Svbtle is probably one of the most misunderstood companies we've
funded. Partly because what they're doing is hard to
understand, and partly because Dustin has alienated a few people
along the way, who now in the usual way with haters want to
misunderstand what Svbtle is.
One of the reasons Svbtle is
hard to understand is that it's a work in progress. At its current
fairly fuzzy resolution, it's what I'd guess a traditional magazine
evolves into when it hits the Internet: a loose confederation of
lightly edited writers with their own individual reputations. Beyond
that few of the details are figured out. But costs are low and
traffic is growing steeply, so although in most cases I'd be nagging
founders to figure out more details, in this case I've advised
Dustin to let this grow and see what it turns into.
I encourage neutral observers to do the same: let's see what
this turns into. And as for the haters, it's fine with me if you
want to keep hating. Though this was not a deliberate strategy by
Dustin (he is actually confused and hurt by all the hate), being
controversial is actually a good thing for a publication.
I haven't followed the Dustin-drama. In fact I don't know anything about it, but that something happened one day and he changed his tag line from "hero" to "villain".
But I've followed more than a few links from Hacker News to articles on Svbtle over the past months and came away with the strong sense that they're of unusually low quality. Maybe I'm just not the target audience, but the articles I've seen have been vacuous without exception. I went to the home page just now and scrolled down and found more of the same. Having been the editor of a print magazine in a past life, I'm a fan of the curated approach, and I like much of the front-page content on Hacker News, so this surprised me.
It looks like saved stories aren't public here, so I can't use them as a constructive example of content I think is good. But I use reddit for similar purposes
If I had to describe the Svbtle content direction, I'd say it's like somebody is randomly scraping longer comments off of TechCrunch articles and putting them into a blogging system.
>> came away with the strong sense that they're of unusually low quality
I couldn't agree more. I guess I'm out of the loop of the drama involved, but every article I've read seems very light/thin, and had no real substance, outside of the standard SV gossip. I actually kinda go out of my way to avoid reading them when I see a svtle link on HN...
That sounds like a wonderful idea until you take a step back and realize it's not all that profound or even interesting. I get it but at the same time it doesn't make sense. What I see is a guy who is playing kingmaker by "giving people the tools" to blog and all writing under the same banner. There's nothing to this and it basically already exists in every other blog network ever. It seems we're somehow to believe the minimalist theme and the fact that it's SV-in-crowd Dustin Curtis orchestrating this thing with fellow SV-in-crowd pals makes this something other than an ordinary blog network.
On one level I get it. It's not about what it actually is, it's about the feeling, the aura, this attitude about it that makes it feel special. On the other hand, it's just another blog network. To me, I see it as the difference between Newsweek and the New Yorker. It's all about the public sentiment. Or maybe I missed the mark completely but when I hear things along the lines of "well people are haters and it's kinda hard to get but you'll see" they seem kind of like cop-outs to me.
There's nothing wrong with Suvbtle at all though. No one should have a problem with the basic idea. What I, and I think others, have a problem with is the sneaky feeling that this is just another blog network and we're being told it's somehow more and special. Like we're being served hamburger but someone's calling it filet mignon. I've eaten my share of beef and I've read the Svbtle network blogs and I know when I'm being fed ground beef.
I think a lot of the initial dislike stems from the svbtle/obtvse thing, where Dustin went into all-out-rage because someone cloned what amounted to not-much-more than a Wordpress theme.
That and the air of superiority within the announcement: svbtle would only be used by people who are "intelligent and witty" implying that everyone who couldn't, wasn't.
It definitely stems from both factors you mentioned. No one really knows who Dustin is and he's established a brand as a person who aspires for the best and is very opinionated. For better or for worse, most commenters only really know that about him. His response to the Svbtle clones on top of the personality he added to the Svbtle announement really acted as a tipping point for most peoples' perceptions about him.
Unfortunately, like you allude to, most people also saw his reaction simply to being a stolen theme, and don't appreciate that it was intended to be much more than that.
The network's introduction introduced Dustin's concept and site. If you ever visited his blog before that, it's clear he was building the site before. Part of the introduction was sharing a novel approach to the blogging workflow and get a glimpse of the CMS. If it's "just a theme," you'd imagine that people would steal some of the more interesting things, like his approach to editing, or build on it. Instead, people insisted on duplicating the theme -- some just to spite Dustin.
Dustin was explicit about his goals in the beginning - to create a great publishing/blogging network. If yoiu look at how it's panned out, people are making Svbtle their personal blogs and the theme is the differentiator. writers were willing to forego a complete branding of their website and demonstrated they were willing to accept this brand. When you're working to build a brand and key piece is plagiarized (and subsequently insulted by people who don't understand the work that goes behind it), the reaction is a bit more understandable.
I'm being polite. I recognize that it interpretations may differ
I think most people separate Svbtle from Dustin, although I don't think Dustin necessary is advocating for this separation himself. You can see this in the comments. When people are being critical, it generally leans towards Dustin and not the product. When people are boasting Svtble, they rarely mention Dustin. There's a reason for that.
It was clear to most that Dustin was expecting adoration and when that didn't happen, the conversation changed.
I don't know how many tweets, posts and "thoughts" I read where Dustin was "abandoning HN" or laying claim to "the downfall of HN"[2], only to end up back here posting some other ego-laden[3] dribble.
"You're welcome", I believe is what used to be on the footer of Svtble. Really gets me thinking about how modest he is.
