notes is especially valuable for users who don’t have large pre-existing audiences.

The company saw an opportunity to capitalize on the chaos at Twitter as soon as it began. In October 2022, Substack took a direct shot at Twitter and warned in a post  that: “Twitter is changing, and it’s tough to predict what might be next.” The post had encouraged creators of all sorts to port their Twitter follower base to Substack. Substack then took its ambitions further with the launch of a Chat feature, and then later, Notes.

As Substack continues to build out its Twitter-like product, X is spiraling further into disarray, as the company announced on Monday that it plans to charge new users a small fee before they are allowed to post on the social network, in an effort to curb the platform’s bot problem.

Substack now allows podcasters to sync and distribute their episodes to Spotify


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Open source Substack rival Ghost may join the fediverse | TechCrunch

April 16, 2024 3:17 AM0


Ghost, the open source alternative to Substack’s newsletter platform, is considering joining the fediverse, the social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and, more recently, Instagram Threads, among others. According to a post from Ghost founder John O’Nolan, the company — which is structured as a nonprofit — is considering federating Ghost over ActivityPub, the social networking protocol that powers the fediverse.

O’Nolan said that the most requested feature over the past few years has been to federate his software. “It seems like there are many potential ways to do it. Curious to hear how you would want it to work?” he asked in a post on Threads, which was syndicated to Mastodon via Threads’ own integration with ActivityPub.

The survey asks users if they use any ActivityPub platforms like Mastodon or Threads, and how they would expect ActivityPub functionality to work in Ghost, if it were to be added. It also asks how federation would personally benefit Ghost users. It invites survey respondents to optionally provide an email address if they want to be contacted for more input in the future, as well.

Image Credits: Ghost

While the launch of a survey isn’t necessarily a commitment to federating Ghost, it is another signal pointing to the broader reshaping of the web that’s now underway.

Following Twitter’s acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk, online users have experienced the downsides of putting their trust in centralized platforms: With a shift in ownership, Twitter was overhauled to be a different type of platform called X, with revised ethics and long-term ambitions. (Musk wants X to be an “everything” app for transactions, creator content, video, shopping and more and takes a more hands-off role in terms of content moderation.)

For those unhappy with Musk’s changes, having a portable social networking identity suddenly seemed like an idea that had more value. That is, if you don’t like the way your Mastodon server (or other federated service) is run, you can pick up your profile and move it elsewhere, followers in tow.

With Ghost, however, the idea could be to federate the accounts of the writers who use Ghost to publish their content. Their posts, which would also be published on the web and to their newsletter subscribers, could also exist in the fediverse, where others could read, like and reply to the post from their preferred app. These replies could also potentially syndicate back to Ghost, where they could exist as comments.

Assuming Ghost went this route, it would be similar to how WordPress federated with ActivityPub after the acquisition of an ActivityPub blog plug-in. When enabled, WordPress blogs can be followed by people on apps like Mastodon and others in the fediverse and then receive replies as comments on their own sites.

After seeing O’Nolan’s post, Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput reached out to help with the ActivityPub integration, which O’Nolan accepted.

Ghost has gained attention as a Substack rival in recent months for the same reason that some have fled X: People disagree about how platforms should be moderated. Substack has taken to promoting free speech, as Musk does on X, but that’s also led to the platform being used by pro-Nazi publications, as detailed by The Atlantic late last year.

As a result, one of Substack’s more high-profile writers, Casey Newton, formerly of The Verge, left Substack and migrated to Ghost instead.

“I’m not aware of any major U.S. consumer internet platform that does not explicitly ban praise for Nazi hate speech, much less one that welcomes them to set up shop and start selling subscriptions,” Newton wrote at the time.

In addition to Newton, other notable Ghost users include 404 Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever and Tangle, to name a few.

Today, Ghost has been installed over 3 million times, which would make for a healthy addition to the wider fediverse and its roughly 13+ million total users, around 1.5 million of which are active monthly. (This figure doesn’t include Threads’ 130+ million monthly active users as it’s not fully integrated with ActivityPub as of yet.)

How Twitter’s descent into chaos is paving the way for a new web


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