
Forget Today’s Drama, Dustin Curtis’ Svbtle Is About Pushing Blogging Forward - dwynings
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/forget-todays-drama-dustin-curtis-svbtle-is-trying-to-push-blogging-forward/
======
methoddk
TechCrunch never ceases to amaze me. Pushing blogging forward? With a simple
markdown to post converter with a crappy editor with an "idea" button?! Give
me a break, man. Its too early for this.

An entire article about some designer elitist's _super-cool-too-cool-for-you-
bro-because-I'm-a-superhero closed blogging "network"?_

Svbtle (dumb name.), is garbage. It looks like something I designed in 7th
grade, yet it's getting so much attention that arguably the _worst_ tech blog
on the Internet did a write-up on it?

It was copied in 12 hours for a reason, _it sucks_.

Hacking is about openness, not snobs rubbing their clout in everyone's faces.

~~~
jd
Although you certainly have a point I think your judgement is a bit too harsh,
and the the logic "it was copied in 12 hours [therefore] it sucks" just
doesn't follow.

~~~
methoddk
It may be, but I really don't take lightly to snobby people acting like the
crap they make is better than anything anyone has ever seen.

I have a markdown editor, too. It's called VIM.

~~~
stevenkovar
A snob is just a regular person who has incited jealousy or offense. You're
bigger than taking offense to someone who has a product with some quality
control in place in its pre-launch phase.

~~~
methoddk
If quality control is the reason, then say so politely. Making the people
reading about your product feel inadequate is not a good look.

It's obvious the author of this article is friends with the self-proclaimed
superhero-dick-villain, as an article about a closed blogging platform is in
no way, shape, or form applicable news for a website of TC's magnitude.

------
jrockway
Is there a more graphic term than "circle jerk" that I'm allowed to use on HN?
If so, that term describes this situation.

I don't know how Dustin Curits does it, but anything he does attracts an
insane amount of attention.

~~~
masklinn
Attention and money are quite similar in that they accrete: if people are
already paying attention to what you do, anything you do is attention-worthy.

You can trivially see that with sports and hollywood stars, they can't fart
without it being news.

------
inkaudio
This is how misnomers are created.

"couple developers forked it within hours, and offered new versions for the
world to install."

A couple of developers did not fork Svbtle, only one developer copied the
design but wrote original code. Dear Techcrunch, that's not a "fork". Nate has
since changed the design and he plans on refining it.

~~~
MichaelApproved
I agree with you and thankfully it looks like the "forked" was edited out.

------
xelipe
Svbtle Is About Pushing Blogging Forward? That is like Scoble saying that
Quora is the biggest innovation in blogging over the past 10 years.

Whether or not this is the future of blogging, I've learned something from
this whole episode... don't go on Hacker News to show off a two feature
minimalist pet project, arrogantly state it's close to elite members only, and
not have it re-implemented in hours. It's called Hacker News for a reason.

~~~
mhurron
>Svbtle Is About Pushing Blogging Forward? That is like Scoble saying that
Quora is the biggest innovation in blogging over the past 10 years.

I recognize the words, but that whole statement seems like complete gibberish.

~~~
brodd
Scoble did actually say that: [http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/26/is-quora-the-
biggest-bloggi...](http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/26/is-quora-the-biggest-
blogging-innovation-in-10-years/)

But when people started to downvote his Quora answers he took it back:
[http://scobleizer.com/2011/01/30/why-i-was-wrong-about-
quora...](http://scobleizer.com/2011/01/30/why-i-was-wrong-about-quora-as-a-
blogging-service/)

------
JohnnyFlash
There are two important things raised by this article but completely missed.

Firstly, what dcurtis made is not as ground breaking as the article makes out.
It looks very promising but this trend towards simplification is happening
everywhere. On the mac you have iA Writer for writing things. If you look at
productivity apps (names escape me), the trend is to strip things down only to
what is required to be most productive. Same things are happening in bug
tracking and message boards.

dcurtis has come up with something that is really neat but saying "it looks
like a better Tumblr" after seeing two screenshots seems a bit premature.
There was also mention of "competing with Tumblr".. its a closed beta with 6
users.. the hype machine needs to calm down.

The second point is everything dcurtis has been working on being completely
ripped off in a couple of hours is almost completely ignored. We not talking
about someone being inspired by the idea. Nor are we talking about duplication
of functionality. Instead someone cloning the concept, functionality AND
design of both the front and back end!

