“Coming for the Content, Staying for the Community” Started With Video Games (Or Maybe Religion?)

As a member of the Substack economy, I’d like to be able to take some credit for these successes, and I no doubt make some small contribution. But the larger truth is that I was in the right place at the right time—Substack is taking off because audiences are hungry for something more than clickable diversion in 10-second installments.

In a community, members build relationships with each other, solve problems and master skills together. They come back as much for each other as they do for the next newsletter, video or course. They may initially come for what the creator produces, but they stay to talk, explore and build things with members who are near them, similar to them and ... See more

What does “community” mean? Facebook calls its billions of users a community, and multinational brands use this word to refer to their customers. Are these communities in any meaningful sense? What about the “brand communities” I mentioned earlier, do these qualify? And can a community that is paid truly be called a community at all? As paid commun... See more

However, a new breed of networks is gaining ground with the content-first model. They provide users with tools to create a corpus of content, and then enable conversations around that content. Behance, Pinterest, Instagram, Dribble, Scoop.It have all gained traction by building a corpus of content before building a social network.