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Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

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Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#521

Post by PaulHoule »

not2b wrote: post #199
reilly3000 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Substack is literally a paywall as a service platform for indie writers.

They let each indie writer choose whether there will be no paywall, a partial one (for some articles), or a full one.

What's great about it is that it changes the psychology.

People are resentful about the paywall at The New York Times, which feels like they took something away.

Somehow the average Substack seems like they are giving away a lot for free but you can get even more if you support the creator. It helps that the creator is in charge of what requires payment so they can use the paywall to help, not hinder their personal brand.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#522

Post by michaelcampbell »

thepasswordis wrote: post #270
wkat4242 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are not the main pain points. The biggest issue for me is that medium makes me feel like a cash cow. The way it wants me to pay every step of the way, the way it hijacks copy/paste to insert its own marketing. The account it wants me to create. The trackers it inserts everywhere. You missed the step of making something great that people actually feel good about paying for. The grassroots "for users by u…

This is literally it. Especially hijacking copy/paste, or text highlighting. It just brings the entire feeling of the place down. Imagine walking into a nice high end restaurant, and the server tries to sell you a credit card before taking your order. Would you continue going to that restaurant? That's what this sort of garbage does to my sentiment around websites that do it.

Agree. There's a reason there are so many "de-medium-er" scriptlets and browser plugins; to get away from all that crap.

Here's the one I use with mostly success:

    javascript:location.href="https://scribe.rip"+location.pathname;

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#523

Post by michaelcampbell »

ploum wrote: post #485
rchaud wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why has substack "won" this market? Medium "won" this market a few years back as well. The reason it sucks now is because investors aren't paying them to make the internet reading experience nice. And in any case, readers aren't willing to pay a subscription fee for 'nice'. Substack is now the leader because investors haven't pressured them to turn more newsletters into paid products. They will, they just haven't n…

I already do.

Yeah, I want to "not", but sadly it's going that way for me as well.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#524

Post by michaelcampbell »

wkat4242 wrote: post #512
rchaud wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to build a profitable blogging platform because the economics of writing itself makes it unworkable. The tech stack isn't even on the top 100 hindrances to profitability.

But medium isn't the one that does the writing here, so does that really matter?

That's a good point; I guess it's hard to build a profitable company that supports an unprofitable endeavor?

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#525

Post by PaulHoule »

wkat4242 wrote: post #132
drc500free wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow I find that less annoying with substack, because their positioning is clearly "look, this is a newsletter, not a blog." The dark UI patterns around dismissing the pop up are annoying though.

Yeah that's the problem. I don't want a newsletter, I want a blog. And like the OP I only care about people reading my stuff. I don't care about monetisation and I definitely don't want to put them through all the crap that medium does.. substack is not a great alternative because it's also monetisation focused for authors.

For me one problem with the newsletter is that everybody and his brother and his sister and his other brother wants to send me email spams several times a day. The only way I can keep it manageable is to remove myself from every list as soon as I can.

I've been building my own smart RSS reader so I'd much rather add a feed to by reader which puts me, the reader, in control.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#526

Post by PaulHoule »

rsync wrote: post #482
wkat4242 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question! I thought of it but Hacker News posts are pure text, you can't add a single picture. The reading format is also not suitable for long form, and it makes the post text kinda grey which makes it even harder to read. So, no. The community is great but it's not a blogging platform. I could self host my blog and post links here for discovery but self-promotion is generally frowned upon. I don't want to abus…

"I thought of it but Hacker News posts are pure text, you can't add a single picture." ... which is, in my opinion, an overlooked and extremely powerful filter.

It's a great way to reduce the moderation burden.

If people can upload images people will upload atrocity pictures (with the caption POST A STUPID IMAGE MEME... U DIE!), lewd pictures, CSAM pictures, and other things that will waste your time to manage if they don't get you in trouble outright. (It was super easy to get a basically G rated site demonetized with a 10⁻⁴ fraction of problem images ten years ago, it must be much worse now.)

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#527

Post by PaulHoule »

readwriterick wrote: post #228
vimda wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's monitization models somewhere there. Off the top of my head, you could go the email route and charge for "premium" features. Analytics, custom domains etc. Either that or it could to be run as a loss leader for some other service

The thing is there's no money in charging writers, really. There's just not enough of them, and they aren't going to pay you enough (certainly not to reach golden egg territory). You must monetize on a per reader basis if you want real revenue.

There is a market but how big, I'd assume that these are real offers

https://wordpress.com/pricing/?compare=1#lpc-pricing

that seem like what somebody would pay. If you'd assume somebody spends 4 hours a week blogging and their time is worth $25 an hour you'd be putting $400 of hour of labor in a month and spending $40 for hosting is a fraction of that. That $25/hour would seem low to some people but high to others: some people are time-rich and cash-poor and others the other way around.

The horrific truth about the "Next Medium" is that it is going to appeal to people who are too lazy to write a successful blog by having GPT-4 write their blog posts for them.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#528

Post by coatmatter »

Everything On Medium.com Looks Like An Ad

I'm surprised it's taken this long for more people to realise this. I don't care about reading techbros' opinions on everything when most of the time it boils down to them doing shameless self-promotion.

While I'm on this topic, Quora is pretty bad too. I hope no explanation is necessary.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#529

Post by hd95489 »

throw1230 wrote: post #416
AmericanOP wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant think of a single platform thats doesn't ultimately lose relevance and get replaced that does this. A few days ago people here said their Google trick is appending 'Reddit' to the query. Not Quora. Not other dedicated Q&A sites that have been around as long. Reddit the free (minus the dumbass mobile app prompt.) Same for log-ins. Pinterest? Forget it. Twitter? Just missing a replacement. I don't know what anal…

Quora is a shithole too. I remember 5-6 years ago I hung out in Quora because it high quality content from real experts. It was really interesting. Now it's nothing. Websites (forums, mostly) have figured out they'll actually drive more traffic if they didn't have a sign-up wall. The signup requirement is myopic, some PM looking into the data and doing some math they can make more $$$ per unique visit if they make th…

I would ban quora and Pinterest from all search results if I could.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#530

Post by hd95489 »

Joeri wrote: post #397
wkat4242 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are not the main pain points. The biggest issue for me is that medium makes me feel like a cash cow. The way it wants me to pay every step of the way, the way it hijacks copy/paste to insert its own marketing. The account it wants me to create. The trackers it inserts everywhere. You missed the step of making something great that people actually feel good about paying for. The grassroots "for users by u…

On top of that, medium just isn’t a site that matters much to me. I am not interested in exploring medium to find the interesting articles they are boosting . For me medium is just a place that hosts articles that I find through reddit or HN or mastodon. The best thing it can do is let me read that one article and get out of the way. It doesn’t need features, it doesn’t need recommendations, it just needs to not be a…

Agree idk why anyone would stay in the medium ecosystem. The site is annoying so much so that like others I think twice before I even click a medium link.
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