> It's interesting what Dalton is trying, but I find the utter lack of design personality across the sites to be quite off-putting.

Dalton is the guy behind App.net. Svbtle is a Dustin Curtis thing, I believe.

Whoops, you are correct. s/Dalton/Dustin

I personally like the lack of design. It puts the focus on the text and the ideas in the text, not the design of the page.

I agree. I was really impressed with Dustin's blog where each post had a different design theme. I was hoping that svbtle would pull something more creative off. The network itself is fine but the quality doesn't seem to be better than my rss feeds. /me shrugs