I don't see how anybody can separate Svbtle from Dustin. The whole selling point is that it is curated by him. It's a collection of blogs from authors that he likes. The product here is Dustin Curtis's opinion, not the content or the platform. Blog posts and blogging platforms are a dime a dozen, the only differentiating factor of Svbtle is Dustin Curtis's curation.
> The whole selling point is that it is curated by him.
I disagree. I doubt Subtle is getting funded because of Dustin Curtis' audience. For funding, the conversation of "market" had to come up and if the answer to "market" was "Dustin Curtis' fanbase", the investors would have had to be nuts to proceed. How big is the "Dustin Curtis" following? Hundred? Several hundred? A few thousand?
I think not. Haters are distinctive enough that it would make the language less expressive to discard the word and merge it into "critic."
I'm slow to adopt new words, but I think "hater" is a useful addition to the language, and not simply a pejorative version of "critic." The difference is that a critic is what you're called as a byproduct of being critical in a particular instance, whereas being a hater is an ongoing state of mind. So for example it is reasonable to say "he was sometimes a critic of the administration's policy" but not to say "he was sometimes a hater of the administration's policy."
"Hater" is not a pejorative version of "critic" so much as a negative version of "fan." In fact the distinctive thing about a hater is how uncritical his responses are.
What I've seen in this thread is that people have reasons for disliking Dustin, some of which directly relate to Svbtle. To the extent that they don't directly relate, though, people are quite explicitly saying they evaluate Svbtle separate from Dustin.
And by far the most common reaction expressed is a lack of understanding any valid business model for the network, which in your op you say is quite understandable.
What I don't see in this thread is any willful misconstruing of the project. Which seems to be the requirement for a "hater".
HN users are sophisticated enough not to simply post comments saying "I hate Dustin Curtis." Here they resort to something more akin to concern trolling.
The way you can tell something is amiss is the volume of commenters who seem worried about e.g. how Dustin is going to make money. If most startups issued such a bland funding announcement, it would sink beneath the surface of HN with barely a ripple of comment.
So you made me curious. I went and had a look at Dustin's writing. Here's a piece entitled "Do".
=========================
Wake up early. Show up. Learn how to think. Be genuine, but appear nice. Use envy for motivation instead of destruction. Do what you say you’re going to do. Ensure balance in every area of your life. Confront repressed thoughts immediately. Surround yourself with people who are better than you (but remember the thing about envy). Work out every day. Be good at what you do. Make money doing what you love. Have good friends. Never settle.
--
Now, as far as I can tell, every aspect of that post is good advice. It's evident that Dustin's advice was derived from experience, because some his points are counter-intuitive-but-true (which tend to only be learned as a byproduct of screwing up). The advice seems to match my own experience as well, so it seems possible it may be broadly true and (and therefore broadly useful).
I don't know what demon you see in him, but you're wrong.
Now, at this point, it seems only fair that we contrast Dustin's writing against someone else's writing. Let's use your writing, in fact.
So here's a piece you wrote, entitled "New Year - No Fun Allowed".
=========================
My resolution is to blog every day. Whoops, already missed that one. Make it every week, I guess.
Also, to finally launch the enormous white whale of a ship that I’ve been working on in Kerbal Space Program (which is what has kept me from here for so long). It will set all sorts of records, visit all the planets… I just need to have the damn thing not explode. I’m getting closer now; got as far as 20km, and the most recent launch was spoiled by pure bad luck (a piece I’d blown off the top of my rocket fell down back onto it).
You might think stuff like buying a flat or finding a job should be higher on the list than achieving something in a computer game. And you’d be right. But damned if it doesn’t feel like the other way around.
--
Eh... I was going to say some more stuff, but it appears you may be going through a rough period in your life.
This is something of a tangent, but: if you happen to want to talk with someone about what's on your mind nowadays, or if you just need someone to talk to, then please feel free to toss me an email. I'm happy to listen (if you want that) or to do whatever else I can.
Life can be rough, but don't let it break you, even if it seems hard not to.
>It's evident that Dustin's advice was derived from experience, because some his points are counter-intuitive-but-true (which tend to only be learned as a byproduct of screwing up).
That seems implausible given his age and job history. I don't see how he can possibly have tried e.g. settling enough to be able to assert one should never do it.
The whole tone is one of condescension, of the enlightened master speaking down to his acolytes. I'd accept it coming from e.g. that guy who built a windmill out of scrap metal, or Helen Keller, or even Mark Zuckerberg. Someone who's overcome adversity and/or achieved something useful - or perhaps even just someone old enough to have a bit of life experience. From a bay-area upper-class white male who has never had to struggle, who so far as I can tell has never done a day's real work in his life? No; I'd accept domain-specific advice on design or writing (which he seems to have a genuine talent for), but I refuse to believe he knows better than me how to live - and that's how he's phrased it, not as suggestions or things that worked for him, but as instructions and universal truths.
>Eh... I was going to say some more stuff, but it appears you may be going through a rough period in your life.
Hah, a reader. No, don't worry, I guess it sounded bad out of context. No Fun Allowed is the blog title, not because I don't have fun but because I spend most of the posts taking silly things way too seriously. My present employers have chosen a somewhat inconvenient time to make 2/3 of their developers redundant, which in the worst case might set my life plans back a few years, but life is good; thanks for the sympathy, but I'm doing ok, at least for the moment.
