Alternative email provider Hey is expanding its offering with a new blog and email newsletter service, called Hey World, which is being offered as a free addition to all personal Hey subscribers, the company announced today.
Using Hey World is incredibly simple: Hey users just need to send an email to world@hey.com. The subject of that email then becomes the post’s headline, while the body text is the blog post itself.
Once you’ve sent the first email, Hey will automatically create a blog for you, at “world.hey.com/yourusername,” which collects all of your posts and offers both an RSS feed and an email subscription box for followers to keep up with your latest missives.
In a Hey World blog post announcing the feature, Hey co-founder Jason Fried explains that the feature was borne out of a desire for a place to share thoughts online in a longer-form context than a short Twitter post or tweetstorm, without the contentious public square of a place like Twitter. Fried also notes that the Hey World blogs are an experiment for now, and the company is going to “play for a while,” with the new feature. Additionally, as “a shoutout to simpler times,” Hey World pages feature “no javascript, no tracking, no junk.”
Hey World likely won’t replace more premium newsletter services like Substack, which allow writers more robust tools and monetization tools; but for more casual writers looking for a place to share thoughts, it could be a good option. Plus, the simplicity of writing posts using the same UI and editor as Hey’s regular emails means there’s an incredibly low barrier to entry (assuming one is a Hey subscriber, at least).
Hey World blogs are available now for paying Hey subscribers with personal accounts; users on business accounts or with free trials aren’t eligible for the new feature.
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