Hello@, and Good Night
Heads up to new visitors of the Notes section: We posted four intros you might want to check out. First, Gould heralded the return of blogging to The Atlantic, then Matt debuted our novel thread function, Krishnadev framed our approach to news, and I invited readers to throw down the gauntlet. I’ve been long anticipating our thread function, which is our modest attempt to square the circle of blogging in the age of social media—two things increasingly at odds. Ezra Klein said it best:
[B]logging is a conversation, and conversations don’t go viral. People share things [on Facebook] their friends will understand, not things that you need to have read six other posts to understand. Blogging encourages interjections into conversations, and it thrives off of familiarity. Social media encourages content that can travel all on its own.
Thus, any of our thread-connected notes that travel around the web will carry all the related notes with them. Clicking into a note lands you at the top of the thread page, where you’ll see a brief overview of the blog conversation and—pinned right below—the note you clicked to see. If other notes were published later in time, clicking on the red box will show them instantly. Now it’s a fully displayed thread, with the newest notes at the top. (Clicking on an “oldest” toggle orders them chronologically, to catch up from the beginning.) This is all much easier to show than tell—and this note is currently in a thread as well, so look around.
So far we have two threads going: one on the new campus P.C. and one on the Notes launch (a thread you’re currently in). We can’t wait to use this function for live-blogging. Soon I’ll be adding to this thread a bunch of your emails responding to the Notes launch, but for now, here’s one email at the very top of our inbox for hello@theatlantic.com:
Hello, indeed!
I’m excited about what you guys are up to. The state of the blog and hubs and the stream and social media are an ongoing point of interest (and conversation) for me and several of my friends.
I’m not excited that I can’t find an RSS feed for just the Notes section, though. Any chance that’s a hint you guys will make happen, or do the vagaries of advertising-driven publishing simply make it not doable?
RSS is at the very top of our to-do list right now and should be live tomorrow, but we’ll keep you updated.
Finally, for this first full day of blogging, some major props are needed: Frankie Dintino and Paul Nicholsen on the incredible job building Notes, Libby Bawcombe and Darhil Crooks on design, and Clarissa Matthews and Betsy Ebersole on product direction. And one more shout-out:
Thanks, Paul’s mom. Now to regain a bunch of sleep ...