The new Twitter alternative: Substack Notes

We have a new legitimate Twitter alternative. With Twitter becoming a sinking ship for so many reasons, I’ve been looking for another quick-publish service to use. Heh. Just today, I said I was going to use my blog on mattmaldre.com to publish quick thoughts. And then a mere 30 minutes later Substack announces “Notes”. A place where writers can post quick thoughts.

The composition box for Notes asks “What’s on your mind?”

So that’s how this all starts. The composition box in Substack notes asks this open-ended question. What is on your mind? I’m thinking about how this box is much like the Twitter composition box in 2007.

Twitter’s composition box in 2007 gave the prompt, “What are you doing?” My first tweet was, “Signing up for twitter, duh”.

And now, instead of asking, “What are you doing?” Substack wants to know what is on your mind.

There’s a stark contrast between these two questions.

• “What are you doing?” is a mundane inquiry that invites the writer to share their daily activities, like sharpening a pencil or eating a donut.
• “What’s on your mind?” invites the writer to explore the depths of their imagination, fears, and dreams. How do I fill the Substack notes box with all my mind’s desires? It’s an open-ended inquiry that invites writers to explore their innermost thoughts and express them in this notes box.

Even the interface of Notes looks a lot like Twitter.

Here’s a screenshot of my timeline on Notes:

For reference, here’s the Twitter stream:

As you can see, it looks almost exactly like Twitter. They both have the same icons under the note/tweet. Except Note has their icons in a different order:

• Twitter’s order:
  1. Reply
  2. Retweet
  3. Like
• Notes’ order:
  1. Like
  2. Reply
  3. Re-note

Big difference, right? lol

Why Substack is set to replace Twitter

I’m certainly welcoming the new world of Substack Notes. If anyone were going to make a Twitter alternative, Substack would be up on that list. They already have a large group of writers using the Substack to a large audience. The introduction to Notes says, “There are more than 35 million active subscriptions to writers on Substack, including more than 2 million paid subscriptions.” With all these existing subscriptions and writers, Notes can get a good kickstart.

Substack can now have both types of content: Long-form essays and short-form tweet-like posts.

Go Substack, go!

I’d love it if you followed me on Substack.

You can find my Substack profile as Matt Maldre. I don’t have a publication yet. But I’ll use the notes feature. For my first note, I wrote a summary of this blog post.