What's Wrong with Substack?

A partial list of features I think Substack needs to add. Plus some reasons why I think smaller accounts have a hard time gaining traction on the platform.

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

Comments Are Second Class Citizens

Substack makes commenting a chore AND commenting is a second or third-class citizen. What do I mean by that? If I want to leave a comment on a piece, I’m usually taken to a new page that only shows me one or two lines of the post; I’m not commenting where I can scroll up, see what you read, remember the points I wanted to make and leave them in one or more comments. I have to keep switching between two browser tabs.

And then there’s the fact that comments don’t get any kind of text manipulation. I can’t leave a url that will turn into a link, I can’t bold or italicize text, nor can I add an image to a comment. And I can’t make a block quote to quote a passage from the post. But I can do all of these things if I make a Note.

Notes

Here’s where things get weird: Notes are the internal social network of Substack. They drive internal views to your content. When you leave a comment, you also have an option to turn the comment into a Note. Doing so may help raise engagement with the commenter and could lead to the post getting some additional views. But now you’ve got the comment in two places. And if you’re having a conversation back and forth, is the conversation in two places or only in the comment section of the post?

Restacks

When someone “Restacks” your post, that creates a Note. And if someone shares a quote, that’s a separate Note. So I guess if you have a very engaged audience, all those notes _could_ drive more traffic...provided any of the people who are Restacking or quoting your post have enough followers for someone to see any of _their_ notes.

Threads

Next, there are threads which are confusing, because you have notes for off-topic remarks or promotion. And you have posts for long form writing. So what exactly are threads for? I mean yes, if you can get engagement with your threads, they can be useful for creating a community. But that means you could have divided your audience: the audience for your long-form writing (e.g. “posts” or your “newsletter”) and those who want to chat with other readers and argue about whatever topic.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Feature Request: Private Notes

Finally, I think there is a feature that isn’t popular on Medium.com that Substack needs to adopt and that’s Private Notes. Private Notes differ from Direct Messages, which is a feature that Substack already has. Private Notes is where you highlight some text and send a message to the author, presumably about the text that you highlighted. On Medium, Private Notes are sticky to the text that is highlighted prior to the note being made. The way I’ve always used Private Notes on Medium is to send a message to the author that they misspelled a word, have missing words, could have worded something better, etc. Private Notes can turn into a conversation thread between the commenter and the author. This is useful if the resolution to the issue requires multiple rounds of comments between the two as they brainstorm a solution to the textual problem.

Conclusion

So, for smaller authors on Substack, I think there are way too many tools inside the platform and too many places for people to look for you. But I think you have to show up in Notes and make your long form posts at a minimum to get traction. That’s likely not nearly enough, but it’s a bare minimum start.

What do you think?