• by Ray Schultz , April 6, 2023

Newsletter platform Substack is about to start rolling out a short-form content product called Notes. Observers say it has strongly resembles Twitter. 

“Like our Recommendations feature, Notes is designed to drive discovery across Substack,” Substack says in a Wednesday post. “But while Recommendations lets writers promote publications, Notes will give them the ability to recommend almost anything—including posts, quotes, comments, images, and links.”

Notes “closely resembles Twitter in its design, and, much like ‘tweeting,’ allows users to share posts, images, and ideas,” Fast Company writes. “It also has a ‘restack’ feature that allows for easily resharing of posts, the same as a retweet. It keeps count of ‘likes’ and comments too.”

The goal is to “ foster conversations that inspire, enlighten, and entertain, while giving writers a powerful growth channel as these interactions find new audiences,” Substack writes.  

It continues, “Imagine Kareem Abdul-Jabbar leaving a comment on Margaret Atwood’s note about trends in science fiction, or Alison Roman sharing a quote from an amazing recipe developed by a little-known food writer who then gets a flood of subscriptions. Think of your favorite Substack economists nerding out in a deep thread about the latest jobs report, or Joe Posnanski and Molly Knight going back and forth about Major League Baseball’s Opening Day.” 

Substack says it has more than 35 million active subscriptions to writers on its platform, including more than 2 million paid subscriptions.