Internet History and Substacks' Future

Where I believe it's headed

We will discuss this post next Monday night, September 12, at 8 PM New York time. I will send a link to paid subscribers sometime between now and then.

Erik Hoel writes,

If you hadn’t noticed (and you probably have—you’re here, after all) a lot of writing has migrated to Substack, precisely for the reasons of UI and UX and ease and audience onboarding. A lot.

…It seems there is some tipping point of convenience whereafter centralization onto a single ecosystem becomes inevitable, where posting videos on YouTube becomes the default, rather than one choice among many. I think Substack is at that tipping point for writing.

I started one of the first sites on the World Wide Web in April of 1994. At that time, it was like a wide-open frontier. A site could try to be very general.

Within a few years, though, the space filled up. In order to stand out, you needed to specialize. To get traffic, you had to be well placed in Yahoo’s hierarchical directory. But by the year 2000, Yahoo was overwhelmed, and Google’s search, ranking pages by the links going into them, was destined to take over as the primary starting point for Web users.

It could be that Substack is following the same path. I know that I am trying to cut back on commenting on topics where I don’t think I have a comparative advantage. I am writing more essays that have something to do with economics and business.

Some of us provide links to other substack writing. That will continue to be useful, although I think that we will see the recommendation mechanism become more centralized over time.

If my analysis of history is correct, it is about time for people to become interested in “best of” lists of substacks by topic. Best newsletters on economics. Best newsletters on food. Best newsletters on chemical engineering. Etc.

Next, the best-of lists will become narrower. Best newsletters on development economics. Best newsletters on labor economics. Best newsletters on housing economics. Etc.

Finally, there will be enough information embedded in substacks that someone will develop the Google search for finding information on substacks. Of course, Google might be the one to do that.

In the comments, please recommend a post by a substack writer that I have never read. The reader who gives me the best suggestion will get free admission to next Monday’s event.