With countless users jumping off the Twitter train since Elon Musk took over, and millions more expected to leave in the coming year, alternatives to the platform were bound to emerge. Now a bold new competitor has arrived, and it comes from the email subscription platform Substack.
The publishing platform announced a new Notes feature today. It closely resembles Twitter in its design, and, much like “tweeting,” allows users to share posts, images, and ideas. It also has a “restack” feature that allows for easily resharing of posts, the same as a retweet. It keeps count of “likes” and comments too.
There is one major difference between Substack Notes and Twitter, though. Notes runs entirely on user subscriptions rather than ads. In keeping with Substack’s blueprint, creators can still capitalize on those subscriptions payouts. “The lifeblood of an ad-based social media feed is attention,” Substack explained in a blog post. “By contrast, the lifeblood of a subscription network is the money paid to people who are doing great work within it.”
The post continued, explaining that the goal of Twitter’s new competitor is “to convert casual readers into paying subscribers.” That makes this social media network utterly unique. “In this system, the vast majority of the financial rewards go to the creators of the content,” explained the post, which was written by Substack cofounders Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, and Jairaj Sethi.
Notes isn’t the first big move that Substack has made recently. It added a chat feature last year and called out Twitter’s downward spiral when announcing it. With social media users still hoping for more opportunities to engage with content on a larger scale, but with far less tolerance for hate speech and misinformation, Notes could fill that space.
Still, Substack says not to expect a “perfectly sanitized information environment” from the platform. Clearly, it’s planning to allow for discourse, creativity, and all the components that make for intriguing content.
A week ago, Substack opened up a community fundraising round, which allowed creators to invest in the company. At present, there are $7.2 million in pledges.
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