It's always hardest to see flaws in oneself. Do I come across as telling people what to do? I try to avoid that (outside my specific expertise), but I'm constantly worried I've failed.
Is it that I think I'm better than Dustin? That's a tougher one; I'm hardly any less privileged; I think I'm less condescending. Being proud of one's humility is a trap, but that doesn't mean one should never call others out on their arrogance.
Is it the hate? I'd like to be more constructive, but I think there's still value in being honest. There is a risk of a negative impact here, but the worst obvious case is that I upset one person and have no other effect.
Really? Wondering how to monetize a blogazine is concern trolling driven by hating Dustin Curtis?
I worry that moderating this community has jaded you. (That's concern trolling.) It's a valid question, and one I'd ask of any blogazine that received funding; do you stick ads on it? Charge a subscription fee? Sell user data?
Not all of it, no, but some of it. (The whole point of concern trolling is that the two are indistinguishable, so you only notice something's amiss when you see odd patterns.)
For what it's worth, though I posted a post concerned about how Svbtle will make money (with some analysis), I have nothing against Dustin and I wish him the best with Svbtle and other endeavours. Just can't see how this thing makes money later. As a blogger myself, I'm somewhat attracted by Svbtle (there is something desirable about it), but I can't see the sense of blogging there rather than on my own platform. It seems inferior in every way...
pg- when i first read your comments i was surprised at the categorical ad hominem dismissal of svbtle's critics. scrolling down, i see what u mean- the level of negativity and vitriol engendered by seemingly innocuous facts is surprisingly out of proportion. even for HN :) one wonders why the posters torture themselves so much.
the internet has always been packed with garbage - but garbage to you can be treasure to me. don't like it? click the back button! it's always been that easy.
it's almost as if these out of proportion "controversies" against svbtle are being manufactured by svbtle supporters in order to attract attention? sounds like it could work :)
You are correct with your definition of hater. The problem is that your original post doesn't leave any room for critics who comprehend the svbtles game plan, but still find it unappealing. The implication from your post is that 1) a community misunderstanding exists, and 2) that misunderstanding is caused by either people not being intelligent enough to see what svbtle is doing, or people having a personal vendetta against Dustin.
We don't know what Svbtle's game plan is. We don't even know the set of all possible Svbtle business models (as some people are criticizing), because there are business models that haven't been invented yet.
You are correct. But if that is the standard you hold critics to, as opposed to making statements based on all information available at a given time, then no critics would exist, because it is always possible for any group to enter unknown territory.
My problem with the word hater, seeing how it's used at other sites, is that it stops any dialogue and dismisses even valid argument with a permanent label.
So earlier, I posted how I would like to know more about their business plan, because well, it seems hard to understand how they plan to make money. Now I have to worry my comments will be seen as critical and I will be lumped in as a "hater".
Because that's the behavior at other sites. "Hater" allows and encourages polarization.
(Also, I am not sure if on the spectrum hater is related to fan so much as it is related to fanboy.)
but 'hater' smells like a categorical ad hominem attack which may kill any critical thinking against someone 'you' like. neither 'i hate', nore 'you are hater' belong to a mindful discussion where experiences and reasonings collide, imho.
edit: despite saying that, i am indeed a curious follower of dustin curtis, which i learned during recent discussions, he was fiercely and mostly wrongly criticized. (namely, i have personal positive impression in my limbic system for him).
Paul, I'm disappointed to see this from you. Calling someone a “hater”, no matter how carefully and eruditely you define the term, is still an ad hominem attack intended to dismiss their opinion. It's a DH1 on your disagreement hierarchy.
I visit Hacker News because, while not perfect, it does the best job of any internet forum I know of minimizing that kind of cheap attack. It worries me to see the person who created that forum publicly setting a bad example like this. You're basically saying, “ur all just haters, forget u guyz!!1” even if, superficially, the words you use seem smarter and more reasonable. And beyond being an unconvincing argument, I don't think it reflects well on you to be stooping so low (and flat-out insulting so many people) to defend your investment.
Not to be pedantic, but the word "hater" typically refers to a person who dislikes someone out of jealousy.
I think a lot of people dislike Dustin Curtis not because they're jealous of his notoriety, but rather because of his attitude -- or at least the personality he projects on the internet.
Although I disagree with pg's usage of 'hater'(it's arrogantly dismissive in this context) I thought I would provide the surprisingly poignant urbandictionary.com definition:
"
A person that simply cannot be happy for another person's success. So rather than be happy they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person.
Hating, the result of being a hater, is not exactly jealousy. The hater doesnt really want to be the person he or she hates, rather the hater wants to knock somelse down a notch."
I'm away from my desktop computer (and Opera's bookmark sync doesn't work on my MacBook Air, the PoS), but these two articles seem to capture the imbroglio well enough:
Especially when many of them are making quite long and thought out points. Haters seems appropriate to me only when applied to the most vacuous of comments. Real points deserve real responses or at least the respect of being called comments or criticisms not hate.
That's fair, but I feel like the majority of comments I've read through appear that the poster cannot separate the prospects of Svbtle with their perception of Dustin and his brand. Those aren't critics. They're haters.
If I understand you correctly, you're saying Dustin's reputation can negatively affect the prospects of Svbtle.
While Dustin's brand own brand spills over into Svbtle's, I think the network's prospects can be sufficiently differentiated from Dustin's brand.
