Forgive me, but someone is wrong on the internet. Ben Thompson is one of the first movers of the current newsletter boom. Yes, it's hard to define when the whole thing started, and yes, people have been taking payments for emails for far longer than Thompson's Stratechery has been published. But his claim is real, if for no other reason than that his newsletter was a) financially successful enough to enable him to work on it full time and b) aimed at the tech sector, and so able to spark a legion of imitators.
I read his article and had the same thought. And I'm glad you took that point and expanded it over this whole newsletter. He focused so much on TikTok's algorithm over the summer, it's weird that he totally ignored Netflix's own suggestion engine.
Netflix's ability to push almost any 1 to 10 hours of programming on people is stunning. And from the shows they do end up cancelling (thinking Tuca & Bertie, The OA), it's clear that how they determine success is starting to weigh on writers.
I read his article and had the same thought. And I'm glad you took that point and expanded it over this whole newsletter. He focused so much on TikTok's algorithm over the summer, it's weird that he totally ignored Netflix's own suggestion engine.
Netflix's ability to push almost any 1 to 10 hours of programming on people is stunning. And from the shows they do end up cancelling (thinking Tuca & Bertie, The OA), it's clear that how they determine success is starting to weigh on writers.