For the developer to then open source it on github should be story. Now anyone
else can rip off dcurtis' site. Its not acceptable. There is nothing wrong
with being inspired or copying functionality from another website. However,
cloning both and front and backend then open sourcing it to encourage others
to participate... not cool. This should be the story. Any hype is premature.

~~~
DanBC
The value of dcurtis's site will be the limited bloggers and their content.

The design and the platform isn't much value. Releasing those and announcing
he was starting a multi-author blog would have given better publicity.

------
judofyr
Am I the only one who is a bit underwhelmed by this "amazing" blog network?
Most of the blogs seems like linkblogs that doesn't add more information.

When I see the materialistic design now, I just think "oh look, just another
shallow blog..."

~~~
sp332
Dom Leca's blog looks like that, and maybe Daniel Zarick's. But the others
look more substantial. Also, the blogging has barely started so I'm not
willing to jump to conclusions about what it's going to look like 2 days from
now, let alone long-term.

------
tomkin
I don't know how more clear it could be that dcurtis is an egotistical, self-
proclaimed genius. I love this tweet:
<https://mobile.twitter.com/dcurtis/status/182986897444966402>

And then this one for good measure:
<https://mobile.twitter.com/dcurtis/status/183394426914217984>

Begging to use the _platform_ is probably a little exaggerated.

------
jalfresi
EDIT: DanBC said it far more elequently than myself here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DanBC>

The negativity being spouted by commenters regarding Dustin Curtis approach
with Svbtle to me shows a complete misunderstanding of what he is trying to
achieve with the network. Many have complained about the closed, private beta
and the supposed elitist attitude put across by Dustin. Many are acting like
they have been emotionally hurt and are lashing out against the work that
Dustin is trying to do with Svbtle.

For me, this reaction is understandable, and expected, but I was taken aback
by the volume of the backlash, especially on Hacker News.

Svbtle is an attempt at a closed, curated and quality controlled network of
blogs. In essence, the very people who have reacted so vehemently to this are
EXACTLY people you DONT want in a closed, curated and quality controlled blog
network.

Those of you who feel slighted by being excluded from this network and are
loudly beating your chests either about how simple the idea is or how too
minimalistic (or both) are trying to project your development ethics and
ideals onto another discipline, and in my humble opinion, the two are
incompatible.

Software development or hacking clearly benefit from the exchange of ideas,
sharing and propagation by merit. I wont expand on this any further because
all of this is obvious to the vast, vast majority of members here.

Writing doesn't benefit from this. Writing is a solo exercise; a personal and
subjective process. A process that benefits from curation from experts;
editors who have the chops to not only recognise and correct, but to guide,
steer and sometimes say "No". I think Dustin is on to something here. In order
to move forward, blogging has to move from the quagmire of "least common
denominator", "wisdom of the crowds" sensationalist, ad driven and machine
targeted writing.

I was clear to me that this was what Dustin is attempting to assemble the
pieces together and start. Yes, most blogging platforms have "drafts" as a
feature. Dustin appears to be attempting to move the users of Svbtle away from
thinking of drafts; whole articles, and focus on germinating ideas into
writings for publishing. The nub of the idea here is small, but is a gentle
side step left. It's not an amazing innovation or anything particularly
special, but if you can create a platform or network that contains enough side
step left ideas like this, then he may have something with the potential to
become something special. I'll beat the already pretty beaten dead horse, but
I see something of Apples approach to design/production here. Just enough
little twists on common ideas in one package creates a very compelling
package. And it's always those twists that the competition fails to see.

The idea of a curated, limited network of bloggers with proof reading services
is a good idea. As is the desire to build a brand off the interface, to build
trust in readers so that when they come across another blog with the same
design they know they will be getting quality content. A platform focusing on
promoting good content with an emphasis on filtering article ideas. These are
good ideas and well overdue.

If you feel slighted by Dustin because Svbtle doesn't include you, thats
probably the reason you weren't invited to join yet; the quality isn't there.
It certainly shows in your comments that you can't contribute anything of the
kind of quality Dustin is trying to curate. So, go clone the software. Copy
the visual design. You've missed the larger point I think Svbtle is trying to
make, just like all those hundreds of tablet makers out there.

------
shazow
Can we put away the pitchforks already? I keep hearing how "Hacker News has
gone down hill" but it was never as visible to me until the Svbtle threads.