Seems to me that the network is becoming large enough where the "tech blog" echo chamber opinion (about one individual) is inconsequential to Svbtle's fate
That also suggests that if Svbtle were to find its way into something good, Curtis may not be seen as essential to ongoing success, whatever that may be. It's founder as catalyst, rather than architect, making it more like Twitter, less like Apple.
Perhaps instead of treating "haters" as a pejorative term one should feel inclined to stand by it. I don't see what's so odious about wanting to see assholes fail. If there's any justice or karma in the world, I'd expect it.
I am curious as to what their business plan is, especially for a blog network that strives to minimalism, having an ad presence would seem anathema.
And to that end, I am curious why anyone would fund them -- what is it that they offer in terms of being able to generate income that makes them more viable than say, any old "webring" that uses the same CSS?
Or makes them different from various other focused blogging sites: science 2.0, freethoughtblogs, pjmedia, etc., none of which seem to be doing especially well as far as I know.
My problem with svbtle is that unlike Salon/The Atlantic/ArsTechnica/JUST ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE/ since there is no masthead, or links from one svtble writer to another, so at this moment, I don't see a real difference between svbtle the company, and svtble the CSS design sheet. So I don't see how they build up brand, or how they build on top of network effects since they don't link from one author to another. (And should ads be added and mastheads and footers added well will social toolbars and unother unsubtle widgets be far behind?)
And while I read svbtle when I come across it, I find their content not much better, not much worse than anyone elses.
(I will say, I am much less put off by svtble writers once I had adblock plus block their 0-click kudos.)
My thoughts exactly. But now you're a hater and you just don't get it. It's okay though because I'm there with you. In the end a lot of us will be searching for the answer to the question "why is this so special" and the reason we're so baffled is because we assume that the simplest answer can't be right. But I think it is! THe answer is that this is nothing more than a regular blog network with a minimalist theme and a well known SV insider. It's about the feeling and not what it actually is. Simple as that.
But you know, there's really nothing wrong with that! The problem I have is that so many want to pass this off like it's something new and special when really it's the same old shit with a new name. Maybe if someone would just say "yeah, DCurtis is creating a blog network and it's cool because of who he is, who he knows, and the stylesheet" then I'd be happy and say "cool, I'll read it".
I can appreciate an organic ecosystem, and the exclusivity of writing for Svbtle sure has an appeal, but monetization on something like this seems incredibly difficult. Do they take it a full WordPress direction with hosting, etc? Or does it fully flesh out into a reputable online magazine with ads and the like. Maybe I'm not creative enough to see another viable option, but either way, I still think it's a cool project.
How does Svbtle distinguish itself from any of the other blogging networks that emerged towards the end of the last decade?
Looking at the front page and at Ethan Kaplan's posts in an unscientific way it appears as though everyones posts on Svbtle make the front page (although I could be wrong and if so please say so - I didn't take a particularly large sample). I'm not sure where the curation is.
It seems that anyone can apply to join svbtle, but it's not clear why they'd choose to versus hosting their own blog or writing online for traditional print outlets.
Is there an editorial process for posts on Svbtle?
I ask this because I want to get my head around what makes it special compared to other blog networks. I don't really care who Dustin is (one of the benefits of not being in the valley I guess) or what he's done/not done.
It has an undo, but it could be more discoverable. Click and hold on the Kudos button for a couple of seconds, then release, and the count will go back down. Works on Chrome and iOS Safari for me.
I've seen a few social media sites before, and HN's upvote button looks how I expect an upvote button to look, and it's positioned where I expect an upvote button to be (next to a corresponding downvote button). Most importantly, it only activates with a mouse-click, which is the conventional way for a user to request some kind of state-change on the web.
By contrast, the kudos widget looks like nothing in particular, its location doesn't correspond to any convention I'm aware of, and mild curiosity (mouseover) is taken to mean enthusiastic support.
To me, the kudos widget makes me feel like somebody took advantage of me in an unguarded moment and stole a dollar. It's not much, in the grand scheme of things, but rubs me the wrong way.
> being controversial is actually a good thing for a publication.
Very true. I am sure Dustin has a vision which obviously we don't fully see yet. Still, it seems a bit absurd for a blog to raise. But hey, let's all wait and see what comes. After all, the investment was probably in Dustin and team, and not necessary in Svbtle.
I don't like Dustin Curtis as a person, based on prior history (i.e., American Airlines, presumption in his articles bordering on know-it-all after accomplishing little, and so on). You might find that the majority of the haters you're talking about feel the same; there's been discussion about this recently linked elsewhere in the thread that I won't rehash here. If he's genuinely confused by the hate, that'd be surprising to me. I'm willing to be corrected on my opinion and come around, for what it's worth.
That said, I couldn't care less about Svbtle, frankly, though I certainly understand what it is. Good luck with Y Combinator's investment is my sole commentary on this news: I'm smart enough to divide between Dustin Curtis and Svbtle and realize that my thoughts on and the trajectory of one don't necessarily impact the other.
> I don't like Dustin Curtis as a person, based on prior history (i.e., American Airlines, presumption in his articles bordering on know-it-all after accomplishing little, and so on). You might find that the majority of the haters you're talking about feel the same
I'm guessing that pg's comment was at least partially in response to my own below[0], and you've exactly stated my issue with Curtis and the Svbtle network. There's nothing horribly wrong with the general concept behind Svbtle - perhaps it'll work, perhaps not. It's definitely legitimate enough that it's worth a shot.
