sachinmonga

Ahh, sorry about that poor experience! And thanks for sharing the domains - will pass this along. If you get stuck in the auth loop again, our support team is very responsive.

Yes! Very excited to build more readability features and customization.

1. Account switching and/or being able to merge accounts is a totally reasonable idea. Right now you can theoretically sign out / sign in with a different email address but I know that's a pain

2. Good feedback re: the orange dot! I'll pass that along to our Designer.

3. This is also a good idea, but unfortunately a little less straightforward to get right 100% of the time as email clients increasingly start to get in the way of tracking pixels visibility.

> after commenting on one newsletter, it becomes impossible to comment on any other newsletter without compromising my privacy.

We tried to build reader profiles in a way that can handle this nicely - you can choose on a per-subscription basis which publications to display on your profile and which you'd like to keep hidden. This is almost like an anonymous subscription although it doesn't quite support a fully anonymous commenting use case, since theoretically someone could recognize you from different comment sections.

One thing I could see us trying in the future is giving writers more control over who can comment and how, on their particular publications. Already, writers can choose whether to allow comments from all subscribers, only paid subscribers, or to turn off comments entirely. Allowing writers to choose to support anonymous commenting doesn't seem out of the question.

Thanks!

- The iPad experience is admittedly not as amazing as it could be, and something I'm excited to improve big time down the road. For now, the app should respect your dynamic type settings (in case you have your font set larger at the iOS level)

- Yep, there's a toggle you can access from your Profile Tab > Notifications

- Right now the offline experience is so-so but not perfectly optimized. If you refresh your Inbox right before a flight your recent posts should be cached nicely and readable while offline.

Thanks! I definitely had that realization too when I first downloaded the app, and it's been a not uncommon experience.

Technically that was the 2nd release ;)

We submitted v1.0.1 the moment that v1.0 was released and shipped it on launch day as soon as it was approved by Apple.

Definitely. The current Discover tab in the app is admittedly pretty basic - just search, the same featured publications from the homepage on substack.com, and categories. We have a lot of ideas for how to improve this tab, as well as other discover mechanisms throughout the app.

One area I'm especially excited about: discovery through the lens of the writers you trust. What are those writers reading themselves? What else are their readers (whose taste you ostensibly share) reading? We have a light version of this already with reader profiles in the app (and on web) - when you subscribe to a publication, you can choose whether to display it on your profile. Lots more we could do though.

> As a user I don't mind an app from a technical perspective. It gives me more options! But what are the things the app can do that the web cannot?

A simple but important one: being able to get a notification on your phone when a new post lands in your inbox. There are lots of subtle little things around readability, scroll performance, etc. too. There are also a decent number of Podcasts on Substack now, and listening in a web player (on mobile) is a pretty sub-par experience.

It's definitely not optimal, I'll be the first to admit. With limited resources, it really comes down to sequencing. We could have sat on the iPhone app until the Android app was ready to launch, but shipping on one platform ASAP allows us to start learning what's working / what's not working and ultimately improve the product that goes out the door on day 1 on Android.

In the iOS app, we don't support in-app-purchases (subscribers can upgrade to paid via email/web) so there's no 30% take from Apple.

Aww, thank you for the kind words. It was fun to get to sneak in some of the Cocoon design patterns here and there throughout the Substack app :)

Bundles of some kind are an often-requested feature by both writers and readers. Something we're really mindful of: the direct connection between reader and writer is the magic that makes the whole Substack model work. So we would be very wary of a bundle product that abstracted that connection. However, I do think there are ways to do a bundle that keep that direct connection front and center, keeping the reader in control, and maintaining the writer's ownership of their audience. It's an interesting problem to think about!

Thanks! Curious if you use dynamic type on your phone? Right now those settings should be respected by the app. In-app settings are on the roadmap too (themes, font selection, type size) but in the mean time maybe that's a helpful stopgap.

> Also, for a "quick win", have you considered adding the ability for authors to generate unique URLs for sharing posts? Ideally with separated analytics.

That's a cool idea! Is your intended use case being able to easily spin up different URLs so that you could share them in different places and see which ones drive the most traffic / subscriptions?

To answer your question a bit more specifically, one thing that's starting to work as a nice discovery loop in the app is being able to tap on a commenter's profile and see what other Substacks that person is subscribed to. Reader profiles existed before the app, but since comments don't render in emails (but do in the app), this discovery loop was pretty constrained.

