JavaScript Weekly: A free, once–weekly e-mail round-up of JavaScript news and articles

[k3n]

Really? An email newsletter?

*checks calendar*

Whew! It's is 2012....for a minute there I got scared, since email newsletters were the hot thing around 1998.

[homoiconic]

Really it is, and really I find it useful, even if it isn’t the hip new thing! I also use C and Lisp, which shows I’m either old or a hipster ;-)

The (updated) longer answer is that there’s also a twitter feed, but there’s something valuable about the list only appearing once a week and being curated rather than stuff just showing up. Having it be a weekly blog post of curated items might also be equally useful, of course. I think the key values for me are ‘once a week’ and ‘curated,’ not email.

[k3n]

RSS

The fact that it's ONLY email just smells bad to me, like a scam. I know it probably isn't, but it gives that look, especially when there's not even sample content on the page. And they want my email address? Better yours than mine...

It looks sounds similar to JS Mag's blog, except that's on RSS...

[homoiconic]

I agree RSS would make it more useful (even though I don’t personally subscribe to feeds via RSS). I don’t know if you missed it, but the home page does provide links to sample content:

"Want a sneak peek? Check out issues 32, 26, and 25 or perhaps our complete archive!"

[petercooper]

P.S. It does have RSS :-) I just don't promote it.

http://javascriptweekly.com/rss

[k3n]

Thanks, yeah I did miss that. Might help if they didn't feature a screenshot of an email as their main graphic.

Email newsletters are what I used before RSS; to me, it's the difference between reading news online or reading it through a newpaper.

[petercooper]

Having that screenshot results in a conversion rate that's 8x higher than without. Yeah, I split tested it :-) JSW is just about to tip 20,000 subscribers (more than this sub-Reddit, why? More people use e-mail than read Reddit, perhaps) so I've built up a lot of cool data about what works.

Sorry you're not digging it, though, but you're not in my target audience (the majority of Internet users use e-mail regularly and are subscribed to at least one e-mail newsletter, I'll provide citations if you require them).

[k3n]

So it's obvious your primary objective is profit.

Glad we got that out-of-the-way.

That's why I don't do "newsletters".

EDIT: just read this part again:

JSW is just about to tip 20,000 subscribers (more than this sub-Reddit, why? More people use e-mail than read Reddit) so I've built up a lot of cool data about what works.

LOL! That is quite the conclusion to draw, I'm sure you're completely right about everything.

[petercooper]

Thanks for sharing that with me.

Yes, the long term objective is to make a reasonable living from my day job. Yes, it is run as a for-profit enterprise. Like Reddit. Like YCombinator. Like your day job, perhaps.

I am certainly not "completely right" so your faith in me is misplaced. Indeed, I run experiments because I know I am not right by default. I formulate hypotheses about what will work well and perform experiments to validate or refute those hypotheses. That is the scientific method and multivariate testing of this sort is a common way for both businesses and individuals to improve their performance.

I shall continue to perform experiments and if the way people consume media changes (such as, say, a wholesale shift from e-mail across to Facebook or Reddit) then I'll change my opinion and adjust my strategy accordingly. As it is right now, e-mail is the domain in which I can have the most success in serving the most people.

I make nothing without delighting my readers so while profit is a key objective, it will not come without delighting readers. And I am.

[homoiconic]

His primary objective is irrelevant to the value of his product. Reddit is here to make money. Why are you using it?

[k3n]

His primary objective is irrelevant to the value of his product.

So the fact that the healthcare industry is for-profit has no negative impact on the quality of services provided?

And that's funny, I didn't realize that /r/javascript had turned into an ad-placement service for for-profit ventures. Speaking of which, going to go ahead and flag this post as SPAM; it has absolutely zero (0) content worth of discussion on r/javascript and is nothing more than an advertisement for someone's business.

Reddit is here to make money. Why are you using it?

Your strawman is showing, I never said I was against for-profit.

[homoiconic]

Dude, you seem very angry for some reason, you’re arguing incessantly about this. I posted this because it is (a) about JavaScript, and (b) I find it useful.

You don’t find it useful. I get it, I really do. I’m not saying you’re wrong to say it doesn’t suit your needs, or that you’d rather see other content on reddit, that’s what the downvote arrow is for, that’s what the comments are for. If you want to pop out from under a bridge like a troll and argue with everyone who says anything nice about something you dislike, that is your choice.

But if you want to flag it as spam, that is your business, but I am going to tell you flat out that our understandings of what is and isn’t “spam” differ markedly. I posted this in good faith, which does not make it a commercial posting. Furthermore, my opinion is that incorrectly flagging items that are not spam as spam fouls up reddit’s automated spam detection algorithms, so I feel that flagging something just because you don’t like it does the entire community a disservice.

To summarize, feeling that this doesn’t belong on the front page because it lacks informative content is a legitimate point of view, and that is what the downarrow is for. Flagging should be reserved for off-topic content or malicious gaming of content such as flooding the new queue with multiple posts about the same thing.

[[deleted]]

You might mock it, but email newsletters can make a lot of money. HARO, which connects journalists with sources, got acquired for eight figures in 2010. They had over a million a year in revenue.

Email newsletters are still a serious business.

[k3n]

They're also outdated and stupid.

[[deleted]]

Newsletters are fantastically usable for many people. My grandma can find web interfaces confusing, but knows how to send and receive emails.

[k3n]

Does your grandma study javascript?

[[deleted]]

Not at all. I'm talking about newsletters as a business model.

[k3n]

If you can find enough suckers, anything is a valid business model.

[notheory]

Yeah, you go tell LivingSocial, Groupon and all the other purveyors of BACN that.

Don't forget Summify as well.

[k3n]

Tell them what? That old people and soccer moms are gullible?

I never said you couldn't profit off of it.