Twitter is killing the newsletter | Hacker News Reader

Twitter is killing the newsletter

elliotnash.me

11 pointsbgnm200014 comments

Imagine this. I spread out my arms wide apart. My left palm represents reality. My right palm represents the dimension where the author of this article currently exists, but to get from left to right palm, you have to go one time around the globe.

This article is so far from reality, it's stupid. The data point is a single anectdotal one. There is no info on the data. There is no hint at all that twitter had anything to do with the decline - it could just as well have been birds pecking at the internet cables to all the subscribers houses and disrupting exactly those packets.

Totally biased in-the-bubble speculation, this blog post is not even wrong, it's just silly.

Every once in a while, I look at the comments before the original article, just to see how I'd like to proceed.

I'm not going to read this article because no matter how good or bad it is, it can't possibly be more entertaining than maxklein's assessment. I wish I could just hit an F key to post this review whereever I wanted, replacing "twitter had anything to do with the decline" with some context sensitive text.

Many of us do it like that, thanks for spelling ist out. We are a crowd, here on HN.

I couldn't agree more entirely. Some 97% of internet users use email on a daily basis while only some small bubble of a demographic use twitter.

Comments like this are why I love news.yc

Excellent analogy maxklein. In fact, you should be able to copy/paste this for over 90% of the "x is dead" or "y is the x-killer" blog postings.

Twitter is not killing, or even changing, the newsletter, and we know this.

For almost 10 years I've watched daily and weekly newsletters go out for a few of my clients, and they attribute the success of their businesses to these newsletters which are basically blog posts filled with relevant content that are emailed to lists that range from 1000 to 7000 people.

If you're click-throughs drop from 23% to 6%, you need to check if your messages are being filtered as spam, you need to rethink whether your content is relevant, and you need to double check the links in your email because they may be going through a tracking service that is breaking down.

My clients who send newsletters have added Twitter to their newsletters in the form of a "follow me" button. The reason for this is because they post on Twitter when they've sent out their latest newsletter and use it to chat with their subscriber base.

Twitter is not a newsletter replacement, but a tool that you could certainly use to enhance communications with your subscriber base.

With regard to corporate newsletters and the like, I would be inclined to agree.

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The article here though does seem to show that a more focused newsletter can still be quite useful/valuable:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=865042

In regards to corporate newsletters, this post was just as ridiculous. Twitter likely had nothing to do with the decline. He has absolutely no evidence indicating it in any way, other than twitter growing while the newsletter ctr dropped. Nearly everyone on earth gets email, and has an email account. Twitter's audience is minimal in comparison. But rather than say anymore, I'll just refer you to maxklein's comment above. He really nailed it.

Very very very very far from true. It definitely has the potential to at least be a just as strong supplement down the road, though I highly doubt it. Here are three key reasons why:

a) Email is the highest penetration of any utility on the web. Even more than search. (I know, i know, i need to find this source again, but it's not far fetched). Twitter is a blip on the radar in comparison.

b) Too much noise on twitter. When I read your newsletter, it's just me and your newsletter. That's it. Twitter is surrounded by other noise including lots of spam.

c) Twitter is the gateway, not the destination. 140 characters can't get enough across. It can certainly get a link across... which will probably be to the newsletter you just sent out.

I couldn't believe someone would post this "twitter is killing the newsletter" stuff the day after you posted that extensive post yesterday Jason... clearly they're not reading HN.

Too much noise on twitter.

The fact that the author thinks that he'll know everything a company he follows ever tweets indicates that he's probably wasting too much time on Twitter.

Well, Twitter+RSS.

If you're already getting updates as they happen then why on earth would you care about monthly ones?

It's already bad enough with newspapers (yesterday's news - today!) - but _monthly_ newsletters? Why would I care?

When I get a newsletter that's under 140,000 characters, let alone 140, I'll buy it.

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