We have some other exciting ideas in the works for helping readers discover more writers through the lens of the writers they already trust, that the app will provide a nice canvas for.

Thanks for the kind words!

The nice thing about "network-first" products like Medium and Twitter is that there's a large audience baked in (as you mention) that you can tap into is a small time writer. But the trade-off is that you don't own your audience - you can build up followers, but you don't have a direct connection to them outside of that product. You typically don't get their email addresses, and you can't take your audience with you if you choose to leave.

You also don't necessarily own your work! I was a huge fan of Medium when it launched, and an early active writer. One day, my best performing post got added to someone else's collection, and now it "lives" in some random space that I have nothing to do with (https://medium.com/p/3eadcdc56ff2). This was a pretty frustrating experience.

We think there's a way to have your cake and eat it too: own your own audience, and be in full control. But also get access to a network of readers that grows over time. We're trying to take a deliberate and thoughtful approach to growing the destination for readers, and the app is a major step.

I tagged in one of our lead engineers to talk about the tech stack, but can chime in re: considerations for multi-platform.

We are sprinting as fast as we can to get an Android app out the door. We're also planning on investing more in the reader experience on web. Some time ago, we launched a web reader (reader.substack.com) in beta and have some exciting ideas in the works to evolve that surface.

Beyond Android, when it smaller platforms like iPad / Desktop apps, it's mostly a matter of looking at the data and listening to users. With a small team, we have to be judicious with prioritization, and as we increase the surface area for readers it's important that the experience for writers remains clear (right now their readers can already read on email, web, and mobile).

Sachin here (from Substack). I for one would be stoked about a MacOS app, although it's probably not the highest priority thing right now :)

Our next step within the Apple universe will most likely be to build an amazing iPad optimized experience. Right now the app works on iPad, but it's definitely not as great as it could be. A better iPad app would also be a good starting foundation for MacOS (and work on Silicon macs out the gate).

Cocoon | Android Engineer (FTE) | San Francisco | Onsite (remote currently)

Cocoon is a dedicated digital space for families to gather and keep each other close. Over the past few weeks, we've been inspired by the thousands of groups coming together in Cocoon - and now we're urgently looking for a senior Android Engineer to help bring it to broader audience. We're a small + nimble team with backgrounds from Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, IDEO, etc.

More about our mission here https://cocoon.com/about.html and the team/role here https://cocoon.com/team.html

To apply, reach out directly: [email protected]

RE: Royal Bank of Canada, their access to the Messages API was specifically to let people send money to their friends via Messenger through the RBC app.

In Canada, the only way method for P2P money transfer is through a system called Interac, which relies on email addresses. Using Facebook Login + Messenger was a big improvement since it's harder to accidentally send money to the wrong person.

William Whyte should be required reading for anyone building an app intending to facilitate interaction. I probably reference his book (http://www.amazon.com/Social-Life-Small-Urban-Spaces/dp/0970...) more than any book on actual product design when working on social products @ Facebook!

Ha, this was all I could think about while reading.

Missing the biggest one: 3 offset columns to display entries, a la Pinterest.

I'll definitely have to check out How Buildings Learn, your description sounds great. Both Brand and Kelly have really interesting views on the implications and effects on cities.

There's a great full section on cities in Whole Earth Discipline, and here are some of Kevin Kelly's writings you might like:

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/01/fossil_cities...

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/07/cities_are_im...

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/05/whos_your_cit...

Hey everyone -

The goal with H4aC is to turn this into a movement.

We're trying to do the opposite of the TEDx model - minimize the red tape, but maximize the support. We're trying to build a framework for running a successful Hack and I'd love to get the HN community's thoughts on what we've got so far (http://hackforacause.org/build.html). Borrowed heavily from agile and lean principles, but scaling back the development cycle into 10 hours of coding is an interesting challenge.

We also relied heavily on tools like Dropbox and Github to centralize design assets and plan on open sourcing all the code.

I'm actually amazed we were able to ship 12 code-complete products including an API and I'd love to be able to build a framework to allow people in any community to run a successful Hack. Planning is underway for events in Dublin, Buenos Aires, Palo Alto, and Beijing and if you'd like to get involved or create a new community please reach out!

Thanks,

Sachin