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Comment by rp1 | Hacker News Reader

The advice is, in essence, to prioritize your mailing list over audiences on proprietary platforms like Twitter and TikTok. This may work for some, but mailing lists seem like they would be really ineffective for a lot of use cases.

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Yes, it's pretty focussed on mailing lists as alternative. Having a comment section may work too, but then, it shouldn't be hosted by discurs of course, and you have the trouble of managing it.

Same goes with your own forum, but it's not worth mentioning it almost, since nowadays everyone seems so opposed to a forum. But I believe, a good alternative for a mailing list is RSS (for the people who are tired of signing up for stuff).

A mailing list is generally made of people who are a lot more engaged and willing to support you. Twitter and tiktok are places you use network effect to try to grow your committed customer base but the conversion rate is much lower than a mailing list.

I think it also depends on business model and product but mailing lists are fundamentally more targeted than social media. You still need both to some degree.

The advice is more generalizable than that: move your audience into content in spaces that you own -- not spaces that Zuckbook or Google or TikTok own.

I don't think the advice is the move your audience to spaces you own. The advice is to move your audience to spaces you own that intersect with spaces they go often. E.g. moving users into a forum you run wouldn't work because it would require your users to explicitly go to your forum. Mailing lists work because people go to their email inboxes often. I'm struggling to think of another place people go often that isn't a proprietary platform.

Mailing lists probably don't work well for some demographics that don't use e-mail significantly, e.g. teens.

Not necessarily "prioritize" so much as "make sure you have good and solid backup." Proprietary platforms are free advertising that can get taken away whenever, so understand the risks of using them. Good mitigation is to maintain strong lines of communication beyond those.

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