13 November 2014
A slightly longer response to last night.
With Two Microsofts, I saw that Ben Thompson started including the entire article in Stratechery’s newsletter for new posts. Apparently, it’s been that way since the previous article. Here’s why I’m likeliest to be sold via email: brevity. A tweet oftentimes falls short in trying to explain the authors line of thinking on a complex topic. Even if it is contained appropriately somehow, the reader may not have a deep interest in the topic, and might avoid it entirely. A disproportionate number of the articles are really good on Stratechery, but some don’t interest me enough (like Two Microsofts). Which is normal. Same goes for when Federico Viticci writes/speaks about games on MacStories or Virtual, Shawn Blanc writes about exquisite stationery, Marco Arment writes about Coffee, and anyone else writes on the internet about something which isn’t of my interest (yet?). Typically, I skim Twitter to find something of interest. When I do find it, I either read it immediately or save it for later. For the writers mentioned above, I can safely skim because I know I’ve subscribed elsewhere. In case I miss it, or am not inclined to reading it, Nuzzel recommendations are really useful. Inevitably, really good analysis and writing is shared en masse. If I avoid it there too, Ben Thompson, Benedict Evans, and the others re-post their articles to refresh my memory of their recent writing. This funnels down to RSS. I read almost every single RSS entry. Again, I might just decide that I don’t have any interest on the said topic and move on.
The last link in this daisy chain is email. It is still effective in so many ways. I know what to expect. I signed up for it. The sender should realize this as well. Getting through email is a task in itself; I can’t tie myself up to reading an entire article there. Even tapping an image takes me to the browser. Overhead.
The writer has an opportunity here: tell me why it’s important with a little more context. I’ll click.
Circling back to Stratechery, of course I didn’t notice the new newsletter format with the previous (excellent Apple’s Leverage and the future of Apple Pay) article because I’d archived the email on account of me finding it elsewhere. I certainly didn’t expect the entire article to be there.