Svbtle is hiring to build the future of news and opinion on the web

So I'm just a simple country lad who doesn't understand the big silicon valley city, but I really don't get svbtle. This is coming from someone who is (I imagine) part of 'the masses' who has been linked posts from there but otherwise has no involvement.<p>It's.. a curated collection of blogs? Why can't you just have a blog? I've probably been linked a dozen or so blogs inside that network (always from HN, I've never noticed traction anywhere else), but at no point has there been any cross promotion, so the fact that it was inside svbtle barely seemed to matter.<p>On 'barely': so far the fast majority of posts that have come out of svbtle have not actually been very good, and the curated 'we are the cream of the internet crop' pretentious feeling you get is not that positive.<p>Basicially, for me, a blog being inside svbtle seems to have negligible effect, and that effect is a negative one.<p>Maybe I'm missing the point though.

We've completely severed the relationship between us and reality

When I read this, I see my old YC2010 startup NewsLabs/NewsTilt. I maintain that was a good idea, but I wasn't the one to do it. My lessons are at <a href="http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down" rel="nofollow">http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down</a>, and it looks like Dustin has a handle on most of it.<p>Dustin has a lot that we didn't - a good sense of design, a large following, writers already contributing, and from the look of this, some cash. We had writers too, but they were checking out the latest fad, not actually writing for their own purposes. We didnt have the followers/brand awareness to bootstrap traffic - I think svbtle does.<p>I think he's doing some of the things which for us were mistakes, but they might not be in the context of svbtle. For example, we also made our own CMS instead of using wordpress. That was definitely a mistake for us, but I'm not convinced it is here - could go either way.<p>He's making the branding all about svbtle instead of about the journalist. That was definitely a mistake for us, again I'm not positive it is a mistake here - svbtle actually has a brand (even if some people think its a pretentious one).<p>He's making it about journalism instead of about blogging. I think that's a mistake. Journalism is a horrible niche to be in and I would hate to be a journalist. It has expectation of journalistic purity and a hypocritical hype machine around traffic. Better to be a blog network - I think it's closer to what svbtle is now and I believe that has the potential to be bigger than just journalism.<p>We werent motivated by journalism - I've never heard of Dustin being either. I think he made svbtle to be a better blog, so why not focus on that? I could be wrong here - I dont know Dustin well at all.<p>I think they're aiming for the right level of writer - definitely those who want to make something for themselves. We didnt: <a href="http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down/#worse-is-better" rel="nofollow">http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down...</a><p>Anyway, this looks like it might work. I cringe when I read about it because it brings back the awful memories of a failed startup, but I could see this succeeding. Best of luck Dvstin!

Err....what? Am I missing something here? While I know Dustin is a "design genius"...did he raise some money or is there some monetization plan (in the short term) that I am not aware of?<p>I mean, I fully agree with the premise of the current state of journalism.<p>This solution does seem awesome - it's one of the reasons I love The Economist.<p>But as a potential writer, I am not keen on necessarily jumping into something where I don't know what the future might look like.

I get the impression that Svbtle is more trying to be the TED network of blogging (with a focus only on the T and not the ED right now), since most of the people who've been invited to participate are accomplished in tech some way.

<i>We’ve completely severed the relationship between content and revenue</i><p>It's a bold claim/goal with, in my experience, a dearth of successful precedent (in cases where there <i>is</i> non-trivial revenue, of course) and tells me the business model will certainly be interesting.

"make something noteworthy" — interesting choice of words. Nothing is noteworthy until Svbtle chooses to take note of it.

Great job ad. Journalism is historically a career were people are very unhappy. This is due to many many facts, which are hinted in the post. I bet theres a lot of great journalist that will read this and would want to jump into such opportunity.

Love the design of the blog. It's brilliant. So swish. The problem is they all look the same, and it kills the branding aspect of it.<p>Still, there is a very clever plan unfolding and it's pretty cool. Look forward to seeing more.

It's really hard to tell if they want to be the future PandoDaily or The New York Times.

can i short this company?

Based on Curtis' explanation of Svbtle[1], I took "the essence of blogging" to be more in the graphical design sense. I wonder what Curtis (and who else is behind Svbtle?) imagines "the future of news and opinion" looks like, and whether he's/they're thinking about it in the socioeconomopolitical sense as well as the graphical design sense.<p>[1] <a href="http://dcurt.is/codename-svbtle" rel="nofollow">http://dcurt.is/codename-svbtle</a>

Cool another propaganda network

Beautiful format and great bloggers. I love the sheer simplicity of the site and focus on quality content. Every time I'm linked to Svbtle blog I am really genuinely interested on what the writer has to offer because you've done a great job of maintaining quality. Looking forward to these new writers!

I'll stick to 9rules.com, thank you very much