Ghost’s New Release Bridges Social Web Gap, Challenging Substack in Digital Publishing Landscape
In an advancement following extensive beta testing, Ghost has launched Ghost 6, a new iteration of its newsletter platform software. This update enables publishers to disseminate their long-form content natively across the expansive open social web beyond traditional channels such as web publication, RSS feeds, and email distribution. The expanded connectivity encompasses services like Mastodon, Meta’s Threads, Flipboard, WordPress sites utilizing ActivityPub, Surf, WriteFreely, and others.
While Ghost indicates the possibility of publishing to Bluesky through this release, this functionality is facilitated via an integration with Bridgy Fed—a service bridging the open social web, or fediverse, with the ATmosphere. The former operates on the ActivityPub standard for decentralized social networking, while the latter caters to applications such as Bluesky employing the newer AT Protocol.
Manton Reece, founder of Micro.blog, differentiated his service from Ghost’s by noting that Micro.blog has been focusing on direct AT Protocol integration, whereas Ghost utilizes bridging technology.
Originating from ActivityPub, an established protocol for open and decentralized social media applications, the interest in developing with this standard has increased significantly since Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. This surge followed by emerging competitors to Twitter (now known as X).
Meta entered the fray in 2023 with Instagram Threads, competing effectively on mobile devices alongside X. Meanwhile, blogging platform WordPress—including its hosted version WordPress.com—has integrated ActivityPub functionality, enabling users to follow WordPress blogs across platforms such as Mastodon. Various other applications have also joined the open social web, including Flipboard’s flagship app and newer app Surf, along with publishing platform Medium.
Ghost emphasized the potential network effects of connecting with ActivityPub, allowing users on federated apps to follow publishers’ posts and engage through interactions like liking, commenting, or resharing. This expansion could broaden a publisher’s reach and increase their readership.
In addition to the ActivityPub integration, Ghost 6 offers several other enhancements and new features. Notably, the software now includes a built-in analytics suite for real-time monitoring of performance, engagement, and conversions across web platforms, newsletters, and subscriptions.
The software also supports multiple payment methods, tips and donations, branded newsletters, personalized content tailored to individual readers, and more. Following the release, Ghost has adjusted pricing for its Pro (hosted) plans, with the cheapest options starting at $15 and $29 per month—an increase from $9 and $25 respectively. Publishers with a substantial subscriber base will now benefit from reduced pricing.
