When You’re Kicking It In Your Backyard
Working on your tan. Only to hear what sounds like a pool party in the next yard. You peep over the fence and what do you see?
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According to a recent release from Variety,
Facebook’s new platform will face a range of competitors in the expanding newsletter/self-publishing space, including Substack and Twitter, which is gearing up to launch “Super Follows,” which will let individual users and publishers earn money from subscriptions. In January, Twitter acquired Revue, a startup that lets writers self-publish subscription newsletters.
Did you notice that there isn’t a single word in there about Medium, Vocal, or Newsbreak? Variety went on to say,
“A large part of this initiative is aimed at supporting independent local journalists who are often the lone voice covering a given community,” (emphasis by author) Campbell Brown, Facebook’s VP of global news partnerships, and product manager for news Anthea Watson Strong wrote in a blog post.
So did you catch that? No names were given. But who does that sound like to you?
Newsbreak.
Newsbreak has been cracking down on its writers of late to do local news stories more than anything else. That was supposed to have been their objective since launch. But they wanted writers, so they allowed a free for all on their platform just to get “talent”. Then they thinned the herd over months to “niche down” to use a well-worn phrase, the writers.
Enter Facebook.
2021 is going to be an interesting year, to say the very least for independent writers regardless of their niche or what platform they use.
Writers, if you haven’t already, get your house in order.
