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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

Svbtle’s dashboard is designed to work the same way your brain works. It encourages you to dump ideas, links, and thoughts into a flow of draft posts, and then makes it easy to slowly sculpt those ideas into publishable articles. It just feels natural.

This isn't the type of marketing copy that makes me want to use the product, and in-fact drives me away from it. Contrast with Medium's more neutral, objective copy: https://medium.com/p/8d615d86ac04

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Why does the copy drive you away from it? Serious question since I didn't think one way or the other about it.

I'm curious too. It wasn't really compelling copy (for me), but I don't see why Medium's would be better in this case.

I don't feel it as strongly as minimaxir apparently does, but the copy bugged me in the way a lot of products focused on the Apple core audience do. It's impressed with itself and encourages you to be impressed with yourself as well.

Personally, I prefer a more matter-of-fact approach. The less bullshit I get in a marketing pitch, the less I worry that they need to bullshit me to cover up for issues I haven't yet discovered. But then, I'm not in Svbtle's target market; I'm very unlikely to use a hosted platform to publish.

...the copy bugged me in the way a lot of products focused on the Apple core audience do. It's impressed with itself...

Definitely! Having just got back from watching the X Games, the comparison that springs to mind is that this sort of thing bugs me the way any opinion column published in any Aspen CO newspaper bugs me. "When I think about how perceptive and fortunate I am to have chosen to live in such a wonderful community..."

"When I think about how perceptive and fortunate I am to have chosen to live in such a wonderful community..."

I grew up in a ski town. I bet the locals fucking love him.

Maybe it's a Colorado thing? It reminds me of the same coffee shop conversation I used to overhear: 'I just love living in Boulder, it's so diverse.' Said by white person to other white person on a day I went only saw white people on the way to the office with all white people before I went home to a largely white community.

I'm sure they were great people and I loved my neighborhood in the suburbs but it and Boulder were anything but diverse from an ethic or cultural point of view.

the way a lot of products focused on the Apple core audience do. It's impressed with itself and encourages you to be impressed with yourself as well.

Huh. I've never thought of it in those words, its a great explanation for the tone of writing has been driving me batty. The first self-congratulatory superfluous adjective I see puts me directly into "I'm being lied to" mode.

Because my brain doesn't necessarily work how your brain works. Saying they've figured out how the brain works is like saying they've figured out how fashion works or design works. Everyone does things differently, so their preferred method may not be the best for me.

Well, he did study neuroscience for a while, I think he's informed enough to give educated guesses to how the mind operates enough to design a platform that operates much in the same way.

I like Medium's better because it's a story. It's got some emotion behind it.

I think a lot of recent radical changes were made to medium.com in recent times to adopt this sense of "emotional design".

I also read that and thought "Oh, they know how my brain works? Seems a bit presumptuous..."

I thought the next section of copy was even more off-putting. "It cares about your identity." Because your name appears on the article and you can use your own domain and avatar. How is that differentiated from any platform that allegedly doesn't care about your identity?

Writers shouldn’t be defined by the brands of their publishers...

And yet, every svtble blog I've seen is very clearly a svtble page first, text content second, and any consideration for personal identity a distant third. I don't really have an issue with that but why feature such a ridiculous claim?

My biggest issue with the competition (Medium) is that it does not allow you to use your own domain.

> Oh, they know how my brain works?

That seems like a rather bizarre idea to attribute to Svbtle. It seems clear to me that the "you" in their copy is someone who is likely to be interested in their product. That's an extremely common wording in marketing copy.

If the copy is off-putting, it's because my natural cynicism that such text is used to polish up an otherwise mundane and common pattern...however, this copy gets a thumbs up from me for its relative lack of adjectives...e.g., none of this: "Svbtle's beautiful dashboard"..."It gracefully encourages"..."an amazing flow of beautiful draft posts"

If you hate superfluous adjectives don't ever watch an Apple demo video (I suspect that is where the approach got widespread traction).

yes Apple invented marketing that uses positive words to describe a product

Yes, hot-air balloons. Sign me up.

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