Newsletter platform Substack is introducing the ability for writers to send videos to their subscribers via Chat, its direct messaging feature, the company announced on Wednesday.
The rollout of video in Chat comes two months after the newsletter platform brought videos to Notes, its X/Twitter copycat that lets users share short-form content.
To share a video in Substack Chat, writers can open a new chat and click on the plus icon in the bottom left corner.
Substack also provides the option to add a caption, put the video behind a paywall, as well as email subscribers about the video.
Additionally, writers who allow subscribers to start their own chat threads will now also be able to share their own videos.
Substack is adding new capabilities to its Twitter-like Notes feature that bring it more in-line with the social network now known as X.
The company announced on Tuesday that users can now post videos directly to Notes in the Substack app and on the web.
Notes let users share posts, quotes, comments, images, links and ideas in a Tweet-like format, The short-form content is displayed in a dedicated Twitter-like feed.
Starting today, users can post videos directly to Notes by recording a video or selecting one from their phone’s camera roll or their desktop.
In its blog post, Substack explains that Notes is especially valuable for users who don’t have large pre-existing audiences.
According to a post from Ghost founder John O’Nolan, the company — which is structured as a nonprofit — is considering federating Ghost over ActivityPub, the social networking protocol that powers the fediverse.
It also asks how federation would personally benefit Ghost users.
With Ghost, however, the idea could be to federate the accounts of the writers who use Ghost to publish their content.
After seeing O’Nolan’s post, Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput reached out to help with the ActivityPub integration, which O’Nolan accepted.
In addition to Newton, other notable Ghost users include 404Media, Buffer, Kickstarter, David Sirota’s The Lever and Tangle, to name a few.
Most notably, the company is rolling out a Spotify integration that will allow podcasters on Substack to sync and distribute all of their free and paid episodes to Spotify’s streaming service.
Plus, the integration will allow Substack podcasters’ existing subscribers to listen to paid episodes on Spotify.
Podcasters on Substack can set up a Spotify integration by going into their podcast settings, opening the Spotify dropdown, and then clicking the “Sync to Spotify” option to create a new feed with all current and future episodes.
Paid episodes are labeled with a padlock, and listeners need to link their Substack account to Spotify to listen to paid episodes directly on the streaming service.
Substack plans to make this data accessible via a creator’s Substack podcast stats page in the future.
Substack is introducing direct messaging, allowing users to have private one-on-one conversations, the company announced today.
DMs can be accessed in the Chat tab on the Substack app and website.
After launching an X (formerly Twitter) clone last year called Notes, Substack is now copying yet another feature from the social network.
Substack says DMs was a highly requested feature among users, and many users have shared their excitement on the announcement post.
The launch of DMs comes a few days after Substack updated its peer-to-peer recommendation system, allowing writers to curate and share a list of publications for their readers to subscribe to.
Substack is updating its peer-to-peer recommendation system, the company announced today.
With this new update, Substack is helping writers aid other writers in expanding their reach and potentially getting more subscribers and followers, as the company is now allowing writers to curate and share a list of publications for their readers to subscribe to.
Most social media networks currently leverage algorithms for their recommendation systems, but Substack is instead focused on allowing writers to curate their own networks of recommendations.
Substack says the new update will help writers build up goodwill with other writers by helping them reach more people, while also helping readers curate a worldview.
The platform will show writers how many subscriptions and follows they have driven for people in their network.
Substack has industry-leading newsletter tools and a platform that independent writers flock to, but its recent content moderation missteps could prove costly.
Earlier last year, Substack CEO Chris Best failed to articulate responses to straightforward questions from the Verge Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel about content moderation.
The interview came as Substack launched its own Twitter (now X)-like microblogging social platform, known as Notes.
Substack authors are at a crossroadsIn the Substack fallout, which is ongoing, another wave of disillusioned authors is contemplating jumping ship from Substack, substantial readerships in tow.
It’s unfortunate that Substack’s writers and readers now have to grapple with yet another form of avoidable precarity in the publishing world.
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