Revue thinks newsletters are the future of quality content

In an age of fake news, clickbait headlines and SEO-copywriting, in-depth opinion pieces and long reads from a trustworthy source are needed more than ever. Revue, a Dutch startup that develops personal newsletter tools, just launched Discover; a highly curated directory of personal newsletters that has the potential to bring informative content to a broad audience.

Discover

Revue was founded in 2015 by Martijn de Kuijper and has raised over 400.000 euro’s in funding. Through Revue, users curate, write and publish content by email. Over 2.5 million emails are sent each month by 25.000 users. To help readers learn about new interesting authors and curators, Revue recently launched Discover.

Personal feel

For the past few years, authors are rediscovering the possibilities of email to write and publish their work like essays, in-depth journalism pieces and other long reads. Without the noise and character limits of social media, newsletters reach people where they are focussed: their inbox. Sure, a blog or platform like Medium also share these characteristics, but a newsletter has a more personal feel, with a direct connection to the reader, and an instant notification to the reader when new content is available.

Trend

The personal newsletter trend has been a long time in the making. Take Bob Lefsetz, who started writing the famous “The Lefsetz Letter”, a daily email about the issues that are at the core of music, back in 2005. The trend reached a new peak in 2015, when Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner first sent the highly praised “Lenny Letter”. Other examples include Dave Pell’s NextDraft and the highly popular financial news updater Finimize.

In-depth

With Discover, founder Kuijpers says that users can easily find and subscribe to newsletters with subjects that interest them. “We love the depth and admire writers who cover niche topics in great detail and have the urge to share these gems with the world,” says Kuijpers. “Initially we started compiling personal newsletters mostly out of interest, which eventually turned into Discover.“