NEWSLETTER
Substack newsletter platform Announced Today it’s introducing several new features, including Private Substacks. A private Substack is a post that you can host yourself or readers can request to subscribe to read your posts. Writers can choose to approve or reject each subscription request.
in a blog post, Substack explained that Substack private accounts work similar to private Instagram profiles. A private Substack can be used to keep in touch with friends, build communities of interest, and test the waters for a new post, the company says.
Users can change their Substack from public to private at any time by navigating to their settings and selecting “Private” in the “Import” section. Once a user makes their post private, readers will not be able to see any post. When a reader requests to subscribe to a Substack, the writer will receive an email notification with her details. He can see requests from him on his Subscribers page. If you approve a request, the reader will be automatically subscribed and sent a welcome email.
The release of the new feature comes as Substack was hoping to capitalize on Twitter’s turmoil following its acquisition of Elon Musk. The company openly targeted at the Twitter user base in recent months and recently threw his hat into the ring as a more direct competitor to the launch of Substack Chatwhich allows writers to communicate directly with their loyal readers right on the Substack mobile app.
Image Credits: substack
Now, the company is pushing a bit further into the social media giant’s territory by offering private Substacks. Twitter has offered the ability to make your account private for many years, and also offers Twitter Circle, which allows you to tweet to a smaller audience of your choosing. With its chat feature, Substack was also taking on other online communities like Discord and Slack, which also offer private settings. Substack’s new offering could be seen as a way for the company to align its platform with the companies it seeks to compete with.
As for the other new Substack features rolling out today, the company is rolling out new updates for its aforementioned chat feature. The new updates are designed to make it easier to start conversations with existing subscribers. Now when you share a new post, podcast or video, you can instantly start a conversation in Chat by automatically sharing the link with a caption in your chat.
For users with more than one Substack post, the company is introducing a new feature that allows users to easily switch between posts without having to remember multiple usernames and passwords. Another new feature allows users to “duplicate” posts, allowing them to easily reuse templates instead of reformatting each post from scratch.
The company is also introducing search enhancements as a web search button is now prominently displayed in the top right corner. Searching for keywords will bring up the three most relevant posts. Readers can now also search keywords to find posts, posts, and people from their web inbox. Additionally, math and science writers can now embed math equations into any publication using LaTeX.
