A brand new blog post from Meta marks the six-month anniversary of its publication publishing platform, Bulletin. Amid its plugs for the writers who publish work on the service, the corporate lets us know simply what number of publishers it has on board to assist compete with firms like Substack and Twitter: 115.

Unlike Substack, the buzziest publication platform of the second, you possibly can’t simply begin writing with Bulletin — Meta has continued to add writers to the platform in batches as an alternative of getting a public sign-up course of. While the quantity implies that the corporate isn’t doing an enormous push to get individuals on the platform as quick as potential, that does look like on objective, not less than to some extent (there’s at all times the chance it hasn’t been as profitable at courting writers because it deliberate). If it needed, Meta may most likely get these numbers up by letting anybody signal as much as write, however for now the corporate’s nonetheless promising to “thoughtfully increase the number of creators” over the subsequent 12 months.

In November, Substack introduced that its writers had netted a million paid subscribers. Meta solely gave numbers free of charge subscribers, saying “more than half of the creators on Bulletin have over 1,000 free email subscribers, with many having more than 5,000 or 10,000.” Even if most Bulletin publishers are nearer to the ten,000 aspect, it doesn’t seem like Substack could have its lunch eaten anytime quickly. That’s doubtless a reduction for Substack’s co-founder, who wrote a semi-snarky blog post welcoming the competitors when Twitter purchased competitor Revue and rumors had been swirling about Facebook moving into the publication enterprise.

While it’s most likely too early to jot down off Bulletin over how the testing goes, it doesn’t seem to be Meta’s seeing the identical runaway success it has with a few of its different clones. Its copy of Snapchat’s tales characteristic has change into an enormous a part of Instagram, and Meta is just one of the companies making an attempt to show that Clubhouse’s social audio is extra of a characteristic than a complete platform. With these options although, there’s much less baggage — writers might have a tough time trusting a platform run by Meta, as its previous efforts to work with publishers and journalists haven’t been terribly profitable.