So I'm just a simple country lad who doesn't understand the big silicon valley city, but I really don't get svbtle. This is coming from someone who is (I imagine) part of 'the masses' who has been linked posts from there but otherwise has no involvement.
It's.. a curated collection of blogs? Why can't you just have a blog? I've probably been linked a dozen or so blogs inside that network (always from HN, I've never noticed traction anywhere else), but at no point has there been any cross promotion, so the fact that it was inside svbtle barely seemed to matter.
On 'barely': so far the fast majority of posts that have come out of svbtle have not actually been very good, and the curated 'we are the cream of the internet crop' pretentious feeling you get is not that positive.
Basicially, for me, a blog being inside svbtle seems to have negligible effect, and that effect is a negative one.
Even worse, it's a curated collection of blogs...that all look the same!
Dave McClure posted a really thoughtful post about late bloomers recently, and the general reaction was "Wait...Dave McClure wrote that?" Yeah, you can't tell, because his blog looks exactly like 20+ other ones! This is the same pet peeve I had with WPTouch...everything looks the same and it destroys branding. (Not hoity-toity Fortune 500 company "branding"--just your picture on the blog, or something that indicates your blog is written by, you know, you, and not some anonymous random person. Especially when you are Dave McClure.)
To add a constructive point to this: http://jobs.problogger.net/ is a way, WAY better place to hire writers than a Hacker News post. We posted a job opening for some writers on there and got back some amazing resumes, including people who had media credentials galore and who had written for top newspapers and magazines. This seems like it'd be right up Svbtle's alley.
I agree, something about it is pretentious. The title of svbtle.com is 'Svbtle : The essence of blogging' which reminds me of that advert in Zoolander where Derrick is advertising some sort of male facecream.
I actually came here to post the exact opposite comment. I love all of the writers on svbtle, especially the ones that are linked often on HN (dcurtis, caldwell, etc), and I love the design.
Why are there so many people here on HN to reflexively find Svtble pretentious and whatever similar adjectives they use??
When it was first shown, there was a common feeling in the posts of not being picked by a kid at school to play in the lunch time soccer team. :P
The internet, and I guess I'll say life in general, needs more curation and less dumping. We speak of design and other wonderful things yet we encourage mindless undesign dribble in apparent content creation, relationships and other ways—it strikes of me being partial whores.
When I read this, I see my old YC2010 startup NewsLabs/NewsTilt. I maintain that was a good idea, but I wasn't the one to do it. My lessons are at http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down, and it looks like Dustin has a handle on most of it.
Dustin has a lot that we didn't - a good sense of design, a large following, writers already contributing, and from the look of this, some cash. We had writers too, but they were checking out the latest fad, not actually writing for their own purposes. We didnt have the followers/brand awareness to bootstrap traffic - I think svbtle does.
I think he's doing some of the things which for us were mistakes, but they might not be in the context of svbtle. For example, we also made our own CMS instead of using wordpress. That was definitely a mistake for us, but I'm not convinced it is here - could go either way.
He's making the branding all about svbtle instead of about the journalist. That was definitely a mistake for us, again I'm not positive it is a mistake here - svbtle actually has a brand (even if some people think its a pretentious one).
He's making it about journalism instead of about blogging. I think that's a mistake. Journalism is a horrible niche to be in and I would hate to be a journalist. It has expectation of journalistic purity and a hypocritical hype machine around traffic. Better to be a blog network - I think it's closer to what svbtle is now and I believe that has the potential to be bigger than just journalism.
We werent motivated by journalism - I've never heard of Dustin being either. I think he made svbtle to be a better blog, so why not focus on that? I could be wrong here - I dont know Dustin well at all.
Anyway, this looks like it might work. I cringe when I read about it because it brings back the awful memories of a failed startup, but I could see this succeeding. Best of luck Dvstin!
Err....what? Am I missing something here? While I know Dustin is a "design genius"...did he raise some money or is there some monetization plan (in the short term) that I am not aware of?
I mean, I fully agree with the premise of the current state of journalism.
This solution does seem awesome - it's one of the reasons I love The Economist.
But as a potential writer, I am not keen on necessarily jumping into something where I don't know what the future might look like.
I get the impression that Svbtle is more trying to be the TED network of blogging (with a focus only on the T and not the ED right now), since most of the people who've been invited to participate are accomplished in tech some way.
We’ve completely severed the relationship between content and revenue
It's a bold claim/goal with, in my experience, a dearth of successful precedent (in cases where there is non-trivial revenue, of course) and tells me the business model will certainly be interesting.
I assume they're expecting to get free content creation from their curated selection of blog posters, and part of to keep 'quality' up offer editorial services. I see some flaws in what they're doing so far. Will have to see how they navigate it all. Certainly be interesting is right.
Great job ad.
Journalism is historically a career were people are very unhappy. This is due to many many facts, which are hinted in the post. I bet theres a lot of great journalist that will read this and would want to jump into such opportunity.
It's really hard to understand what this comment means, as it boils down to "it's really hard to tell if they want to be the worst of online journalism or a rival for the best of it".
Is there some cue in the writing on this page that suggests that they're hoping to suck?
