My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the internet corner where I unpack my musings, curate and write about noteworthy apps and software, and explore the latest trends in design and tech.

Hey and welcome to Creativerly 337 👋

For Creativerly, I use Fathom Analytics*, which is a privacy-focused, secure, and ethical way to get insights about the traffic happening on my website. I do not check it that often, I do not have any events set up in order to figure out how many people are clicking on a specific button, the sole purpose of this setup is to keep track of what is going on on creativerly.com in a laid-back environment. And thanks to that, I found out that overall the traffic has been up, and I am happy about that. Now, the core Creativerly "product" is still the weekly newsletter, however, I have newsletter fatigue, which means I do not read that many newsletters as I have used to, and based on the newsletter signups to Creativerly which are stagnating, it seems like others are feeling like this too. So, it is great to see that an increasing number of people are reading Creativerly on the web.

In a recent post by Molly White, she pointed out that the surge in newsletters has been overwhelming. Journalists who left corporate media or got laid off, established news rooms, independent writers, well, even your mum or your dad probably have a newsletter now. As Molly White further points out, instead of subscribing to a single newspaper for columns and articles by a dozen journalists, now you have a dozen separate newsletter subscriptions, with articles appearing haphazardly in your email inbox amid bills, business communications, marketing spam, order confirmations, and two-factor authentication codes.

In addition to just being overwhelmed by all emails landing in my inbox every single day, email is increasingly spying on you, like Substack collecting data about your reading and then showing you an algorithmic feed based on that data.

Based on that I am increasingly defaulting to my RSS reader whenever I want to read new stuff from my favorite writers and news sources. Thankfully, most of them offer RSS feeds, so I can easily subscribe to them, and curate my own feeds, or how Molly White calls it curating your own newspaper. As some RSS readers even provide you with the functionality to generate a custom email address which then adds your newsletter subscriptions to your RSS reader directly. I am using that functionality too, although, I have a bit of a different setup, as I use a separate email address to subscribe to the newsletters, and then forward that email address to the custom one provided by the RSS reader. The reason I am doing this is to have the possibility to engage with the writers of the newsletter in case I want to, since the custom generated email address from the RSS reader does not allow me to use it as a "regular" email address. I explained more of my reading setup in a post on my personal website.

So, while I do love reading within my RSS reader, I find myself opening up the articles every now and then, since as Molly White further points out the RSS feed can make it easier to miss subscription prompts or donation requests that appear on a website outside the content feed, and ultimately, it is all about supporting the writers. And as the RSS reader kind of bypasses the support options, you can become a paid member to your favorite writers, sign up for the newsletter, leave a donation, or at least share the post and spread the word about it. On top of that, while my preferred RSS reader which is Readwise Reader, provides a lovely reading experience, it is always nice and special to read the article or post on a website that has been specifically designed to read that article.

RSS is a lovely way to put together your own feeds, packed with what interests you, free from any ads, promoted posts, or clutter. It is a very personalized, private, calm, and cozy reading experience.

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Fresh Updates & News

Naz Hamid and Scott Robbin introduce Letter Club →

Naz Hamid and Scott Robbin just launched a really cool project which they initially started building together during the pandemic. The idea got born because they wrote weekly about their current projects through Scott's private group newsletter format. That way, they stayed connected during the pandemic without the pressure of social media. After the world slowly moved its way back, Scott quietly wound down the project, however, at the beginning of this year, he shared with Naz that he would like to bring back the project.

And now, they have launched Letter Club, a private group newsletter that everyone contributes to and receives. So, how does this work? You can create a club with a prompt like updates, catch-ups, stand-ups, book discussions, movie reviews, work projects, and so on. You then set your preferred frequency, weekly, biweekly, or monthly, and then everyone will get a gentle reminder to nudge people to contribute. On the specific day, you will then receive a clean email digest from your fellow club members.

After being in private beta for a couple of months, Letter Club is now open to everyone at no cost. Let me know if you are interested in creating a club around side-projects or writing, to motivate each other, and stay in the loop, I would love to set something up like this.

Mental Wealth

❯ Substack’s extremist ecosystem is flourishing – “Substack has once again revealed itself to be a Nazi bar. Last week, the newsletter platform got caught sending push alerts featuring antisemitic invective to users’ phones. One of those alerts was for an explicitly neo-Nazi blog, whose profile picture and banner are simply the flag of Nazi Germany. When asked for comment by Substacker Taylor Lorenz, a company spokesperson blamed an unspecified “serious error,” one that, “caused some people to receive push notifications they should never have received.””

❯ The Future Of Software Is Small – "The dominance of SaaS platforms in business and pleasure today is a cyclic one. If you went back in time to the 1980's and told them that 21% of the industry was using the same CRM platform they'd probably nod serenely, knowing that nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.”

❯ Curate your own newspaper with RSS – “Last week, both The Verge and Wired announced major newsletter strategies. Wired writes of a “traffic apocalypse”, where “platforms on which outlets like Wired used to connect with readers, listeners, and viewers are failing in real time”.1 The Verge describes “Google Zero”: the moment when the dwindling supply of visitors from Google Search completely dries up.”

❯ The Planet Can’t Afford Billionaires – “A decade ago, world leaders agreed to a host of sustainable development goals. Today, governments are wildly off track to achieve them. Simultaneously, efforts to address global poverty and climate change have been derailed.”

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These are paid promotions or affiliate links to support Creativerly. If you are interested in putting your tool, product, or resource in front of over 2000 creative minds, consider advertising in Creativerly and book a sponsor or classified ad spot. Find all the important information at creativerly.com/advertise.

Appendix

❯ ICYMI

Substack is back in the news for the worst reasons. It is still bonkers that so many independent writers are using Substack to publish online. In my newest post Is there really a choice for independent writers in selecting a platform, I explored the ethical and financial dilemmas independent journalists face when choosing platforms like Substack.

❯ Quick Bits

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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