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Comment by rainsford | Hacker News Reader

I know that post and thread is sort of a joke, but investing in Twitter killing companies seems like a pretty good call right now. Twitter built up a lot of demand for that kind of service, and Elon seems to be doing his best to make a lot of those people seek out alternatives. I don't know if Substack is one of those direct alternatives, but I could see it drawing off demand for some of the reasons people use Twitter.

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Ben Thompson (Stratechery) said that Twitter couldn’t exist if it was created in todays environment. The chance of getting enough users to engage with something like Twitter in a world with Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Twitter couldn’t even make a profitable company.

There's space for a "classy" or "thinking person's" social media company - Substack could be that.

Substack is the platform for people who _think_ they're a "thinking person".

Yes, just as every fashion company makes its money from people who think they would be really, really, really ridiculously good-looking if they wear these specific clothes.

Selling aspirations is a pretty good business model.

Yeah, and most people aren't thinking people, so it sounds like they have their market figured out.

Is that space profitable? And isn’t it also littered with conspiracy theorists? I don’t subscribe to any so I don’t know.

They used to call that "Letters to the Editor".

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