Moving Next from Revue to Substack

TLDR: Twitter is shutting down Revue, the newsletter platform that I use for Next. Thus, I’m migrating to Substack. You shouldn’t need to do anything on your side. BUT: If you can’t find the newsletter, check your spam folder. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder either, you should look in the Promotions tab.

Yesterday I received surprising news: Revue, the newsletter platform owned by Twitter, was shutting down in less than three weeks. I landed on the information by chance. I checked my emails infrequently this holiday season. Why am I salty about this? Because this newsletter runs on it.

I started writing this more than a year ago. Seeing the #rstats community on Twitter coming up with new articles and reviews led me to create a collection of interesting ones. One evening, I thought, why not share it with the broader community?

Almost automatically, the format of five stories, four packages, three jargons, two tweets and one meme came to my mind.

The initial interest was pretty high. The newsletter launched with almost a hundred subscribers. Over time, I lost a few and gained a few. Initially, my target audience was R enthusiasts and learners.

Now, I’ve seen people with all levels of expertise subscribing. The few responses I got from readers encouraged me to continue.

Revue was great: it gave me wide reach due to its integration with Twitter. It was free with no ads. It had a simple interface for embedding links. With Revue coming to its end of life abruptly, I needed to find a replacement quickly. Substack was a natural choice as now I crave consistency more than reach.

I’ve migrated my old posts, but a few technical glitches need to be fixed. Some posts’ titles don’t show up well, but that should be fine, functionally speaking. I hope you will understand.

Broadly speaking, it was a big lesson for me on how private companies hold such enormous sway over years of our work. With a week of notice, they can decide to kill it. Completely. In a week. Welcome to capitalism.

Even if they do not own the copyright, they control the reach and thus have absolute power.

This is another reason to own the space rather than just the content. I thought of hosting the newsletter directly on my website, but managing the subscribers’ list would require more work.

Anyway, please head over to Substack and let’s talk there. Substack provides comments, so feel free to discuss the posts if you want!

There is also an option of subscribers community where I would post irregular prompts that subscribers can engage and comment on.

Hope you have a wonderful year ahead.