It was nice chatting with you, my friends!

Developments and trying things out

Photo by Frank Leuderalbert on Unsplash

It is strange how life on a social medium is moving all the time. Thinking back just a month or two, everything was different.

Of course, there are the measures, telling about numbers of people and the number of times they are doing different things, and such numbers are accumulating endlessly, but at varying speed.

But also the features available on the platform, and how they are used – how I use them – change.

An example: I posted a note that was just a silly joke, and it became my all-time smash-hit of a viral post on Substack Notes:

Yes, you see it right: 11 likes!

Most other notes get zero or just one, or maybe a couple. I have been told many times that I should just keep posting, then the readers will come. I have tried out different kinds of contents, both serious, thoughtful, funny, and silly.

I even tried changing my time zone through VPN, thinking that the system may have a preference for people from the USA (as it could seem from the many popular posts from there), but with no result.

An attempt to be informative and scientific turned out like this:

I had thought that it could lead to a talk about what works and what not, but no. Even a Merry Christmas went unnoticed:

Yet, my stream is full of notes like this one, often telling something like “this is my first post, I’m completely new here”:

She does look cute and has healthy interests, and a nice photo is always popular. But she starts at a higher level, I must say. 710 likes, so far. I guess that if she keeps posting, she will reach the sky.

I will not here and now bring more examples, but it seems like the concept of Notes is a tricky one. Personally, I don’t want to spend much time on it, as it doesn’t seem to have any real effect on my engagement here: nobody starts subscribing or telling me important things as a result of my notes, except for the few great people who do show me that attention – and who I appreciate a lot.

Now, my own posts are one matter, the posts of others – another:

I was one of the first to reply to this catching story about the price of shoelaces, and it just keeps bringing in likes, shares, and comments.

I don’t see the point of posting something like this, and it doesn’t bring me subscribers either, so I will not go that way very often. Perhaps, if I feel lonely and want to talk to someone, and I don’t want to talk to the wall of my own notes, then I can simulate some social activity through a reply like that.

During the last couple of months, I created some accounts on Bluesky, hoping that they could help attract some attention to my publications on Substack.

It doesn’t really work as I hoped for, but I didn’t believe in it anyway, so that’s as expected. They did, however, get high rankings on a Google search, meaning that they help drag attention to my company website – which was the original reason for creating a newsletter on Substack. So somehow the full circle of things help each other to work.

One very strange thing happened on Notes! I posted a question about integration with Bluesky, and a few days later, there were suddenly menu items for this! Not exactly as I had asked for, but still – some coincidence! And maybe only that, but I like to imagine that at least the Substack staff has read my post, if nobody else:

Well, all-in-all, Notes is crap.

There is no value in it for me, as it doesn’t give me anything, and it doesn’t allow me to give anything to others. A complete waste of time and resources. But as I do want to talk to other people and hear their thoughts, I tried out the Substack Chat.

Through each of my two publications, All of Life and Turning Life, I introduced a new chat, and I was happy to see that several people actually took part in the chat!

As if this wasn’t enough, I also got a response to a previous attempt, on the Chat of my Data Analytics publication.

The topics of the three chats were:

• Notes and Chat

• AI

• Statistics

All chats took place during the last few days, so it has been a chatty week for me ;)

And they are still open for more comments.

I have set up the pubs so that Chat works for all subscribers, but not for non-subscribers. I hope that this helps in making it feel more relevant and even safe to take part in it.

And I can’t stress enough how happy I am to see that it works! That there are real reactions from real people with thoughts and lives that they are open to talk about. It changes Substack from being a cold outlet of articles into being a real social space.

This, of course, together with the occasional comments and chats that appear on each article, but I still feel that Chat has a potential for deeper conversations.

So, this has come to stay. I plan to not over-do it, and perhaps a new chat each week or so will be appropriate, on each of the two pubs about life.

I have set up things so that only I can start chats, so please just suggest a topic if you have one (direct message or a comment on one of my posts will work). If it seems wanted, and safe, I may later decide to open for everyone to be able to start a chat.

To those who took part in the chats, my warmest “Thank You”!

And to all other subscribers: You are very welcome too!