A friend of mine recently started publishing on Svbtle, a super-classy, invite-only blogging platform. I like the super-classy part, not so much the invite-only part. Can we have classy and open?
The only way I get to see Svbtle's editing interface is when its creator, Dustin Curtis, deigns to show me. Turns out I love it. It feels like Apple to me. And like Apple, Svbtle whiffs of totalitarianism. Are these two traits, high quality and crushing control, inseparable? From Dustin:
I’ve decided to open [Svbtle] up to a small number of vetted bloggers. At least at first. The goal is simple: when you see the Svbtle design, you should know that the content is guaranteed to be great.
When I see the Svbtle design, I think, "Gee, I wish I were part of this elite club." If it were really about the content, Svbtle would be more like The Economist. It would downplay the identity of the authors. It would have a consistent editorial voice. It would skip the short filler posts. It would occasionally produce more in-depth pieces as collaborations between multiple authors. Instead, Svbtle turns each author's personal brand into a big, throbbing distraction: it's the one thing that's fixed as you scroll through page after page of what, in the end, are rather ordinary tech blogs. "Don't forget! I'm an invited, vetted author of content that's guaranteed to be great! Are you?!" Puh-leez.
One way for Svbtle to deliver on its promise of great content is more control. Apple works because of the coercion of employment. However, it's much harder (to say the least) to coerce a network of independent bloggers. Instead of coercion, Svbtle could try cooperation. But it's hard enough for Apple to be Apple, even with direct financial incentives. It would take a special bunch of bloggers to give up their personal page rank to deliver on the Svbtle promise together. On the other hand, I happen to think that Python is as elegant as Apple, and all the more remarkable for having been built cooperatively. I dream of the day when cooperative elegance spreads beyond software developer tools.
I have this idea that gist.io could be a decentralized, cooperative counterpart to Svbtle. I published my first gist here recently, and I caught myself worrying about the page rank I was giving up by not publishing on my own site. I went ahead with it for a few reasons:
- It was the path of least resistance to getting the content up.
- I wanted to violate some mild taboos, so the slight distance from my online persona was a plus.
- Gist.io felt interesting, and I wanted to experience it more.
- I had had a positive interaction with the founder of gist.io, Idan Gazit, and wanted to support him.
It's important that gist.io is not fully anonymous. As we know, anonymity on the Internet reduces content quality. Gist.io strikes just the right balance between anonymity and personal identity. The identity of the author is one deemphasized click away, and it's not nearly the distraction it is on Svbtle.
Gist.io could be a formal counterpart to Svbtle, as a really slick, minimalist blogging platform. To be honest, it's not there. But it's open source, and it's good enough that I'm motivated to participate in making it better. I wish Dustin Curtis would, too. We need people with his taste that can also work together with the 50% of us who are below average.
Of course, gist.io could never make guarantees about the quality of its content, by virtue of its decentralization and openness. However, in my view, Svbtle doesn't either. In the absence of guarantees, I think Svbtle's kudos feature is a brilliant way to give us a quick view of a piece of content's impact.
If Svbtle was open to anyone to join, was developed as open source, and sufficiently deemphasized authors (without making them fully anonymous), I would love it 100%. Dustin gives me some hope when he says that Svbtle will be closed, "[a]t least at first." Until he opens it up, I'm going to publish on gist.io, and look for time to borrow ideas from Svbtle and contribute them to gist.io.