Substack, the newsletter platform, has acquired Letter, a “public correspondence startup”. Terms not disclosed. Letter operates in a similar way to Twitter but allows longer form content, facilitating chains of correspondence, and has attracted contributions from well-known contributors.
Digiday says the Letter tech “…allows people to send public notes to one another, giving audiences a look at the resulting exchange. Though it never turned into a breakout hit – the most popular exchanges on Letter have gathered just tens of thousands of views – Letter got a wide range of public intellectuals, ranging from Noam Chomsky to Yuval Noah Harari to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to at least try the service out.”
Substack is also focused on adding tools which support its writers such as legal advice, training and community management – as it prepares for a wave of competitive services from the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. This week, it became known that the New York Times is recruiting journalists for its own newsletter platform which has been developed over recent months.