Dustin has been working on this design and others for what is effectively many
years. He's rightfully proud of his usability discoveries, so he shared them
in a blog post. Read the post again, there's nothing sinister there, only a
couple of questionable phrases that got blown out of proportion and completely
picked apart: <http://dcurt.is/codename-svbtle>

We're supposed to be a community of people who like to make things and inspire
others to do the same, which means supporting each other in the endeavor.
Dustin is a member of this community and has done nothing towards us to
deserve the name calling and hatred he's receiving.

~~~
tomkin
> only a couple of questionable phrases that got blown out of proportion and
> completely picked apart

I don't know about that. So far, many of the tweets from his own Twitter
account seem to postulate himself as a genius. I would like to think the UI he
has created isn't leaps and bounds above what I've seen and I know very few
developers get the kind of credit he seems to think he deserves for doing very
similar work. Doubtful his work operates on the caliber of the average IBM
engineer. Sorry, it's really off-balance. If I am giving dcurtis praise for
his evolution of blogging, I have to ask myself _why_. Would the same praise
be given if _you_ made Svbtle? Doubtful. The fact that it was essentially
duplicated within less than a weekend shows that the praise was probably
placed rather than earned.

> I keep hearing how "Hacker News has gone down hill" but it was never as
> visible to me until the Svbtle threads.

"HN going downhill" and "whaaa! no one fellated me for the work i did" seems
to have some correlative timing. Another thing that is tiring – those
proclaiming HN has become a wasteland, but submitting their own articles to HN
hoping for the spotlight, only to later call the end of days when people don't
immediately grovel at their knees in astonishment.

~~~
shazow
Are you justifying this completely poisonous and destructive behavior on the
basis that you found his Twitter feed too arrogant for your liking and that he
got more attention than you would have?

> submitting their own articles to HN hoping for the spotlight

I'm confused, are you accusing me of submitting my own work for a spotlight?
Or Dustin? I've certainly done it for my own work in the past, as many other
members of this community, but it wasn't Dustin who submitted Svbtle.

~~~
tomkin
> Are you justifying this completely poisonous and destructive behavior on the
> basis that you found his Twitter feed too arrogant for your liking and that
> he got more attention than you would have?

I don't expect to get that kind of attention for something on that level.
Nothing I've done certainly would warrant the kind of attention Dustin is
getting for this concept. We're not talking about a lot of work, let's
remember. The whole "but his years of experience to get to this design!"
garbage talking point is most ignorant. Sometimes people post stuff on HN and
it's so simple but brilliant that my jaw drops in awe. Building over top of
Tumbler, Posterous, etc, philosophy and taking it 1 step further (not to
mention: exclusivity, arrogance, nepotism, prop theatre) is not inciting that
emotion. Sorry.

If I had been responsible for, say, Ruby on Rails, I'd expect the kind of
clamour that Dustin is getting for a weekend project – of which, many are
posted to HN as "Show HN: My weekend project X". All of which are reviewed,
criticized and praised for what they are. Not one of these humble moonlighters
go off to Twitter and claim X community is dead, or that everyone sucks if
they don't agree. Most of the time, they take the criticism and learn from it.
Dustin cried in the corner and acted like a spoiled brat. The tweets just
solidify that.

> I'm confused, are you accusing me of submitting my own work for a spotlight?
> Or Dustin? I've certainly done it for my own work in the past, as many other
> members of this community, but it wasn't Dustin who submitted Svbtle.

No.

------
lubutu
I'm sure Dustin Curtis's 'members' entry used to read "Dustin Curtis,
Superhero" rather than "Villain". Why the change?

~~~
reneherse
Because traditionally, that's how many super villians start out, before their
brilliance being misunderstood by their peers throws them into a downward
spiral of taking over the world.

------
ojbyrne
I think "Well-read" (the first two words in the article) does not mean what
the author wants it to mean.

------
falling
I don't like people here dismissing the ideas in Svbtle because of the
smugness of its author.

I agree with everybody else that Dustin presented it in a very elitist and
smug way, but that doesn't discount the fact that the ideas are good. Nor does
the fact that it's easy to clone.

The minimal blog platform is cool, as demonstrated by the fact that people
reaction has been so strong when they discovered they couldn't have it.
Revolutionary? No, nothing is revolutionary in this industry, especially three
days after the first release.