No, but if you'd like to make a bet on it, and are happy to lose money, I'm probably happy to put $500 on the line, winnings to charity (mine's Partners In Health).
Based on Curtis' explanation of Svbtle[1], I took "the essence of blogging" to be more in the graphical design sense. I wonder what Curtis (and who else is behind Svbtle?) imagines "the future of news and opinion" looks like, and whether he's/they're thinking about it in the socioeconomopolitical sense as well as the graphical design sense.
Beautiful format and great bloggers. I love the sheer simplicity of the site and focus on quality content. Every time I'm linked to Svbtle blog I am really genuinely interested on what the writer has to offer because you've done a great job of maintaining quality. Looking forward to these new writers!
[+] [-] SCdF|13 years ago|reply
It's.. a curated collection of blogs? Why can't you just have a blog? I've probably been linked a dozen or so blogs inside that network (always from HN, I've never noticed traction anywhere else), but at no point has there been any cross promotion, so the fact that it was inside svbtle barely seemed to matter.
On 'barely': so far the fast majority of posts that have come out of svbtle have not actually been very good, and the curated 'we are the cream of the internet crop' pretentious feeling you get is not that positive.
Basicially, for me, a blog being inside svbtle seems to have negligible effect, and that effect is a negative one.
Maybe I'm missing the point though.
[+] [-] ericabiz|13 years ago|reply
Dave McClure posted a really thoughtful post about late bloomers recently, and the general reaction was "Wait...Dave McClure wrote that?" Yeah, you can't tell, because his blog looks exactly like 20+ other ones! This is the same pet peeve I had with WPTouch...everything looks the same and it destroys branding. (Not hoity-toity Fortune 500 company "branding"--just your picture on the blog, or something that indicates your blog is written by, you know, you, and not some anonymous random person. Especially when you are Dave McClure.)
To add a constructive point to this: http://jobs.problogger.net/ is a way, WAY better place to hire writers than a Hacker News post. We posted a job opening for some writers on there and got back some amazing resumes, including people who had media credentials galore and who had written for top newspapers and magazines. This seems like it'd be right up Svbtle's alley.
[+] [-] damian2000|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natural219|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rradu|13 years ago|reply
They get a UI which is custom-designed to focus on writing and little else. Dustin Curtis explains it here - http://dcurt.is/codename-svbtle
[+] [-] dorian-graph|13 years ago|reply
When it was first shown, there was a common feeling in the posts of not being picked by a kid at school to play in the lunch time soccer team. :P
The internet, and I guess I'll say life in general, needs more curation and less dumping. We speak of design and other wonderful things yet we encourage mindless undesign dribble in apparent content creation, relationships and other ways—it strikes of me being partial whores.
[+] [-] bslatkin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbiggar|13 years ago|reply
Dustin has a lot that we didn't - a good sense of design, a large following, writers already contributing, and from the look of this, some cash. We had writers too, but they were checking out the latest fad, not actually writing for their own purposes. We didnt have the followers/brand awareness to bootstrap traffic - I think svbtle does.
I think he's doing some of the things which for us were mistakes, but they might not be in the context of svbtle. For example, we also made our own CMS instead of using wordpress. That was definitely a mistake for us, but I'm not convinced it is here - could go either way.
He's making the branding all about svbtle instead of about the journalist. That was definitely a mistake for us, again I'm not positive it is a mistake here - svbtle actually has a brand (even if some people think its a pretentious one).
He's making it about journalism instead of about blogging. I think that's a mistake. Journalism is a horrible niche to be in and I would hate to be a journalist. It has expectation of journalistic purity and a hypocritical hype machine around traffic. Better to be a blog network - I think it's closer to what svbtle is now and I believe that has the potential to be bigger than just journalism.
We werent motivated by journalism - I've never heard of Dustin being either. I think he made svbtle to be a better blog, so why not focus on that? I could be wrong here - I dont know Dustin well at all.
I think they're aiming for the right level of writer - definitely those who want to make something for themselves. We didnt: http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down...
Anyway, this looks like it might work. I cringe when I read about it because it brings back the awful memories of a failed startup, but I could see this succeeding. Best of luck Dvstin!
[+] [-] marcamillion|13 years ago|reply
I mean, I fully agree with the premise of the current state of journalism.
This solution does seem awesome - it's one of the reasons I love The Economist.
But as a potential writer, I am not keen on necessarily jumping into something where I don't know what the future might look like.
[+] [-] malandrew|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petercooper|13 years ago|reply
It's a bold claim/goal with, in my experience, a dearth of successful precedent (in cases where there is non-trivial revenue, of course) and tells me the business model will certainly be interesting.
[+] [-] loceng|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielpal|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vipervpn|13 years ago|reply
Still, there is a very clever plan unfolding and it's pretty cool. Look forward to seeing more.
[+] [-] revelation|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|13 years ago|reply
Is there some cue in the writing on this page that suggests that they're hoping to suck?
[+] [-] antidaily|13 years ago|reply
(just kidding)
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nobody_nowhere|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|13 years ago|reply
What would you like the terms to be?
[+] [-] mvzink|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://dcurt.is/codename-svbtle
[+] [-] mvzink|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gunter69|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zaheer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trevorturk|13 years ago|reply