Substack now helps you to observe writers, providing a approach so that you can preserve tabs on what a author is doing with out having to subscribe to their publication. If you observe a author, “you’ll be able to keep updated with what they’re studying, liking, publishing, and subscribing to — by the Notes feed and on their profiles,” Substack says in a blog post.
Substack is probably finest referred to as a publication platform the place writers can earn a living from getting folks to enroll in paid subscriptions. However the platform has additionally been dabbling with extra conventional social networking options such as its tweet-like Notes, and a observe button appears like Substack stepping much more toes into the social networking waters.
The corporate stresses that follows, that are free, are supposed to assist writers as they construct out subscription networks. “Following helps writers develop their viewers through the Substack community, which is already residence to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most dear readers,” Substack argues. “We constructed this characteristic to assist maximize — and never change — subscriptions, which can at all times be crucial kind of relationship on Substack.”
However now, Substack writers could have the added burden of fascinated by methods to transform followers and non-followers into subscribers. (Substack is promising that sooner or later, it would “make ‘upsells’ to subscriptions simpler” by notifying followers about “trending posts and different milestones.”)
Final week, Substack’s co-founders stated that they need to make the platform a better place for readers, not just writers. The corporate has already launched a handful of options to encourage studying issues instantly on the platform, together with cell apps and the power to carry RSS feeds to your Substack feed.
For folks searching for a brand new place to learn textual content and put up some microblogs given the final degradation of X / Twitter, the observe button is likely to be a helpful characteristic to see what writers are as much as with out clogging up your e mail inbox with newsletters.