Forget Today’s Drama, Dustin Curtis’ Svbtle Is About Pushing Blogging Forward

http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/forget-todays-drama-dustin-curtis-svbtle-is-trying-to-push-blogging-forward/

by dwynings • 14 years ago

24 27 14 years ago

lubutu• 14 years ago

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

reneherse• 14 years ago

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.

methoddk4• 14 years ago

It now says villain because he is an ass. His snobby attitude got him hated on his HN post of Svbtle and he threw a hissy fit[1].

It should read, "Dustin Curtis is a crybaby."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742617

ojbyrne• 14 years ago

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

inkaudio• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

judofyr• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

jrockway• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

JohnnyFlash• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

xelipe• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

>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• 14 years ago

Scoble did actually say that: http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/26/is-quora-the-biggest-bloggi...

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...

methoddk4• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

methoddk4• 14 years ago

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.

falling• 14 years ago

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.

tomkin3• 14 years ago

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.

shazow2• 14 years ago

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.

tomkin3• 14 years ago

> 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.

shazow2• 14 years ago

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.

jalfresi• 14 years ago

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.

Forget Today’s Drama, Dustin Curtis’ Svbtle Is About Pushing Blogging Forward

Related Stories