Substack launches Twitter lookalike Notes after Musk clampdown

Days after Twitter restricted hyperlinks posted by on-line e-newsletter publishing platform Substack, the latter has made its Notes function public. Much like Twitter, Notes is a brand new house on Substack the place customers can publish short-form posts with photos, hyperlinks and gifs.

Notes, which has been in testing with a small group of writers in current weeks, was made public on April 11.

A Twitter various?

“Notes helps writers’ and creators’ work travel through the Substack network for new readers to discover. You can share links, images, quick thoughts, and snippets from Substack posts. As well as being lightweight and fun, we hope that Notes will help writers grow their audience and revenue,” the platform stated in a weblog publish.

Admitting that the product “looks like familiar social media feeds” it stated the important thing distinction is that the “Substack network runs on paid subscriptions, not ads. This changes everything”.

Also learn | Why journalist Matt Taibbi, Substack and Elon Musk’s Twitter are at loggerheads

Taking to Twitter, Substack founder and CEO Chris Best stated, “What you’ll see today on Notes is just the beginning. This release is an early version of the product that we have been testing with a small group of writers in recent weeks.”

Twitter has restricted promotion and visibility of tweets with hyperlinks to Substack posts after the corporate introduced that it’s engaged on Notes.

Musk, Taibbi fall out over Notes

In protest, Matt Taibbi, an impartial journalist and writer well-known for releasing the Twitter Files, give up the microblogging platform.

“It turns out Twitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival,” Taibbi wrote in a Substack publish he titled “The Craziest Friday Ever,” including: “I’m staying at Substack.”

However, Twitter proprietor Elon Musk denied Taibbi’s claims and stated that the latter was an worker of Substack.

“Matt’s assertion is fake. Substack was attempting to obtain an enormous portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone, so their IP deal with is clearly untrusted,” Musk tweeted.

He added that it seems that “Matt is/was an employee of Substack.”

Best reaction

Substack CEO Chris Best called the whole situation “very frustrating” and refuted Musk via his Substack Notes post.

“Substack links have been obviously severely throttled on Twitter. Anyone using the product can see this. We have used the Twitter API, for years, to help writers. We believe we’re in compliance with the terms, but if they have any specific concerns we would love to know about them. We’d be happy to address any issues,” Best wrote in the post.

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