A popular sentiment on HN is "don't make an app when you can just have a web page". Reading articles is an an almost perfect fit for the web. What are your reasons for having an app?
Reading articles may be an almost perfect fit for web, but we see a really clear pattern among the 70% of our users that read in mobile: they discover stuff to read on the web through links that get shared, but once they sign up they overwhelmingly read in their email client.
Email is actually pretty great for this, and email is especially powerful for giving writers direct connection to their readers. But there are limits to what you can do there, and stuff like community discussion, audio and video, and even 'not accidentally going to the promotions tab' can get a big upgrade.
Somewhat related: developing for email is still a pretty big pain. It's kinda like the bad old days when you had to support IE6 - lots of people still use old versions of outlook or whatever.
> developing for email is still a pretty big pain.
I hear you, it's a shit show! I'm gonna have to do that myself soon and I don't look forward to it.
> But there are limits to what you can do [in email]
But email will still be a very common entry point for readers (unless you expect to change the behavior of your users), so you still need to link to the app or website from the email.
As a user I don't mind an app from a technical perspective. It gives me more options! But what are the things the app can do that the web cannot?
> But what are the things the app can do that the web cannot?
As a subscriber to many Substack newsletters with different publishing schedules, I've found it to be a bit tedious and distracting to have my email inbox be inundated with new posts. I'd rather go to a reader app that has all the newsletters I've subscribed to in one place for when I have the time and the interest to spend a couple of hours reading. I'd like for the app to just send me a reminder once a week with who published what so that I can decide if I want to go to the reader app and peruse at my leisure.
As a writer on Substack I've found that readers like to reply directly to the emails they receive instead of leaving a comment on the web version so that others could see it and perhaps react/interact with it. If the app could help harness a community for the writers by making it more comfortable for readers to like and leave comments, then that would be beneficial in building a brand. Additionally, if the app has a mechanism to recommend Substack newsletters that are similar to the one a particular reader is reading then that would help expand the reach/discoverability of lesser known writers.
Sounds like you need to set up a quick filter that moves these interesting but low urgency items into a "Read it Later" folder.
This is one of my favourite thins about email, it is a way to deliver something to me, but imposes no limitations on my workflow. I can customize however I want.
This is one reason I would never use a substack app. I don't want a different app for substack, medium, WordPress, blogger and have to check them all and learn their imposed workflows. I just want everything sent to my email then I can use the workflow that I want for all of the content.
So you want an aggregate newsletter with the top posts of the last X days in your email and then a link to substack? What part of that experience isn't possible on the web?
Yes, I'd like an aggregate email notification, sent no more than once a week, containing only the titles of recent posts of all the newsletters I subscribe to that will allow me to go to one place, like an app, where I can read all these articles at once rather than piecemeal. Prior to the app, the only way to get notified of a new post was to get an email from the newsletter, which as I mentioned can start to become pretty tedious because of the constant stream of emails. Alternatively, one could bookmark all the newsletters one subscribes to on a web browser and keep checking them, which is also quite tedious. A reader app is a better solution.
> As a user I don't mind an app from a technical perspective. It gives me more options! But what are the things the app can do that the web cannot?
A simple but important one: being able to get a notification on your phone when a new post lands in your inbox. There are lots of subtle little things around readability, scroll performance, etc. too. There are also a decent number of Podcasts on Substack now, and listening in a web player (on mobile) is a pretty sub-par experience.
App notifications are not a feature but a detrimental annoyance.
Also useless, because it is very likely you cannot read the article at the moment you receive the notification, because you are busy.
I don't know what Substack is, but it seems similar to Medium, and as such an app is unnecessary. You don't need apps to display and read text, I already have a web browser. Distraction-free reading? Just make sure your pages are compatible with Reader View, or better yet, make a distraction free design in the first place.
Can you elaborate on what “scroll performance” means? The only time I’ve had trouble with scrolling when I’m reading something on my phone is when an app or website thinks they know how to scroll better than the OS does.
I'm not sure how they meant it in this particular context but IMO good scroll performance with a lot of media on the page can be quite tricky to do on the web and a bit easier on iOS. This might be better these days than it was when I last did web dev (3+ years ago).
I turn off gmail notifications. I suppose some of their readers might want to know when the Substacks they subscribe to have new content but don't want to know when they're getting new spam.
By "read in their email client" (presumably on mobile) I will assume that people view but do not read. Attention spans on mobile are atrocious (notably, the fulcrum is screen size having a neurological impact on ability to pay attention - this is a biological fact) – very little real reading takes place.
I can imagine Substack is more of an "aspires to read X" platform than a place for actually reading X. This argument is anecdotally supported by the sensationalism of popular pieces I see go viral, the payment system (it is always easier to quickly monetize aspiration than behavior), and its reliance on growth through virtue-signaling (eg twitter).
This is a huge assumption. I do almost all of my reading in my email client (mostly RSS to email that gets sorted into a Reading folder). Whenever I have some downtime I slowly read through the articles that have accumulated. I have no problem finishing long articles or anything else.
> Attention spans on mobile are atrocious (notably, the fulcrum is screen size having a neurological impact on ability to pay attention - this is a biological fact) – very little real reading takes place.
If you have any further reading on this please share.
n=1 with exception for scientific papers I do essentially all my reading on my phone and I do not experience any attention difference. I also have my phone on perpetual DnD so notifications and other distractions are not a thing.
Not affiliated with Substack, but this doesn’t feel like a fair assessment. For me, email is the best way to consume curated content that I don’t get distracted. Often, like with Matt Levine, it’s a way around a paywall and obnoxious sites.
> " aspires to read X platform then a place for actually reading X "
This assumes this is goal for Substack founders and leadership. The null hypothesis absence of other evidence, is that the goal is active reader/subscriber growth
While I agree with the overall message of web over app (and have bugged some of my colleagues for going "App First", locking themselves into particular ecosystems before gaining audience), for consuming content, there are benefits to Apps, when done properly .
Most pertinently, offline content - I will always use Prime/Netflix/Disney in app form rather than Web form.
Offering an app as an option is a brilliant way to meet everybody's needs.
(nagging/pushing an app and deprecating web, however, is devil's work:)
"Popular on HN" and "Conducive to a profitable business" are nearly disjoint sets.
One of the main products at my job is a new site that we've spent a lot of time making performant and readable but we're still building an app experience because we want to meet our users (particularly affluent users) where they are.
I am a subscriber to 4 paid and a few other free substacks. One thing I like about the app is that often gmail was forwarding the Substack emails to promotion or spam folder. Having an app is better with push notifications.
I think there are browser extensions (including for iOS, since it now supports them) that will redirect all reddit links to avoid these annoying nag bars
