Whenever something becomes popular, Facebook buys it or copies it. This time, it copies the paid newsletter service Substack. But why are newsletters so popular now?
Why Newsletters Are Making a Comeback (and Why You Should Care)
Newsletters were the OG form of internet publishing. After all, everyone has email. But recently, newsletters have become popular again, and people are paying to read them. What’s the appeal? It all starts with a direct connection.
“I think newsletters are popular now partly because of what they are, and partly because of what they’re not,” Ryan Singel, Stanford fellow and founder and CEO of Contextly and Outpost, told Lifewire via email. “They’re not the horrible experience that we all get on the web and social platforms, and they’re a way to support writers and artists that people care about, which I think has become important to a growing number of people.”
Today, we read and write on Twitter and Facebook. These platforms are limited to short pieces of text, not long, considered articles. They are also bad places to publish long text. Readers don’t go to Twitter when they want to read long text, and it moves so quickly that the good stuff just slips by.
