Svbtle now open to the public | Hacker News Reader

Svbtle now open to the public

svbtle.com

44 pointsowenwil45 comments

Isn't this like shooting themselves in the foot? Svbtle exclusivity was the only differentiator, guaranteeing at least some quality of the content. Now it's gone and so Svbtle turns from a notable content source to just another blogging platform.

What am I missing?

This same comment, except replace "Svbtle" with "Facebook" back when they opened up registrations for college students outside the Ivy League. It's not too far off from the much ballyhooed Slashdot quote on the first ipod.

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame. http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ip...

What a brainfart of a comment. You are missing the point completely.

Facebook isn't a publishing platform. Apple didn't undermine its best feature in existing product by introducing iPod.

What an unnecessarily mean-spirited comment. Did you really need to say your first sentence?

That being said, maybe you're missing the point. Maybe svbtle wants to be a mainstream publishing platform and is just bootstrapping its initial user culture by curating the users. Maybe not.

Nothing.

I wanted to use it because I just wanted a blog that would look as good as Medium but that I can install on my own domain.

Any recommendations now that svbtle seems to have closed again?

I would say that Medium killed them. The problem with svbtle is that there was absolutely zero hope for a long time to get in. If they made it exclusive but there was some way to work your way in, I think they would have done fine but it's too late now.

Not so sure it's this simple. The market is pretty large. Not everything needs to be so black and white.

I agree. I think Dustin has a lot left to show.

Who?

Dustin Curtis (http://dcvrt.is), creator of Svbtle.

http://dcurt.is - FTFY

I don't know if you're just taking a stab at the name there, but at least supply the real URL.

Too late, it's over. I don't want it anymore. I can get the exact same stuff with minimalistic Jekyll/Pelican themes and Svbtle is not exclusive anymore.

"Use my template, it's cool". I don't understand Medium either.

As of 11:58PM CST, that web page says:

"Want to be a part of the network? Awesome. But for now, we’re invite-only. You can apply for an account below, and we’ll send an invitation when we’re ready."

Right... not exactly open to the public.

"twitter can't be blank"

Why not?

so does the last name, for some reason last name can't be blank, do we have to use our last names? it's not a must. why is it compulsory?

I don't know why it's not public to some people, i just signed up it was not as cool as i expected

http://ruky.svbtle.com/trying-my-thing-with-svblte

clearly, it's because they don't want royalty to join! ;)

(AFAIK, most royal families dont have last names)

They do, they just don't use them everyday. E.g. the Tudors were called the Tudors because that was their surname. Current lot are the Windsors I think.

Yes they are. They changed their surname to Windsor after high anti-German sentiment during WW1. [1]

Prior to that they were the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's.[2]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Windsor [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saxe-Coburg_and_Gotha#...

Surprised they don't also ask for your Klout score.

Probably because it is built around the assumption that the author has a twitter account.

I guess the question was, why would you make this assumption in the first place.

And at 12:14AM CST it was a public signup for me...

Approx 1:40 AM EST:

    "Want to be a part of the network? Awesome. But for now,
    we’re invite-only. You can apply for an account below, 
    and we’ll send an invitation when we’re ready."

Okay, great. So...

    "Something went wrong, and an error has occurred."

I wovld like to vse this or listen to Chvrches, but I gvess neither option is set in stone.

I wld prfr SBTRKT or MSTRKRFT.

Check out Trve Brewery if you're ever in Denver.

In a very sarcastic voice I would like to say how excited I am.

Moving on to the next story...

Oh, lucky me. Signup seems to have been disabled while I was filling out the form (I was greeted with the form without Twitter handle forced etc). When I pressed "Apply" or whatever it said, I got to a page that said "Sorry, but we can't find that page.". Now mobile and desktop site redirects /signup to /apply. What a mess.

What's the point of this? Can't you just use Obtvse?

It appeared to only be open for a few moments. It was then redirecting to /apply. As of a few moments ago you could /signup again, but the accounts beings created have issues.

Jeepers Creepers, boys! Get your act together.

Probably a bad PR stunt. Not sure why they'd need that though; I'd rate their competition Medium at best...

I wonder how much of this is influenced by medium and the approach they've taken.

Groucho said it best... I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member. That said, opening it up would be a mistake, ask A Small World, aka the affluent circle jerkers. (Still miffed Paris Hilton never wrote me back).

Oh well. I was looking forward to it but now I've got Ghost and it does pretty much everything I want it to.

i was never fooled by their "we're too good for you" stance, so i'm not even slightly inclined to apply for access. ever.

one of the best things about the web is that nobody has to ask permission from anyone else to make their speech free.

-bowerbird

i don't think the internet is free. Everything has a price. For example if you blog you've to pay for hosting, for a domain. Although $10 is nothing for for some asian countries it's a big communt.

If you get it free still you can only do that until their money runs out like what happened to tumblr or else they'll put ads like what yahoo is about to do to tumblr. And wordpress ads that suck.

So the internet is not free as people think it is.

when i was talking about free speech, i was talking about "free" as in "speech", not "free" as in "beer".

although, to be honest, i also know of no free beer.

-bowerbird

Somehow I got in without an invite. Lucky me?

Yes, because now it's broken.

"Open to the public" doesn't mean restricted signup, we'll choose at our discretion.

What is it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com