Before I started writing this, I took a look at Paragraph's most apparent competitor, Substack. I also went back to my old homebase, Medium, where most of my publications, except for a couple of HackerNoon articles I wrote, have disappeared.

Let's start with Substack. Honestly, I don't think I've ever accessed the site directly. I've always subscribed to writers from a secondary source (i.e., Twitter/X). I don't have the app (actually, I wasn't aware there was an app). I purely rely on email notifications about the publications I follow to keep up to date. They have grown through a sort of ambient discovery that is difficult to achieve.

That said, my first impression when going to their site was, "Wow, maybe I should download the app." Without diving into the details, the overwhelming theme that resonated with me was that they are absolutely nailing discovery.

So why wouldn't I just switch to writing on Substack and try to build an audience there? For one, I want my work to be onchain. As mentioned above, Medium deleted all my self-published articles, presumably because I stopped paying their monthly subscription. Would those reappear if I start paying again? Can I recover them somehow? Web3 offers me at least immutable access to my previous writing.

Furthermore, I have no interest in soliciting monthly subscriptions from readers of my work, and I would never consider paywalling my content. Ridiculous. Paragraph offers monetization incentives that more closely align with my personal mantra. But that ideological alignment comes at the cost of discovery.

Discovery is the flywheel. If people can’t stumble into new writing they love, they won’t stick around. And if writers can’t get discovered, they stop writing. Easier said than done, but here are my ideas.

One of the most challenging aspects for me as a writer with fewer than 100 subscribers and limited consistency (mostly due to low engagement and, consequently, low motivation) is getting people to read my work. Most will likely see my writing posted on Farcaster as a link to the Paragraph mini app. That seemingly minor friction point usually means most prospective readers will scroll right by.

There is very little reason to scroll Paragraph the way one would scroll social media. Substack recognized this and created a short-form feed that draws dopamine-chasers to a writer's broader body of work. They have a video feed that aims to have a similar effect. You can even video chat and DM with writers right from the platform. Paragraph doesn’t need video chat or DMs, but it does need a short-form hook to pull readers into long-form.

Paragraph's For You feed is not really "for me." When I visit Medium, the articles are so uniquely tailored to my interests that I feel compelled to read every single one. So much so that once I get paywalled, I'm almost convinced to re-subscribe (I never do, mostly out of spite). It feels like it draws from a long history of reading Medium articles, as well as the content I've produced on the platform.

The algorithm feels shallow. It seems like a mix of pseudo-relevant articles and content from people I follow on Farcaster and those I've subscribed to on Paragraph. I don't feel that instant desire to jump in and consume.

The Explore page is essentially the For You page wrapped in a different UI. It would be helpful if there were categories to search through or a way to curate what I'm being fed. I don't feel like I can fall down a rabbit hole of exploration and discover new ideas or alternative perspectives on things I am already aware of. This lack of explorability gives me the feeling that there's not much to explore in general, and so it's time to bounce.

Ultimately, all the suggestions I've made fall back to the same underlying theme: discovery. Make it easy for me to discover new content to read and for others to discover the content I write. Monetization aside, this is the flywheel of attention necessary to drive a platform like Paragraph to broad popularity and achieve escape velocity. Attracting writers beyond our bubble is the only way Paragraph breaks out.

Paragraph doesn’t need to copy Substack, but it does need its own engine of discovery. Without that, even the best writing will stay locked in the bubble.