Codename: Svbtle by Dustin Curtis

"When I'm writing, I want to have no distractions, so I removed all of them."<p>When I'm reading it is the same damn thing. You have TWO flashing beacons.

I wonder how many people gave kudos to the post by mistake? I know I did and there's no way to remove the kudos you gave afterwards. User actions should be a click not a hover.

"This is the blogging platform for creative, intelligent, and witty people. Membership by invitation only."<p>Am I the only person that laughed out loud at this?

Points to DCurtis for shipping. That's what this life is all about and it's easy to lose sight of that.<p>But my own personal opinion is that I don't love it.<p>The UI of the published blogs is nice. I actually like the animation on the left, though I personally would only show it once per session. I think the challenge will be making this a more usable, integrated experience for the user while retaining the sparse and appealing UI. Even for "vetted" bloggers, audience reach and accessibility matters.<p>I'm not a big fan of the UI for the backend. I like the concepts. But the UI seems too designed. The strict use of black and white, for example, seems almost a gimmick to me.<p>And I really dislike the Kudos "button" and his response to the criticism.<p>There is absolutely no functional benefit. People know buttons. They expect buttons to work like all other buttons work: You have to press it if you want to press it. I could go on and on about why this is bad (unfriendly to touch UIs (even if it also supports clicking), people shouldn't have to be careful about where they rest their mouse, it takes 1s to "hover induce" this button and far less than 1 sec to click, etc.)<p>But the biggest UX blunder, IMO, is not being able to undo it.<p>I was less than impressed by DCurtis's response to the Kudos issue: that a kudos is meaningless. If it's so meaningless why not let people kudos the same thing more than once? Why have a kudos at all?<p>I hope this can be seen as constructive, because I think his project is much bigger than this critique. He worked on something, and shipped. Our industry is more of a meritocracy than most. Congrats on shipping, high-five and well done.<p>Now make it better, please.

For future record: An article about a by-invitation closed-source blogging platform created by a self-proclaimed superhero is the top article on Hacker News on March 22, 2012 at 17:16 PST.

I love the design, but shrug at the idea of vetted bloggers. I have HN and twitter and reddit and FB and many other ways to filter content for me. I don't want or need a curated brand.<p>I especially don't want writers on the network hesitating about whether to write low-quality material. Insay, wcatter your ideas and let "the market" decide.

I like the "ideas pane" a lot. I have exactly the same workflow, except my "ideas pane" is just a text file in Dropbox. I work on posts there until they're big enough to paste into my blog.<p>I'm not really interested in running my blog on someone else's platform, though (I realize I'm in the minority here).

Who's vetting the bloggers invited to join the Svbtle network? Is it Dustin himself? Something about an exclusive, invite-only network for "creative, intelligent, and witty people" really turns me off.<p>Not that I wouldn't be interested in reading what only the best and the brightest have to say. Maybe it's just the way it's been presented, but in its current form it seems sort of like the Mensa of blogging platforms.

Wait. This isn't some downloadable blogging engine? I'm disappointed. If that "creative, intelligent and witty" bit isn't sarcasm, how about the guy 'puts up' and offers the code for download?<p>Unless this is the guy's business plan and he just doesn't want to kill his server. But this really looks like an "I built this really cool thing for me and some friends and you can't play" kind of thing.

I expected a github link to the software, found... a snobby, invitation-only network. No thanks, amigo, I think I'll steal your idea and release it for free.

1. Kudos Button: Why the controversy? I've always viewed it as a meaningless counter that's fun to hover over. I never took the counts seriously. Sometimes I visit your site just to send arbitrary kudos. What's most concerning about the buttons is the number of readers that feel "victimized," "deceived" or "tricked" from, well...a css element.<p>2. Svbtle: There are few names I've come across in my career that are as painful as this one to read, spell or pronounce. It gives me anxiety, and what's worse is that it's inspired by Svpply. A good name is a word that you can tell someone over the phone without them asking you how to spell it. Period.<p>3. The ideas panel is cool. Is there a way you could generate the list in other ways than just manually adding tags? Could you add a bookmarking tool, for example, that adds keywords to your Ideas List once you bookmark a page you find thought-provoking?<p>4. The S<i></i>* Network: Your strategy to build a platform exclusive for exceptionally high-rated bloggers to use wont work for several reasons, here's just a few:<p>4a. I loved your site's design until I saw others on your platform using it. Then it became boring and nauseating. The design of a blog tells a story sometimes just as much as the content does. It gives the blogger personality, and the reader something fresh to look at.<p>4c. Top bloggers (any bloggers) not only use design to express themselves, but also to stand out. To be remembered. Eventually when you notice a site's design enough times, you realize you might want to check out who the author is.<p>4d. Social elements and "Sharing" buttons can look messy at times, but the fact is, bloggers like their content shared, and readers like to share content they enjoy. Removing arguably the most widely used tool on the web much poorer design that displaying a 'tweet' button after each post.<p>4e. Aside from 'ideas' your platform doesn't have anything that takes away the pain that enough users have to make it worth building. I add 'blogging' to pg's list of frighteningly ambitious startup ideas..

Drafts in Wordpress work quite well for this purpose. I just click "New Post", write in some temporary title and a short description in the body, then click "Save Draft". Viewing drafts is easy too.<p>I find formatting to be the biggest annoyance in blogging, but I bet there's a markdown WP plugin for that which I should use.<p>Actually I do like this, but not for the "ideas" feature. I like it for the simplicity and hip minimalist aesthetic.

After reading that my impression is that the whole thing seems kind of douchey to me. Then again, I'm not a superhero with my own exclusive club so I'm not really qualified to say anything.

