Why we built a social network
Notes from my speech about Notes
On Wednesday night, we hosted a small event at Substack’s New York office to demonstrate the value of Notes.
We’ve just moved into this office in NoMad after a couple years in a more boutique spot five blocks north, so it was a good test of the shiny new space. It held up! More than a hundred Substack bestsellers filled the room.
I kicked off the evening with remarks about what Notes is for and why we built it. (In short: to give power to creators and consumers.) Below is the slightly edited transcript of that speech—with ums, ahs, and ramblings conveniently elided—so you can get a sense of why Substack is, somewhat counterintuitively, building the very thing it was designed to challenge: social media.
Thanks to
for providing the basis of this transcript in his review of the event, which you can also read below (and ignore the stupid photo of me mugging, which, Jason, I had assumed was for private use!):
“We get a lot of questions and concerns from people who are confused as to why Substack is becoming more like a social network, when we are supposed to be almost the opposite. So let me explain.
The way most writers and creators build their audiences and revenue—with some exceptions, and congratulations to those who don’t—is by going on social media to try to get exposure.
The problem is, those other social apps don’t really care about writers and creators. Their interests lie in creating a big, closed garden where you’re not in control—where you don’t own your audience, your relationships, or even your content.
So we wanted to create another option. Not necessarily a replacement, but a place to have your work discovered and talked about while still being in control. A place where you own your audience relationships, you own your content, and you have the freedom to leave whenever you want.
Social networks have gone in a strange direction. They’re designed to keep you trapped in an endless scroll because that’s what their business model requires. They need you to never leave the app. They don’t want you to go find a long-form story or build trust with a writer. They just want you to keep scrolling.
That’s a terrible direction for culture and media. Many of these platforms could even replaced real writers with AI bots and they would be happy about it. They deserve to be challenged—and our way of doing that is to build a system that connects real people with each other, not just with “content.”
We want you to grow. We want you to reach as many people as possible, influence as many people as possible, and make as much money as possible. And we’ve built our business model around that—we only make money when you make money. You have the right and ability to leave any time you want.
So we’re building a social layer that helps you do that—discovery, discussion, connection—but one that works in service of writers and readers. A network that gives creators power and gives consumers the ability to vote for the culture they want to support by voting with their dollars.
You might remember when social media actually felt fun. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram—those early days were exciting, even wholesome. But as the business models evolved, they prioritised engagement over humanity. The game became: maximise addiction, not connection.
Substack’s version of a social network is an experiment in reversing that—in giving power back to writers and readers. We’ve designed a system that rewards deep relationships rather than fleeting attention.
And it’s working. In the last three months, the Substack app has driven over 32 million free subscriptions and nearly half a million paid subscriptions.
Subscribers using the Substack app are seven times more likely to share, like, comment, or re-stack your work.
The app is now the top source of subscriber and revenue growth for Substack publishers—even higher than recommendations.
As of eight months ago, more than a million posts are discovered every day through the app.
It’s still small compared to the big networks, but it has one huge advantage: the others are shrinking—and, frankly, shit—while this is growing, and it’s good.
So that’s the story of Notes, the story of the app, and where it’s headed.”
[Wild applause, flowers thrown on stage, McKenzie escorted from stage on a human chariot]
Can we please have Notes scheduling?
I understand how notes can be used to talk about and promote authors. But I don’t see how it won’t turn into a twitter shit show. Your algorithm seems to already recommend the most “engaging” content, the most pithy, thoughtless, clickbait, anger-inducing notes, just like twitter, and the quality keeps dropping month over month. I see terrible notes from people who have never written an article suggested over notes from people I actually follow and who create content. How is that promoting authors? You have no moderation, which is fine, but you also have no karma system, no way to truly prevent people being an abusive and threatening to others or incentivise them to not ruin the place for everyone else.
I want to believe in your strategy but every time I hear you talk about it, I think you’re just being incredibly naive. I think much of the reason notes isn’t as bad as twitter yet is that there’s not a big enough network effect here yet. But people are increasingly coming here not to create content but just to spread low-quality hateful blather that makes it an increasingly unpleasant place to be.
You need a strategy to make notes actually get better instead of increasingly worse, which I’m shocked you don’t see is happening. It’s obvious to your users, which is why you keep having to defend notes. Perhaps the decay is slow enough that you’re just not noticing.
What’s your strategy? I don’t buy your explanation here. I want to but I don’t. :)