But the way dcurtis went about it - the way he worded his initial post on Svbtle, his responses to the Svbtle theme being cloned, and so on, were very off-putting, to say the least. Moreover, the fact that he was so fixated on people copying the theme suggests that he was placing value in the wrong things in Svbtle.
To use a newspaper analogy, is it the layout of the NYTimes that gives it prestige and distinguishes it from your average tabloid rag? Is it the font? Is it the type of paper they use, or the size of the paper? No, it's the content, and the people who create it.
By stirring up such an enormous shitstorm over some people copying the Svbtle theme and creating RoR[1] or WP[2] clones, dcurtis gave up his reputation (which is actually important for running something like Svbtle) in a futile attempt to preserve the uniqueness of the Svbtle theme (which isn't all that important). His best hope now is to spread Svbtle outside the tech community, to people who aren't familiar with him, and thus don't have any impression of him at all yet.
I've only been following Svbtle with passive interest, so I cannot recall or comment on how his responses may have been off-putting.
I would like to explain my hypothesis as to why he jumped on the fact that people copied the theme.
Consider pg's statement:
"it's what I'd guess a traditional magazine evolves into when it hits the Internet: a loose confederation of lightly edited writers with their own individual reputations"
If you are building brand around a loose confederation of writers, decentralized between domain boundaries, then brand recognition (and, conversely, brand dilution) is an important issue.
Just to dig into your example a little further: Yes, the value in the NYTimes is the content. But if you can't tell whether the content is from the NYTimes or a knock-off competitor, then you don't get the value of recognition when you see something that resembles the NYTimes before you consume the content. So brand differentiation is important for value-creation.
As I said, I don't know how he addressed this question of brand dilution. Nor do I know exactly what the right way to preserve the brand of a loosely federated organization on the wild wild web. Perhaps a trademarked seal for all participating sites?
I think he's a bit of a d too, but I never heard about the AA story and just looked it up[1]. I assumed someone got fired because he was whining, but it seems AA fired someone for breaking their NDA to talk about why the website was so crappy. So, to me the story is more AA being the asshole in that story.
I'm not sure how anything Dustin did there would classify him as an asshole. Maybe I'm missing something.
He blogged about not liking the aesthetics of a website, sparked a discussion with on of the designers of that site and then AA fired the guy and Dustin said that he was "horrified" that it happened.
Why do you feel the need to post this? Most here don't know you, don't know Dustin Curtis and couldn't care less about what you think of him personally. Your comment doesn't add any information to this discussion.
I would really draw a distinction between "as a person" and professional persona. I don't like a lot of things people say on the Internet, but I'd generally trust even those people to be reasonable people in other contexts. And there are people I respect professionally who turn out to be utterly obnoxious in real life or one on one social settings.
After the discussion I had with jrockway in this thread[0], I've come to really dislike the Svbtle network and what it stands for. I can't speak for the rest of the community, but I would consider Svbtle branding to be a strike against a blog, and not something that is a sign of its quality.
ITT: You neglect to read the two blog posts about the topic you're debating and cast a blanket statement about a guy who was just trying to help the brand and didn't understand the internal conflicts going on at the company. The designer was fired for sharing internal information relevant to the initial blog post he made (letting him know there were competent designers in-house, but not much they could do about typical politics), not because Dustin said their design team sucked.
Had Dustin simply made suggestions, he'd be trying to help the brand. Instead, he made it personal and demeaned the livelihood of professionals he'd never met. After he received a response, he then went on to make more backhanded jabs, for example saying he was "surprised" that the other designer's work actually looked good.
Telling an unfamiliar company to "fire designers" he hadn't interacted with wasn't helping a brand. It was being a douchebag and demonstrates an astounding lack of maturity and experience at best.
The idea that anyone on HN is innocent of making statements similar to those he did are laughable, and posts just like them make the front page and are the most-upvoted every day. Are people not allowed to have opinions anymore? It isn't like they hired him to clean up house and that was his approach; he saw a terrible user experience and he gave his advice on how to fix it. Often times, starting fresh is the best way to do that.
A UX architect came forward to apologize and let him know why things were the way they were (again, corporate politics and the design process). AA found the email by scrubbing their Exchange server and fired the guy over discussing that process.
I have no opinion of Sᴧbtle, but I can't fault Curtis's conduct in this episode. He offered a completely valid critique of the antiquated web presence of a large and poorly-managed company. When he received a response from someone involved in the production process, he republished it w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶p̶e̶c̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶d̶i̶a̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ [edit: OK that was a bit strong] cordially. It is unfortunate that someone lost a job in a knee-jerk corporate response to that candid exchange. Everyone likes to be employed, but I doubt even that UX person will admit to having lost a good job. I hope the next employer snapped up the person promptly, and I hope that the new organization is much less dysfunctional. Whatever the case, Curtis is responsible neither for the poor culture at AA nor for the erstwhile employee's poor anticipation of the probable response of that culture.
In the meantime, I'll be unchecking "AA" on the sidebar of the Kayak site for the foreseeable future.
Suggesting people he'd never interacted with in any way (who, mind you, ended up not being the responsible parties anyway) be fired wasn't a valid critique of much of anything.
And I don't think that registering that Dustin was "astounded" that the designer he received the email from had a good portfolio or only admitting to having been "partially wrong" with respect to the firing comment was particularly cordial or respectful, either.