The animation of the left sidebar on each page is really annoying.<p>Aside from that, it looks really clean!

I like the concept, but then I clicked through to the other blogs, and it felt wrong.<p>I felt like I should be reading John Collison's blog, but I keep hearing Dustin's voice in my head. The same goes when I switch to other authors.<p>I get what he is trying to do - by keeping it minimalist and all, but I think it gets in the way of the content and the author by not offering a distinct enough experience on each author's words.

Interesting concept. Like the panes. But this seems contradictory to me:<p>&#62; It really is the essence of blogging[...] no social bullshit.<p>&#62; And, of course, you should follow me on Twitter here.

Ah yes, this reminds me why I made QuietWrite. Except, QW is open to all: <a href="http://www.quietwrite.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.quietwrite.com</a>

I really like it when people <i>thoughtfully</i> scratch an itch that everyone else thinks has been scratched to death. There is a room for major improvements in every established technology area - be it a blogging platform, instant messaging, analytics or email clients.<p>PS. This also explains why Dustin needed a Markdown symbol back in February - <a href="http://drbl.in/daOE" rel="nofollow">http://drbl.in/daOE</a>

I have conflicting feelings: love the concept, love the design, but jealous I'll never get an invite. At least, happy it exists.

A couple of general things.<p>(1) Svbtle is actually a decent name (I sort of thing the 'v' is tired, but that's just a product of things I'm following doing that) Unfortunately, it's probably not appropriate for a tech audience<p>(2) I'm very surprised at the significant negative reaction to his 'curation' of his blogging network. I understand the feelings of condescension, but is it really that big of a deal? Many things are invite only, vetted by one person. I'm personally bothered by /other/ elitist attitudes prevalent in the industry. This is pretty consistent and he never said this was never going to be public...

I think the most interesting thing about whatever Dustin does is the hype he's able to build around it—I'm consistently impressed, and wonder if he might not be as effective as a promoter as he is a designer.

Yesterday I made a quip about how 3 of the 5 members were on the frontpage of HN arguing, and how I didn't want an invite.<p>Insert foot in mouth.<p>I really like the idea of the two columns. I'd totally use this.

If the domain name is invite only, is there any chance that the code will be open source so other people can run their own version of svbtle?

It's very pretty. I wish I had the skill to come up with a UI as nice as that.<p>I wonder what language/platform it's written in?

He has "the eye" for design, though... everything looks effortless and kinda great... unlike when I try to make a page look good (yes I read about Mark Boulton and grids and a visual hierarchy and spacing and baseline and rhythm and UX but it doesn't do miracles...)

I'm sorry, but isn't this just a reversion to late 90's style frame design? It seems all you've done is build it in the latest trendy standards and add a few little CSS tricks.<p>Minimalist design is supposed to be about presenting the content first and foremost. But the content is overshadowed by your frame. Your name and flashy CSS tricks are the only constants on the page and take up nearly 25% of the view, but you claim you're trying to draw attention to the content? Perhaps if the content you're presenting is you, then you have a successful design.

The animating sidebar and kudos buttons are cute the first time around, but annoying when I start to try and move around the site with real intent.<p>Overall, it feels like the designer is wagging his/her tail in my face.

<i>When I have an idea, no matter how developed, I throw it into the ideas pane. This creates a physical scrapboard for organizing my thoughts. I work on ideas over time, and, when one of them becomes developed or good enough, I'll publish it and it'll move over into the published column.</i><p>This is so important. I’ve been using SimpleNote to the same effect. I just handle the publishing part separately; I publish so rarely that it doesn’t make sense for me to couple the two together.

This is great. I've had something like this (probably even simpler) in my mind for a while, but never get around to making it.<p>Dustin, I just emailed you with a name suggestion.

I think this system is well thought out. It has a beautiful, minimal design that actually let's you focus on the reading, once you're done playing with the kudos button.<p>The only criticism I have is that it relies on sites like Hacker News and Reddit or email/twitter for discussion. Blog posts may be full of errors, but readers (and maybe authors) may never find out, due to the relatively inaccessible discussion/feedback system.

Awesome job, I am actually slowly building something like this myself.. Just a simple blogging platform, no fluff, just the essentials.

Awesome. Beat me to it. I treat my writing the same way: like fruit on tree, adding to it slowly until it ripens.<p>How can I get an invite?

It seems ironic for someone not interested in "social bullshit" to have what is essentially a Like button on each post.

I think this is a really good example of "being famous does not mean that you are good at everything". Do not forget why you are famous. If you are really famous actor and body builder, you might be governor If you try really hard, but do not run for presidency.

Am I correct in assuming the post text editor was all custom built? If not, can anyone link to a solution that is as clean as that? I love the idea of just typing on the page versus typing into a special box with a hundred buttons along the top

It looks weird without javascript, there's this huge slab of colour on the left, and the script eats up half of a core (Firefox 11). Are all blogs in Svbtle centrally hosted? Not just federated?

Lovely, very lovely.<p>It looks so <i>usable</i>.<p>I've been irritated by lack of features in Tumblr; whilst you don't those features, it does look like you have a cleaner approach for content-creating.<p>Reminds me slightly of Trello.

It all seems <i>really</i> snooty and lame. Not digging the attitude, dcurtis.<p>Sidenote: The judos thing is annoying and the design is mad plain.

Amusingly, he's gone from being a "superhero" to a "villain" according to his tagline at dcurt.is

Have you considered displaying a collective feed of your networks' posts on the homepage?

Reminds me of Google's redesigns...