Inside Medium's Meltdown
businessinsider.com
Inside Medium's Meltdown
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Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown
#2>They were shocked. Their adored boss, billionaire CEO Ev Williams, best known as the cofounder of Twitter, seemed to care so deeply for each of them.
LOL, as if CEOs (with the exception of some outliers in small businesses) ever care for their employees at the personal level. As soon as the company is in danger, it's off they go. And when the company does well, they aren't going to share the loot that much either.
Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown
#3Personally, I respect Ev more for his decision to put on the brakes, even when Medium seemed to be a financial success. We already have enough blogging platforms. We really don't need yet another one.
Ev Williams' mission to change the way journalism is funded and operated though, that's a truly noble ideal. Yes, it's likely too ambitious to succeed. Yes, it's a moonshot. But it's exactly the kind of moonshot that Silicon Valley needs to be taking. It's exactly the kind of moonshot that the world could really benefit from. I applaud him for his decision to put his unicorn at risk, in order to build something that could truly change the world.
Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown
#4First of all, thoughts go out to everyone laid off. If there are any SRE/SWE looking to work on ops problems in the Washington/New York areas hit me up.
I really really wanted medium to be successful. Over the past several years I have tried several different places to write/host my blog and medium by far was my favorite. I loved the design, editor and most of all draft/sharing for in-progress posts. I hope they can find a better business model that still keeps same spirit.
Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown
#5I mean what Medium is beside a glorified Wordpress? I still don't understand how very simple business like that can raise hundred of millions...
Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown
#6From the article, "industry insiders have growing doubts about Williams' business judgment and are starting to say the company is his vanity project"
This is the co-founder of Twitter which is still losing money despite being post-IPO and having a huge user base. As far as I'm concerned Twitter is still a vanity project.
Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown
#7Personally, I respect Ev more for his decision to put on the brakes, even when Medium seemed to be a financial success. We already have enough blogging platforms. We really don't need yet another one. Ev Williams' mission to change the way journalism is funded and operated though, that's a truly noble ideal. Yes, it's likely too ambitious to succeed. Yes, it's a moonshot. But it's exactly the kind of moonshot that Si…
He could have done that with a lot more tact - informing publishers and employees. He's non-confrontational - ok. Hire someone that isn't. Moonshots carry a risk and it's not all his risk. It's the investors, the users, the employees as well.
Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown
#8> They were shocked. Their adored boss, billionaire CEO Ev Williams, best known as the cofounder of Twitter, seemed to care so deeply for each of them. LOL, as if CEOs (with the exception of some outliers in small businesses) ever care for their employees at the personal level. As soon as the company is in danger, it's off they go. And when the company does well, they aren't going to share the loot that much either.
Jim Barksdale : "I'm not your Daddy and this isn't a family"
Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown
#9I think the problem with journalism is that it was never the actual business. What it was, were supporting and adding sophistication to the news industry, but it was never actually central to the business. But the value of news was that it didnt used to be widely available. That was actually what people paid for. The news, not the journalism. And so what we see are all these people in the news industry trying to improve their business by improving journalism.
Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown
#10I think the problem with journalism is that it was never the actual business. What it was, were supporting and adding sophistication to the news industry, but it was never actually central to the business. But the value of news was that it didnt used to be widely available. That was actually what people paid for. The news, not the journalism. And so what we see are all these people in the news industry trying to impr…
Don't forget classified ads either. Historically the rule of thumb is that subscriptions and newsstand sales would more-or-less cover the cost of ink and paper. Ads (and especially classified ads, which were an enormous money spinner) paid for the actual journalism.
The moment the internet gutted ad revenue, this stopped being viable.
As you say, journalism made the news prestigious, but the news didn't actually make money either; it was just there to get eyeballs onto the ads.