This blog is mine. While it is hosted somewhere, it could be anywhere. The main thing: it isn’t on a platform, and doesn’t have to be.
I publish it on my own, and syndicate it through RSS.
This puts me in a publishing ecosystem that is wide open and full of interop. If you want to know more about how the blogging ecosystem works, read Dave. He’s the blogfather, and pioneering in many useful and fun directions.
Blogging is an ecosystem because it’s open, as are ecosystems in nature. It’s not a plant in the atrium of some giant’s hotel.
In fact, I think “ecosystem” should apply only to open systems that welcome participation, while we need another word for what happens only on a given platform or inside a given silo. For example, the Net, the Web, and the blogosphere are all ecosystems. The Apple’s and Google’s closed and verticalized worlds are something else. Find a word.
Substack is a platform. I am told that one can move from Substack to Ghost or wherever. And, if that’s the case, that means it operates in a larger ecosystem. I’d say the blogosphere. But lots about it looks and feels closed to me.
I bring all this up because today in my email came the newsletter version of Substack is a social media app, by Hamish McKenzie. My instant response was a mix of Huh? and Yuck. Because until then I thought Substack was blogging host with a newsletter business. Meanwhile, social media as we’ve known it is all silo’d and in deep ways very icky. Calling Substack “a social media app” is, at least for me, a huge downscale move. I felt the same way when I read about OpenAI going into the social app business.
Blogging is just publishing, plus whatever grows naturally around that. It’s a how, not a where, which makes it a much better what. And that what isn’t “a social media app.”
Anyway, my thinking isn’t complete on this, and may never be. But what Hamish wrote in that newsletter turned me off to ever blogging on Substack. I like my freedom and independence.
By the way, if people want to subscribe to my blog in newsletter form, they can do that. Look on the right (or on mobile, at the bottom) for “Get New Posts By Email,” and subscribe. I have 92 subscribers so far. Just remember that I almost always keep editing what I write. For example, my last two blog posts started as one, and I’m still not happy with either of them.
Kind of like life. It’s all provisional. What’s the best ecosystem for that?
[Update on 3 October 2025…] I just learned last night that my sister, @JanSearls, a retired officer with the U.S. Navy and a graduate of the Navy’s War College (among other distinctions) has a Substack. So far, it’s all restacks (a term I just learned), but she’s a good writer, and I hope she will post some original stacks as she gets comfortable operating in Substack’s corner of the greater blogosphere.
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