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by jerrya 4902 days ago
Congratulations to Svtble for their funding.

I am curious as to what their business plan is, especially for a blog network that strives to minimalism, having an ad presence would seem anathema.

And to that end, I am curious why anyone would fund them -- what is it that they offer in terms of being able to generate income that makes them more viable than say, any old "webring" that uses the same CSS?

Or makes them different from various other focused blogging sites: science 2.0, freethoughtblogs, pjmedia, etc., none of which seem to be doing especially well as far as I know.

My problem with svbtle is that unlike Salon/The Atlantic/ArsTechnica/JUST ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE/ since there is no masthead, or links from one svtble writer to another, so at this moment, I don't see a real difference between svbtle the company, and svtble the CSS design sheet. So I don't see how they build up brand, or how they build on top of network effects since they don't link from one author to another. (And should ads be added and mastheads and footers added well will social toolbars and unother unsubtle widgets be far behind?)

And while I read svbtle when I come across it, I find their content not much better, not much worse than anyone elses.

(I will say, I am much less put off by svtble writers once I had adblock plus block their 0-click kudos.)
1 comments
bpatrianakos 4902 days ago
My thoughts exactly. But now you're a hater and you just don't get it. It's okay though because I'm there with you. In the end a lot of us will be searching for the answer to the question "why is this so special" and the reason we're so baffled is because we assume that the simplest answer can't be right. But I think it is! THe answer is that this is nothing more than a regular blog network with a minimalist theme and a well known SV insider. It's about the feeling and not what it actually is. Simple as that.

But you know, there's really nothing wrong with that! The problem I have is that so many want to pass this off like it's something new and special when really it's the same old shit with a new name. Maybe if someone would just say "yeah, DCurtis is creating a blog network and it's cool because of who he is, who he knows, and the stylesheet" then I'd be happy and say "cool, I'll read it".

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