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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

all of these ideas that sound cool to a very techy type person, but "moms" are not going to do this. they enjoy getting these ads in their inbox. just because some techy type wants something does not mean the general masses wants the same thing.

this is already way more complicated than "moms" want to do: generate a new email, use that email in this new form, get a feed reader (wtf is that mom says). while this is perfectly fine for power users, it just makes me smile how often we forget there are a far larger number of non-power users that are out there

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This doesn't appear to be a product marketed to "moms." But it also isn't clear how it works at all for a "power user" like me.

If you're not targeting "moms", then you're not going to come anywhere near killing the newsletter. You probably won't even give it merely a flesh wound it. Probably closer to just a scratch.

So who is it marketed towards with a title of Kill The Newsletter?

This might have worked before Google killed Reader when personal blogs ruled the Internet, but nothing has come along to fill that void.

Also, a lot of rss feeds now only offer the title of the post/article. I still need to visit the pages anyway to get to the content. With a newsletter, i receive a bit of context around the content as well.

There are feed readers that will load the pages when you click on the title

While true, it adds even more uncertainty for non-technical users.

I'm not sure I understand what you (and others in this thread) are getting at.

Non-technical users can simply subscribe to the newsletter with their email address. If they don't understand what this project is about, they probably don't need and don't want it.

Users that prefer RSS over email use kill-the-newsletter for outlets that don't offer RSS.

i was (badly) explaining why most people prefer the newsletter format.

And from what i've read, even the technical users prefer it most of the time.

Not to mention, marketing isn't going to do this. I bet email more push notification system vs Atom feed that is just hanging out waiting for attention gets more engagement.

Yeah, feeds sound cool except there are too damn many of them.

I have to monitor my phone, Teams, Slack, email, and some other bespoke notification channel my employer invented. It's too much, I don't want more. As much as possible I try to get stuff pushed into email, as once it's there I can interact with the message in the same way, no matter the source.

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