I agree that the whole debacle reflects -much- more poorly on AA than on Curtis, but his conduct wasn't beyond fault by any means either.
I'm an in-house designer at a company whose print and web design I detest, and I would hardly blame anyone for going off on a rant about it, including telling the company to get rid of their current crop of designers (which can be a part of the problem, because even after shareholder input there are still little things you can do, and often times they can only go off of what they're presented to begin with).
Truth be told, I would be grateful because my voice has gone unheard. That's the name of the game with a lot of in-house design; you make due with implementing non-designer's ideas for a steady paycheck and good benefits.
I now find those posts somewhat embarrassing. The vitriol was unnecessary and diluted my arguments. In fact, I no longer even link to those articles from my website.
Still, I don't think something I wrote several years ago in a completely different context should impact your opinion of Svbtle as a network.
I think that some - not I - feel this way about Svbtle, because they have an impression that it is a "mindshare" platform rather than a blogging CMS - thus an extension and continuation of the things you have said and done.
People's first impression of Svbtle happened in the context of the whole argybargy surrounding the launch and copied design, and even I didn't get a great impression of Svbtle as a result. People impute, when creators and founders don't explain what the project is about.
Maybe it's time to re-explain what Svbtle is and aspires to do to salvage the brand.
EDIT: mladenkovch did a good job of summarizing what I find to be the inkling of a lack of humility in the project description: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5027929.
Don't be embarrassed of those posts. It is what we all think about so many shitty websites every single fucking day. Although I will say that blackatlas.com has turned out better than expected.
As I told pg, my opinion of you impacts Svbtle so minutely that it might as well not even exist. But, it is still my opinion of you.
Let's be honest, Dustin, that article was from 2009. It wasn't exactly written in the '80s when you were on a coke binge. I think your attitude in a lot of blog posts reflects quite negatively on who you are as a person, and that's where a lot of the hate for you comes from.
You're presumptuous about our industry in a lot of ways without much to show in terms of accomplishment. Often I've asked, who is Dustin Curtis? Why is he telling me the important things about building a startup? The answers to these questions are thin, vague, or nonexistent. I'm glad you have opinion and I certainly don't resent yours, but I also don't position myself as a commentator on all things Silicon Valley without having actually done anything in Silicon Valley. This isn't a critique of you nearly as much as it is a critique of punditry, I think, since I haven't given it much thought; that said, it's still my reaction to most of your writing.
I don't hate you, as it were, nor do I seek every opportunity to piss on your brand, I just hold a quite-negative opinion and will share it if asked. Again, as I told pg above, I'm also willing to be proven wrong but you've simply made it worse since I developed it.
I genuinely feel bad for you (and I mean that), that you want to accomplish something but you have to deal with this crap when you do. If you're self-aware about why it happens, I can sympathize, as I've made grievous mistakes in my life that cost me some reputation as well. If you aren't, then you should figure out why it's happening.
"Often I've asked, who is Dustin Curtis? Why is he telling me the important things about building a startup?"
As someone who is neither in the hater not fan category, this is what I've been trying to figure out. I have no clue who he is and it's very difficult to find out much besides he's an opinionated person with a taste for design.
Why does it matter who he is? Why not consider the merits of the ideas in their own right rather than relying on the authority of the author? One would think folks on HN would be inclined to treat ideas in a more meritocratically way.
I can't help but laugh at this. All Svbtle does is slap a pretty, unified design on the articles of people that have interesting stuff to say. It's very good at doing that and I appreciate it for doing that.
Like Curtis intended, when you see the Svbtle design you can expect something interesting. Most of the articles I've read on it were indeed interesting. However, these articles would also exist without Svbtle, they just wouldn't look the same.
Svbtle's got a good thing going, but future of journalism? Please.
I think in the full context of the quote this makes more sense. He is saying that now they have the resources to build something that could maybe be "the future of journalism", not that the current state is "the future".
In other words, what they build next could be "the future of journalism".
The container and the medium is surely important for content, especially now when (as you imply) there's such a confusion about what container your content comes in.
I just don't think Svbtle is that container. At least not yet.
I don't know much about Svbtle but there's something so un-exciting and unapproachable about the way they describe their objectives:
>Svbtle is a curated, invite-only collection of great people who have things to say.
...
>Our goal is to make it easier and more natural for interesting people to write down their thoughts.
...
>Think you should be a part of the network? Apply for membership below.
The most exciting thing about idea exchanges (whether in oral or written form) is the openness of it. You can go out into the world wide web and read as much or as little as you want. You can have favorite sources of information, least favorite sources and have some of your beliefs confirmed, while turning other ones on their head.
In Svbtle, it seems like everyone is a self-proclaimed "great" person with interesting things to say. Then the Svbtle network invites you, gives you a stark blog theme to share your brilliant thoughts with other people of equal greatness. I guess the quality of content will ultimately be deciding factor of whether this has merit, but for right now I can't get excited about it.
I don't understand - what possible business model could you have with such niche blogging? Can anybody explain how this is expected to work? Some kind of sponsored advertising on what the blog topic is about?
I was gonna type this but then I saw your post. I don't see where Svbtle is going. What benefit can membership get from joing Svbtle network? well there's only 1 thing i can think of right now is link exposure. and how Svbtle is going to make profit is still a huge question. Ads is obviously not an option because I felt like it's against the philosophy how Svbtle was created.
