Many members of the cytokine receptor superfamily initiate intracellular signaling by activating members of the Jak family of tyrosine kinases. Activation of the same Jaks by multiple cytokines raises the question of how these cytokines activate distinct intracellular signaling pathways. Selection of particular substrates—the transcriptional activator Stat3 and protein tyrosine phosphatase PTP1D—that characterize responses to the ciliary neurotrophic factor-interleukin-6 cytokine family depended not on which Jak was activated, but was instead determined by specific tyrosine-based motifs in the receptor components—gp130 and LIFR—shared by these cytokines. Further, these tyrosine-based motifs were modular, because addition of a Stat3-specifying motif to another cytokine receptor, that for erythropoietin, caused it to activate Stat3 in a ligand-dependent fashion.