Podcast Episode DetailsListen to the podcast to find out:

1. What Writer (writer.com) is and what it can do for writers and writing teams.
2. Features of Writer that may set it apart from similar platforms like Grammarly and Jasper.
3. Why David Crosby should be remembered for his importance to rock and roll and songwriting.

Introduction to WriterI saw a speaker, May Habib from Writer, at Content Marketing World in September — specifically, the virtual version — I didn't attend in person this year. May's presentation was compelling enough that I decided to check out the platform. If you've been listening for a while, you know that I played around with Jasper for several months in 2022. You can find my review on that in episode 5: Content AI and Humble Pie.

Issues with Content AI Platforms like JasperJasper is a tool that's based on GPT-3 AI project, the same project that ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 are based on. Jasper promises to help you do everything from writing full blog posts, to organizing your thoughts, rewriting existing text, creating captions, writing social media copy, creating product descriptions, and more.

This might be a mild spoiler for my review of that episode, but in general, I found the platform promising, and useful in some cases. I had a few problems with it, and concluded that I couldn't necessarily rely on it for more than simply developing ideas — so I canceled it.

The only problem is that, now and then, I find myself wishing I had some of that functionality back. ChatGPT solves part of the problem for me, but it just isn't as polished or easy to use as Jasper.

Then came Writer.

Is Writer a Grammarly Clone?At first glance, Writer is a Grammarly clone. Grammarly is the market leader in grammar correction and writing accuracy tools — and I've used it for years.

Like Grammarly, Writer watches what you write, and gives you a score based on the quality and accuracy of your writing. It provides suggestions in categories like spelling, grammar, terms, style, clarity, delivery, inclusivity, and plagiarism. If you've used Grammarly, you'll find that list familiar. There are some subtle differences, though.

Jasper-like FunctionalityLet's talk about the AI elements found in Writer, because this is the area where it moves beyond Grammarly. Writer has a feature called CoWrite that approximates the functionality of Jasper.

It features templates, similar to Jasper's Recipes, that analyze text you enter and create suggestions for blog post titles. It can summarize text into bullet points. It can even write copy for you based on the inputs you give it, or rewrite existing copy to simplify it and make it better.

Remembering David CrosbySpeaking of writers, I want to pay tribute this week to one of the great songwriters in the world of popular music over the last 50 years. David Crosby passed away last week at the age of 81.

Crosby was a huge part of two highly successful and influential bands: The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, and Nash — along with all its variations, including Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. David Crosby had a great voice and was a talented songwriter and musician.

Get the full show notes, including my bottom line on Writer.com and David Crosby album recommendations, at SuperSpaceRobot.com