Ben Thompson: preference

Transcript context

…That accidental email hack, how do you think about it? You say you still think about Stratechery primarily as a website, but how do you think about email now? Obviously, it's a big part of what you do. It is, but it's not. I think if you see the stuff that I've done. For example, now you can consume the daily update via a podcast or my articles via podcast, I think that's actually very much in line with my vision and view of Stratechery, which is, this is a publication that I write and I will make it as easy for you to consume in the way you want to consume as possible. Back in 2014, that meant sending emails. Certainly, there's all the advantage of emails that everyone's talked about. It's a fee that everyone checks daily. You don't need permission to get in there. There's no algorithm. It's funny, because I think once Substack came along, it became overwhelming. People started setting up rules to send all their emails to a folder which they never check, so you're back and started the same problem, a self-imposed algorithm, which is where podcast is great. It's the same idea. It's a feed that people check. It works through polling, but to people, it feels like push. That's certainly a great thing from an independent publisher perspective, and I think in line with my vision. One of my criticisms of Substack was I think they were too email-centric to start. Again, I think the web experience is important. It's super important for growth because that's where people find out about stuff is often via social media and sharing links. Email is a tactic, it's not a strategy. At the end of the day, the strategy is about differentiation. It's about consistency. I want it to be easy to use and fit in your life, and email was a way to do that. Again, backed into now podcast is a way to do that, you can get Stratechery articles via SMS, which gives you a link and you can read on the website. Obviously, I've always had RSS. I just want to make it as easy for you to access the content that you're paying for as possible, because that makes the whole thing go. You mentioned churn. The beautiful thing about this model is, from a writer perspective, all I really need to worry about is keeping my subscribers happy. Should this be a free article? Should it be paid? Well, you know what? If it should have been free, but I made it paid, that's fine. My subscribers feel like they got a great article that they paid for, and they feel good about that. That recurring revenue is really, really powerful. Also, that's my marketing channel. It's them telling other people about this is good and you should check it out. One thing we do with Passport is a big way stuff spreads is people forwarding emails. And Passport is the technology infrastructure you've built to enable other people to build Stratechery-like experiences? If they're whitelisted by you, how's that work?…

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