There's no good way to have a conversation on Tumblr, is there? This will have to suffice

There’s no good way to have a conversation on Tumblr, is there? This will have to suffice

I almost exclusively read on my laptop using readability. While still not laid out, and still a “template,” it makes reading online SO much more pleasant. Once you start you can’t go back.

It is an interesting point, though. We have always laid out the pages of our magazines and newspapers using templates as a guide - customizing almost everything. Why don’t we do more of that online?

There is no good reason as far as I can tell.

There’s no technological barrier. Creating a template that allowed for more freedom in design, I think, would be remarkably easy. It’s the practicality of it. Maintaining that kind of site would require skilled producers, an art director, designer(s), front-end developer(s), editors who understood what is and is not feasible. It would certainly be a far more complex publishing process than is typical.

As I mentioned earlier, I believe the biggest barrier is financial. A site like this would just cost more to upkeep than your typical editorial startup. But I think there is a good business there. Slow down your production cycle, create high expectations and therefore real demand around your content and sell advertisers on the content’s high quality and the audience’s high avg. time on site and I think you have a winning formula.