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Inside Medium's Meltdown

businessinsider.com

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Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown

#71

Post by izacus »

Aeolun wrote: post #33
coldtea wrote: post #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.

Past a certain size, it's impossible to care for all employees on a personal level. It's nothing malicious. You just physically cannot connect with them any more. I personally think the cutoff point is somewhere between 30-50 employees.

Yes, and that is why such fluff is insulting to intelligence of anyone reading it.

Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown

#72

Post by avocade »

The usual sensationalistic headline, but the gist of the story is crystal clear: ads and writing is an inherent and probably impossible-to-solve conflict of interest.

The media that won't change their business model during the next couple of years will probably be extremely diminished in quality, and thus influence. Can't wait.

(And no, the latest fad of "native advertising", with ads disguising as articles, is not the answer. Hopefully this will fall to the wayside as more people learn critical thinking and sourcing [I don't see much evidence for this yet but I'm very hopeful ;) ])

But, the risk of losing the cadre of serious journalists at the large outlets that today are struggling, and who rightfully demand a good salary for their critical work (as members of the fourth estate), is a real one which needs to be solved. If Medium can be a part of forging a new way ahead, then more power to Ev. Haters always gonna hate, often without much thought, self-reflection, or humility.

Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown

#73

Post by Traubenfuchs »

kartickv wrote: post #30

I wanted to create a Medium account but decided otherwise, because of Medium's terrible UX: - Images sometimes don't load, showing a swathe of a single color. In India, latency is much higher than the US, so I open multiple tabs, and start reading only when it finishes loading. Anyone who's trying to optimise should first make sure they don't mess up what has been working for two decades. - I read an interesting blog…

They went all out with JavaScript overengineering. On mobile devices I don't want to use it at all.

Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown

#74

Post by boozywoozy »

navs wrote: post #7
whack wrote: post #3

Personally, 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.

Well said. Hindsight is 20-20 though. I imagine it's not easy to make the right calls when one is in the driver's seat.

My takeaway: It's freaking hard to be CEO.

Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown

#75

Post by dsplittgerber »

Baeocystin wrote: post #58
epberry wrote: post #11

I'm guessing I read several Medium articles a month. Some of them are really well produced - Transit's engineering post on beautifying their maps, Remix's post about public transportation planning and ILP, and Karpathy's post on backprop come to mind. So I hope Medium sticks around because I get a lot of value out of them. Would I pay for this value? I think I actually would, but maybe only for stories I finish and t…

Have you heard of https://blendle.com/ ? They brand themselves as 'Spotify for journalism', with a pay-per-article approach, with an instant refund if you don't like the article. I only started using them a couple of days ago, so I don't have any further useful comment, but it seems like a promising approach.

Blendle is a solution to a very different problem. Blendle provides unbundling for popular magazines and newspapers, i.e. you can selectively read single articles for It's really well done, but basically does what the iTunes store did for MP3s.

What Medium faces is a rather different beast: Trying to reach the holy grail of finding non-advertising funding for journalism (ideally, without a subscription-based model).

Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown

#76

Post by kriro »

dpweb wrote: post #14

I view Medium not like a news or blog, but at its best - like the OpEd page of a major newspaper. Medium destroys the average newspaper website experience - ad crazy garbage everywhere. They should lock down public figures who are writing important articles. For instance, why not put someone like a Colin Powell on a retainer, to write regular articles, and he writes exclusively for Medium. There are some powerful fig…

I'm going to disagree. I think exclusive blogging content is kind of fundamentally opposed to "how the written internet works" (imo). Building yet another paywall strikes me as a bad idea. I much prefer "soft exclusive" where your site is the preferred one because you make it easy for the writer and the consumer. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'd rather build a "Twitch for journalism" than a "Netflix for journalism" because you compete with free content and a culture of free (Twitch vs. private websites/Youtube etc.) and not vs. other premium content (Netflix vs. TV). Or put yet another way...you don't compete with the Washington Post, you compete with insightful forum discussions and quality private blogs.

Building a good way to monetize good writing is a very hard problem.

Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown

#77

Post by RantyDave »

transfire wrote: post #26

As a blogging platform I'd be happy to pay a few dollars a month, but no more. I look at other platforms like Ghost, who want $20/mo, and I wonder who in their right mind signs up for it. You can host your own site for far less.

I self-hosted ghost - it was such a pita. $20/month would've been a bargain.

Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown

#78

Post by morgante »

This doesn't surprise me, based mostly on the occasional conversations I've had with Medium employees (all of whom raved about their jobs, by the way).

Medium seems to fall into a growing group of companies that are more interested in innovating on their management/internal politics than actually creating innovative products. (Buffer, which also had layoffs and management departures, is another example.) They're very invested in trying new management frameworks like holacracy and signaling a commitment to things like transparency or diversity. This is all well and good (plenty of very successful companies have innovated on internal structures as well).

The problem is when it becomes the entire emphasis of the company. If you look at what people's priorities are, it seems like they're more interested in the company than the product. You can't have two P0s and until you have a successful and profitable product, that needs to be your P0. [0]

[0] Unless you can fund things indefinitely off your personal brand and net worth.

Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown

#79

Post by Baeocystin »

dsplittgerber wrote: post #75
Baeocystin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of https://blendle.com/ ? They brand themselves as 'Spotify for journalism', with a pay-per-article approach, with an instant refund if you don't like the article. I only started using them a couple of days ago, so I don't have any further useful comment, but it seems like a promising approach.

Blendle is a solution to a very different problem. Blendle provides unbundling for popular magazines and newspapers, i.e. you can selectively read single articles for It's really well done, but basically does what the iTunes store did for MP3s. What Medium faces is a rather different beast: Trying to reach the holy grail of finding non-advertising funding for journalism (ideally, without a subscription-based model).

I think Blendle's funding model has potential. Of particular importance is how smooth it is to read, and just as easy to say 'nope, not for this one', or not.

I've read good things on Medium, but if anything Sturgeon's Law is too generous regarding overall quality. Considering the nature of the beast, I'm not even sure it is possible to change the quality ratio without potentially breaking what Medium is.

I'd be happy chipping in sub-dollar amounts here and there for the good stuff, but I am not going to pay a flat fee for access to what amounts to a whole lot of tripe and just a few meatballs.

Re: Inside Medium's Meltdown

#80

Post by idiot_stick »

whack wrote: post #3

Personally, 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…

What about Medium is a moonshot? Hero worship in SV is peaking.
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