With This Piece of News In, the Newsletter Hype Is Finally Over
Twitter shut down its newsletter wing and a direct Substack competitor, Revue.
Introduction
On November 19, I published this article in The Writing Cooperative: Substack CEO on the Newsletter Economy.
In a post by the Substack CEO, he refrained from terming what’s going on as ‘the newsletter economy.’ On reading it, I can’t help but agree with almost everything he had to say.
There was a time when everyone was thinking the old-school newsletter and email is going to be the next big thing for the second time. Though email enjoyed (and continues to enjoy) its fair share of popularity, newsletters and newsletter provider services apparently don’t.
It’s no wonder why billion-dollar companies like Facebook and Twitter jumped into the game of thrones for the newsletter empire.
The News
Facebook’s Bulletin will take its last breath in March next year.
Twitter’s Revue is no more.
Though I had never heard of Facebook’s Bulletin until they announced its departure, I wouldn’t deny that I had high expectations from Revue.
I have a newsletter that is hosted on Substack (thank god!). But my first thought was not Substack. Guess what, it was Revue!
I thought it’d have a whale of a time after it got integrated into Twitter. I will never know why it didn’t hit the jackpot.
This integration made it effortless to subscribe to a newsletter. Just a press of a button will do the job. There’s no need to go to any external website. It could have been its moat and USP but sadly it wasn’t.
On the other hand, Substack kept innovating and added a ton of useful features. Features that were not made for sales or increasing subscriptions at the cost of writers’ and readers’ experience.
Closing thoughts
So, yes, this gold rush is finally over with big corporations going majorly empty-handed.
Platforms like Substack and ConvertKit are still going strong. The reason can be the fact that they are passionate about what they are doing and not just targeted at the money dividend factor.
No matter how big the company is or if it has got a billion dollars to fund a project, it will always be out ruled by a group of people who are passionate about the cause. Especially in the field of tech.
With this, the chapter of ‘the newsletter hype’ is finally over. What is left is reality. All the hype has already burned down to ashes. Now I see why CEO of Substack doesn’t want to call it ‘the newsletter economy.’
“The trend that Substack is part of is not a newsletter trend, or even the much-hyped creator economy. We are part of a seismic shift in the media economy that is all about writer and creator ownership and independence.” —Hamish McKenzie, CEO at Substack
P.S. Newsletter hype is over, not the whole newsletter ecosystem itself. It’s still one of the most information-dense and highly personal sources of getting to know your favourite creators.
