17 Comments
User's avatar
Shoni's avatar

This is very exciting!! More feedback: the dfos login failed, I couldn't collect an article because it prompted me to add credit and then said I couldn't because stripe wasn't connected yet, and the add to my home page just puts the link to the browser version, not the app on my phone (although perhaps that's what it is at this stage?) I can't find the relevant section in dfos so that's why I'm putting this here, but that's a dfos problem, not a mea one. I do like the UI and will attempt to upload some content later on. Was wondering about your acceptable content rules, if any. My most successful posts on Substack are all a bit steamy, so I was going to share those, but happy to keep it 'clean' if you prefer.

Elle Griffin's avatar

Thank you so much for these. I’ve added them to our list to fix. Sorry about the Stripe issue, that’s annoying! Go ahead and add your articles—you could always paywall your steamiest bits?

Paul Spinrad's avatar

This looks great! Following the "iTunes for..." model, is there a config that lets you designate a folder in your local file system for the pieces that you collect (and write), so that you really own them and can read them offline from there? And then presumably, for the pieces that you've written, the cloud copy that everyone else sees would publish/sync from your local copy when you tell it to.

Ryan Weberling's avatar

Just experimented with copying a piece into Mea: https://mea.media/otherwise/ancient-mutants-of-joy-dutch-crocus

Beautiful formatting! Stylized but not overly so, a bit neutral, a bit whimsical. I’m curious to see where this goes.

Ryan Weberling's avatar

Yes, just the first piece of a series. The difference seemed clear in the composer.

Elle Griffin's avatar

Oh ok awesome. So there are other posts coming? This looks so good! Thank you so much for uploading a post!

Elle Griffin's avatar

Amazing, thanks for sharing!! Did you mean to make this a series? Or was it meant to be a standalone post? It looks like a series with just one post in it so far? (I'm trying to make sure this isn't confusing in the composer)

Jonathan Brownson's avatar

Walk me through what publishing a year's worth of 800 word substacks might look like on your platform...

Elle Griffin's avatar

If you mean how do you get your existing Substack posts to Mea, we're working on an importer. Right now you can just copy paste!

If you mean "what does publishing on Mea" look like, the answer is compose a post, schedule or publish it, readers will see it in their feeds and can collect the posts they like and add them to their library. They can take private notes and highlights on each article or join the public discussion underneath the post with other collectors. They'll get an email telling them who collected their posts, what the people they follow have published and collected, and replies to the various discussions they've had.

Jonathan Brownson's avatar

What organization collects and distributes the money? What do the charge for that service?

Elle Griffin's avatar

Right now there is no money in the app. It's all Monopoly money so you can see how it works. If it ever moved forward and became a platform or product then we would connect it to Stripe, probably take 10%, and make it some kind of platform cooperative where writers/readers own the platform. But this is just a prototype!

Perry Ismangil's avatar

Instant feedback:

1. On a dark theme home screen, the Mea icon is barely visible. Need more colour?

2. I failed signing on using my DFOS account.

jake simonds's avatar

Sorry about that! The DFOS sign on was probably a bad idea, we recommend making a regular account if you haven't already gone via DFOS. If you were able to make a DFOS account, and now it's failing let me know and we can fix it on the backend. Sorry again for the confusion!

Perry Ismangil's avatar

I was using my existing DFOS account. Which in turn I created a while back when Elle was encouraging us to try DFOS. Basically I sign up to anything Elle endorsed 😂

(except abandoning Google - sorry Elle I'm too deep a Google acolyte)

Elle Griffin's avatar

Sorry for making you sign up for so much beta testing 😆

jake simonds's avatar

That was the thought😂😂! People will need dfos anyways so kill two birds with one stone and keep it simple sorry about that!

Thinking about how to do this ... if you're comfortable sharing your email here in a DM or emailing me (jakesimonds@gmail.com) I can basically ... it'll send you a password reset email and then you'll have a normal account? Would that work?

Elle Griffin's avatar

Noted! Adding to our list of fixes.