> What benefit can membership get from joing Svbtle network?
I applied (and got in) to Svbtle because of two things: exclusivity and the interface. Svbtle at least attempts to have only high quality writers there, and it was made clear that sometimes, if posts were of low quality, they'd be asked to be revised. There was also talk of helping Svbtle members with their writing through things like copyediting. I haven't heard of any of those things happening yet, but I can tell you that (generally) I try to keep Svbtle much higher quality as a result. I still maintain a personal blog where I put shorter/news kinds of things, but bigger, more in-depth essays go to Svbtle.
The interface is also really nice. It's good enough that I actually write in-browser, rather than writing in Vim and copying it over.
Oh, and also: I suck real hard at design, and I'm sick of maintaining Yet Another Blog Platform/design. I really like the look and feel of Svbtle. My personal blog is basically just Skeleton default with a few small modifications: http://blog.steveklabnik.com/archive
So, are you gonna pay $50/m for this, to make them profitable?
Assuming they've taken, say, $500k, to get that back from 200 writers they'd need to make $2.5k from each of the current writers. Even doubling the number of writers, that's still $1.25k - 25 months at $50/m.
So actually, to recoup the investment from writers in any reasonable time they'd need to charge more like $100-200/m. I doubt many of their 200 writers would stay in those circumstances. Would you?
Other than charging the writers, I don't see what business model svbtle can support, other than advertising, which would also jar with the way the site is designed, and also with the ambitions of many star bloggers, who typically want to eventually have the option to put their own discreet ads à la DaringFireball on their blog...
Agreed, I tried to address this with 'at least attempts.' I feel that my last post is not up to the standards of the rest of them, but that's also because I judged it across different lines than normal.
I actually liked that post: what are you unsure about? It felt very straightforward to me.
I'd recommend creating some way of chaining posts, either linked-list style (to simulate a blog) or tree-style (to simulate conversations, ala Branch).
For what it's worth, I like the look of your blog with the Skeleton default --- and it really isn't much different from a design perspective than what Subtle gives you.
Your decision to segment your blog onto two URLs is interesting. Won't this degrade your personal blog since you only put short, and by your admission, lower quality posts on it?
In the past, I've gotten paid by IBM to write articles for their developerWorks blog. Long form. High quality stuff. I always felt like they paid me for the privilege of hosting my writings on a website they control, that they make money from...as opposed to me writing something that lives on my personal blog forever, hopefully giving my blog/"personal brand" (yuck, but not sure what else to call it) the traffic.
> it really isn't much different from a design perspective than what Subtle gives you.
Thanks! Here's the thing, though: Dustin is always working on improving Svbtle, and I don't have to think about it. For example, the code formatting on my blog is terrible. I haven't felt the need to fix it. So it keeps looking terrible. The highlighting on Svbtle is great. One day, the 'related posts' feature just appeared: I didn't need to code that up.
> Won't this degrade your personal blog since you only put short, and by your admission, lower quality posts on it?
It may. It depends: if you care about more news-feed personal stuff about me, then you can read that. My blog used to get on HN all the time, and I'd have a hard time building an audience, because a complex, theory-driven post would get a bunch of subscribers, and then the next one would be a "I released a new version of $PROJECT" and people would unsubscribe. Now I can have two audiences in two places.
Also, Svbtle is on my domain, so it's still 'my brand' as much as Svbtle's.
The problem is that companies like this are as not-scalable as possible. It is a bunch of individual contributors. The only way you add value is to hire someone great, who will presumably be quite expensive. Once they start trying to figure out how to hire more cost effective bloggers, quality will suffer and people will stop reading.
Or hope you can keep convincing quality people to join a boy's club, with some editorial power, and perhaps a marketing channel that it could be promoted on/with. Most of the character that I enjoy in personally written blogs feels like it gets lost in whatever process they follow for editing. Just MHO.
There is nothing wrong in running an invite-only network. But claiming to be a genuinely 'quality-oriented' network[1] when your are not is tricking your readers and is plain wrong.
For example, there are a lot of shitty blogs[2] on this network. Even shitty posts[3]. It's just like any other blog network with some extra-hype and a minimalistic design mixed and matched from theme sites (Trust me, I've seen a dozen themes like this before Dustin came up with this and dismissed anyone trying to create a similar design[4])
A really good quality-oriented network would be something like Quora, but for blogs. The readers, people, us should rate what is good and what is bad,what is ethical, what is unethical, what is right and what is wrong. Not at the mercy of some clown advocating minimalism to emphasize elitism and branding for himself.
[1] This was SVBTLE's pitch initially.
[2] massivegreatness.com [An arrogant, unethical Apple fanboy, writer at Techcrunch who supports anything Apple without proper logic]
When people suggest this is a stupid idea, I think there's a profound misunderstanding of how enticing exclusivity is.
Not everyone gets to send a piece in to the NYTimes, the WSJ, the National Review and get it published as an op-ed. But for someone in political science or macroeconomics it's definitely a status symbol. Note that anyone could just as easily put something on their own blog. In fact, many people who regularly send in pieces do publish on their own blogs. People who have much larger fan-bases, power, and immediate influence than almost anyone in tech still seem to find value in spending a few hours writing a piece for no profit, no ad revenues, no pictures next to their name. Larry Summers, who was the head of arguably the most gate-keeper-ish institution in the nation still wanted to get his views published in the WSJ.
