Notes origin story
I was just listening to the latest What Bitcoin Did podcast episode. It's an interview with Doomberg, a bloke that appears to put his voice through a modifier of some type. I guess he's a bit paranoid about privacy. I think he's the front of some sort of bitcoin policy advocat group. Interesting interview. Anyway right at the end they talk about Twitter, or X as it's now called.He speaks about his decision to stop posting on X because of the way the platform has been discriminating against Substack, and other X competitors. The Doomberg (collective?) have a popular Substack newsletter. I wasn't aware that the situation was that bad. That's not good. I've got a Substack too! Nowhere near as popular, but still, it feels gross to be contributing to a platform that is trying to hurt me.
He has decided to only post on Substack, newsletters but also on their Notes app. It totally hadn't occurred to me that Substack had a Notes app as I was creating my latest feature. I did hear about Substack Notes when it was released, but I didn't look at it much. It didn't really catch my attention. I don't know what it is exactly.
For me the idea of a Notes app goes back much further. When I first started my career in tech, for the first 10 years or so I kept notebooks. Propper ringbound paper notebooks. Everyday I would write down the date at the top of a new page and write a todo list. I'd port the previous days unfinished todos, get rid of unneeded items, and add a few new items. As I went about my day, below the todos I'd write notes. Notes about stuff I was doing, or things I was planning, meetings I'd have etc. I ended up with many many of these notebooks, which I kept in boxes ordered by year. It was quite a collection.
Anyway, all that to say that when I created my recent Notes feature, I had those notebooks in mind. I also took inspiration from others online that work in the open. Absolutely nothing to do with Substack at all. I like Substack, I hope their Notes app is successful. #