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by nelsonweiss 4950 days ago
Okay- Question for you Cmod: Why do you think that keeping issues at all is a good thing?

Issues is one of those throwbacks to physical publishing. When you have to physically print and distribute, issues are a good thing... but online you can just publish an article when it's ready.

You mentioned how you think "edge" is important, so I would guess one of your arguments might be that a "publish on completion" stream is the exact opposite of edge. However, couldn't you just create artificial edges? For instance, showing the articles for the past 7 days?

1 comments

Issues certainly create edges. They also allow for thematic grouping (which is good for editorial guidance).

Mainly though, they limit the number of times a reader is pinged. I'm a big advocate for grouping all notifications, not just 'content' — only notify me if #_notifications > x. Issues can be a kind of inherent frequency limiter.

That said, they're absolutely not necessary and most online publishing (rightly) has no concept of issues.

"However, couldn't you just create artificial edges? For instance, showing the articles for the past 7 days?"

Yes — and I think more apps should allow for this.

Facebook is a great example (IMO, but clearly not in the opinion of many others) of doing just this — taking a near infinite stream of one-offs and grouping them based on your Facebook use frequency / habits. Twitter's (Summify) summary articles are another good implementation of this: what happened in my stream yesterday?

Next question- what amount of money constitutes a digital aware subscription price? What range? And how are you determining this price?

Second (though related), what is the place of advertising in this theoretical subcompact publication?