Tiny no more

Tinyletter is closing down but I do not wish our email relationship to end, but rather, to "burgeon"

Dear valued friend,

I have received an email telling me that Tinyletter, through which you have subscribed to my mailing list, is being closed down by Mailchimp (its owner). Thus I must move you, and a couple of thousand of your fellow travellers, to a new service. I have considered building my own enterprise level mailing list provider rom scratch, and even entertained a couple of rounds of meetings with venture capitalists in order to secure finding for a server farm (which I planned to call the "Phunny Pharm"). But in the end, it didn't seem like the right move for me. I'm not ready to run a huge tech business.

So I did what anyone in my position would do. I tried to work out which mailing list provider was free. That's right. I didn't want to spend one thin penny on this service. I wanted to do it on the cheap. And let me tell you, that's not as easy as it sounds. The mail magnates running the business want greenbacks, right in the hand, for the service they provide. I'd have to write a lot of emails to make it worth opening my wallet. I don't know if you actually read these emails, but they're not worth paying for. I used to enjoy sending them once a week, but someone told me, on a day I was feeling somewhat fragile, that I was sending too many. And within a few months, I'd gone from one a week to two or three a year. Because if there's one thing I'm sensitive to, it's criticism that leads to me having to do a lot less work.

But once, I could reach out using social media platforms to friends all over the world. My reach was equivalent to that of noted Mr Man "Mr Tickle". Those days are over. My mailing list has to come back in 2024. It's all I've got left.

So I have moved it to Substack. This communiqué will arrive from there. Doubtless I have bungled the process and will be arrested. But know that, like always, I tried with a whole heart and was punished for my efforts.

Kind regards,

John Allison