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251 sats \ 18 replies \ @SimpleStacker 7 Aug \ on: Growing Stacker News From The Bottom Uprising meta
My take on SN is that it's most valuable commodity is the technology platform enabling a P2P versions of Substack. It's already 80% of the way there.
For the remaining 20%, I think it needs to implement custom domains and user controlled paywalls. I'm sure I'm missing other stuff too, but those are the two that jump out.
I'd probably recommend that they spin off another brand, like Stacker Pages, since "stacker.news" doesn't sound like a blog platform. 30% sybill fees would have be removed for P2P zaps on Substack like pages. SN could generate revenue off hosting fees, probably.
I think as a message board, the growth potential is limited. I just don't think there is that much demand for text based message platforms. SN is already about as active as a fairly active subreddit, which I think is about the maximum potential that can currently be achieved in its current iteration.
Do you see substack lacking p2p functionality as its main problem, if in fact you see substack as having any problems?
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As someone who likes writing about technical topics, a huge drawback of Substack is that it doesn't support native Markdown (last I checked anyway), which is a bit crazy to me.
SN's markdown functionality is sophisticated and advanced, allowing for easy embedding of media and equations and tables, which is great for technical writers. It's definitely an advantage they'd have over Substack right out of the gate.
Beyond that, I've never used Substack---precisely because of the lack of Markdown support---so I can't evaluate its other functionality. But in my experience, platforms like Wordpress make content management really slow and cumbersome. Since everything in SN is native markdown, management is actually quite easier, so I imagine that SN could have an advantage in its UI/UX as well.
Lastly, "Stacker Pages" could allow users to automatically crosspost their substack like articles to stacker.news, so you'd have a built in audience right away, known for their generosity in zapping.
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I guess it's perspective. This is off topic, but I didn't know what markdown was until finding SN. I love it now. I have a hunch most writers outside the technical field may not be used to markdown. That's beside the point if your vision of SN is a place for technical writing. I was thinking its use case was more broad when I posted.
BTW, I see your point about the name - stacker news
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When I began here a year ago, I even didn't know what 'Markdown' stood for. But I learnt along the way and I don't think it's too technical because of I can learn anyone can.
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I think that would be its most competitive advantage to start with (along with P2P).
It would probably have to broaden its interface to accommodate non-technical people, but that being said Markdown isn't too difficult to learn. (Reddit also uses native markdown, it just has more formatting buttons for bold, italics, links, etc.)
I definitely would envision it as a platform for broad topics for people who want native Bitcoin P2P support, and not want to limit it to technical topics.
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I didn't mean to say it is difficult to learn. I agree it's great. I'm just guessing a huge percentage of writers don't even know it exists, so having it wouldn't be a big competitive advantage over sub stack.
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I guess instead of competitive advantage, I meant more like "market niche." I don't think you can expect to compete with Substack directly at first, so you have to offer something different that attracts a group of users, and I thought Markdown support could be one of those things.
I think it could be attractive to the bitcoin community since there's a high proportion of devs, and markdown is the native language of all writing input on GitHub
But definitely, in the long run, it'll be P2P bitcoin that would mark it out as substantially different from Substack
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Regarding your earlier point about SN being as big as we can get... I remember there was literally no sports discussion here before @grayruby arrived. He single handedly created all the alpha that now constitutes the most successful territory here. I can't help but think that can be replicated.
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I think that would be great. And by the way, I think the substack idea is pretty consistent with what you're thinking. Especially custom domains and customized landing pages for territories will let SN users create communities tailored to specific interests that attract people from across the internet without them even knowing at first what lightning and zaps are about.
I also only discovered what markdown was when I started using SN this year. And about the name, I have to agree that it could be more in line with the proposal, since we have few news here that are not links from other platforms.
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