Tech people may not view these venues as worthwhile for their field. What then, is the prestigious place to have your content featured? I think Svbtle could be that. If you own something every influential person wants to be featured in, that would be huge. You'd be a gatekeeper of ideas.
But the NYTimes et al. are exclusive because they've earned respect and have a genuine history of excellence, not the other way around. I'm sure "svbtle could be that" for something, as long as that something is inherently vapid and mediocre.
Well I account for respect on a personal level so the answer is me. Other readers may behave the same way, and they could also feel that respect is something which must be earned.
As for evidence, plenty of research has gone into respect and credibility, particularly as they relate to leadership.
I don't have a problem with curation; Sturgeon's Law goes double for blogs, and I'd be happy to have someone else filter the crap. It's not like it won't find somewhere else to get published or self-hosted. Honestly, the way some people are reacting to this you'd think the government just passed a law that meant if you didn't use Svtble you got the orange overall treatment :)
Reading this reminded me of 9rules[1], which used to be pretty popular some 8-10 years back but eventually withered away. As with most communities, scaling svbtle without comprising on the quality is going to be the greatest challenge.
This is why I'm really interested to see where things are headed (co-founder of 9rules here). It is easy to get great people together when the reason for joining is set behind an idea that everyone can share. In this case it was to bring great content back to the web. However, once money starts to enter the equation it changes the mindset of things a bit. Instead of writing because you are passionate to share your thoughts, you begin to start thinking about what you can write about that will get you the most views/money.
I hope this doesn't happen to svbtle because some good content is coming from it, but as you said it is a difficult balance that will need to be achieved moving forward.
How is this in any way a new approach to journalism? It is a network of editorial / expert writers. Online and offline publications have been doing this for over a century.
I think there is quite a bit of animosity and maybe even jealousy in the HN circle regarding Svbtle because of the apparently pretentious manner that Dustin Curtis launched and promoted it. However, it seems what he did is working out for him in the long run. Svbtle has also adjusted its message significantly since the launch to be more friendly.
Personally I would like to learn more about how Dustin used the situation to his advantage, even leading to funding.
I agree. I was really impressed with Dustin's blog where each post had a different design theme. I was hoping that svbtle would pull something more creative off. The network itself is fine but the quality doesn't seem to be better than my rss feeds. /me shrugs
Silicon Valley appears to think there is a fine line between "drawing inspiration" and "copying." There isn't and to be honest, your output is a good example of the latter, not the former.
"Svbtle now has more than 200 writers with expertise spanning at least eight disciplines, including entrepreneurship, business, finance, political science, and literature."
Is there a directory of all blogs in the Svbtle network? The only ones I've seen have been about technology/entrepreneurs, but I'd be interested in finance topics.
I don't think there is any profiting going on at the moment, but svbtle wouldn't exist without the great contributor in the network. Because of this it will be interesting to see where Dustin takes things and how he handles the situation. I'm sure a lot of the writers in svbtle wanted to be part of a great group that just wanted to bring great content to the forefront of the web. That changes slightly when money is involved because now some writers will be wondering how much they can make off a post and whether they should write about what is hot or just the random stuff they are used to.
In order to be a respected author and build a personality online, I think we'd all be much better off taking the time and care to build our own personal theme and identity.
Our blogs are our online identities. Using something like Svbtle take all the personality and brand recognition out of it.
For me, I designed my own blog around my personal tastes in minimalism, and the way I want to brand myself: http://kswizz.com.
Svbtle sounds eerily familiar to the old 9rules blog network. The only difference (from what I can tell) is that Svbtle provides the bloggging platform and site design as part of membership in the "network."
If Svbtle is to ever monetize as a "publication" aren't they going to pay the writers? Or maybe they'll take the HuffingtonPost route and not pay them?
Not a hater, just voicing some legitimate concerns.
I was a bit uncertain at first, but Svbtle has really grown into a great resource. The writing on there is phenomenal and it's great that the list of authors keeps growing. Excited to see how they use their new resources.
I didn't realize there was so much contention over the Svbtle theme. I was using a Tumblr version, but I just changed to something standard as I spend time to work on my own custom theme. As far as the funding, I think it's great that the blog platform will continue. As a relative new comer to the valley, I have gained some pretty insightful information from some of the Svbtle authors.
I wonder if they're going to try a revenue model that doesn't use ads, I can't see ads fitting the flow of the site overly well if they do go for them.
Selling what data though? There's probably some analytics, but enough for a VC to be interested? There's two outcomes, they're either bought by a bigger network and make the VC's happy, or they take find a revenue model and try make the VC's happy.
Curious to see what happens, if nothing it's been an interesting experiment for the web.
One of the reasons Svbtle is hard to understand is that it's a work in progress. At its current fairly fuzzy resolution, it's what I'd guess a traditional magazine evolves into when it hits the Internet: a loose confederation of lightly edited writers with their own individual reputations. Beyond that few of the details are figured out. But costs are low and traffic is growing steeply, so although in most cases I'd be nagging founders to figure out more details, in this case I've advised Dustin to let this grow and see what it turns into.
I encourage neutral observers to do the same: let's see what this turns into. And as for the haters, it's fine with me if you want to keep hating. Though this was not a deliberate strategy by Dustin (he is actually confused and hurt by all the hate), being controversial is actually a good thing for a publication.