Svbtle

Even Walk says that he sees these new platforms as “content farms for good,” meaning they are mostly focused on curation of quality content, which is why I think it’s better to think of them as curation engines rather than farms — or perhaps as “artisanal” content producers, to use a popular term. Both Svbtle and Medium are clearly putting a lot of emphasis on selecting quality contributors, since both are invitation-only, and LinkedIn seems to take this approach as well (Quora is much more open, in part because it converted its existing message boards).

LinkedIn clearly has an interest in driving traffic to its site with its Influencer content, in the hope that readers of those articles might decide to stick around or visit more often, and make use of the other things that actually produce revenue for the company. But in that sense, its program is more like what some call “content marketing,” which uses content that isn’t directly monetized as a way of promoting a brand or an advertiser’s main business.

In the end, all these platforms seem to be designed to appeal to writers who may have thoughts to contribute, but don’t necessarily want to maintain their own blog. Making that easy, and curating the results so that they are of high quality, may ultimately be a way around Google’s content-farm algorithms, but in the end it doesn’t really matter if higher-quality content is what gets produced. In that sense at least, Google’s efforts seem to be working.

If you’ve read a Svbtle post, you’ve probably recognized that readers cannot comment. That’s intentional. While Svbtle has hinted they may try to develop a new form of commenting that ensures quality and looks good, there are definitely a vocal group of content creators who would just as soon never deal with comments again, outsourcing any activity to networks like Twitter. Now that Quora is open, anyone can sign up and contribute comments; on Branch, the only way to contribute/comment is to invited by someone who is already a member of that specific thread.

Svtble does have some good content already, and Curtis hinted in his announcement that the platform will be opened up to the general public, but there's already some controversy surrounding the site. After the announcement post was shared on Hacker News, Svbtle drew a large amount of criticism for its closed-platform approach. Enter stage left, Nate Wienert. Apparently disgruntled by Curtis's approach to development and his handling of criticism in the past, Wienert decided to remake the entire platform. He calls it Obtvse, and it's almost identical to the original platform, minus some animations. Wienert has released the source code to his interpretation for anyone to compile, edit, and improve on.

Curtis has a plan for this project that ties in the minimalistic admin and public interfaces of the platform with his larger goals as a writer, and possibly as an entrepreneur.

He’s creating an exclusive blog network.

He’s using his clout in design and startup circles to attract other thought leaders who blog, including Dom Leca of the beloved email client Sparrow, and John Collison of payment startup Stripe.

The idea is that the design of the blogging platform should be a vital part of the creative process, that helps some of the best minds in the business refine and present their thoughts. The interface includes a section for brainstorming ideas, and an easy flow for turning them into posts. It removes the array of options, like advanced markup features that you’ll see on WordPress and other established platforms, to focus writers on core ideas.