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Medium is a poor choice for blogging

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Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#251

Post by danShumway »

chaostheory wrote: post #240
danShumway wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I only read his post because it's on HN. And I read Medium stuff regularly on Medium. I totally get where you're coming from, but I'm not convinced that Medium helps at all. I mean, this article was posted to Medium. Medium didn't put it in front of you. So how is Medium helping? I used to cross-post everything I wrote to Medium, because I thought it was a good reader acquisition strategy. But posting on Medium doe…

> Medium didn't put it in front of you. It does through emails and their homepage, which is one major reason people publish on Medium despite the downsides

Again, I get it, and you're not wrong. In theory.

But in practice, is Medium currently helping people build audiences in a significant way? My experience suggests no. It was easier for me to do that with a self-hosted site.

I'm not sure exactly why this is -- maybe it's that Medium's discovery algorithms take into account correlations between existing readers, so if you don't already have a bunch of readers you'll never get picked up. Maybe Medium is just super crowded, so the odds of you getting recommended over someone who's already popular are low.

All I know is that my readers are return viewers (which self hosting helps a lot with) and people coming from Hackernews, Reddit, Facebook, or curated link aggregators. I don't personally see any data that suggests Medium is driving any traffic to my content. And at this point, universally across the board, my self hosted blog performs better than my Medium blog.

I'm sure that varies from publisher to publisher, but I think it's simplistic to say that Medium by default drives traffic. I suspect that for small sites it's a lot more complicated.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#253

Post by MH15 »

foo101 wrote: post #150

Most of the popular online services have screwed up their interface. I think it started with Digg. It was once a loved website. The screwed up the interface and everyone ran to Reddit. Now Reddit has screwed up their interface too. We all used to love Google for its simple and elegant web interfaces. Look at what a mess GMail is now. If there is anything that more than 10 years of Web 2.0 teaches us, it is that once…

Githuh pages is the solution. For now. And that's all we need, as you said, nothing lasts forever.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#254

Post by eropple »

sctb wrote: post #244
gus_massa wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mods can't see everything. It depends how evident it is and if the comments are relevant [1] and if the if the only purpose of the user is to make adds. My guess is that this user only makes a comment per month, so it's not so easy to remember. For an official reply, you can send an email to the mods hn@ycombinator.com and they can take a look at the history of comments of the user. [For example, this is an examp…

Yes! All: please email us when you see stuff like this. We read emails.

To amplify: they really do. I've got my beefs with HN moderation on occasion, but neither 'dang nor 'sctb have ever failed to respond to an email with a response, and a thoughtful one if it's a topic that needs one.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#255

Post by thanatropism »

danShumway wrote: post #222
coldtea wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. But zero ways to get people to read it. I only read his post because it's on HN. And I read Medium stuff regularly on Medium. The chances of most people discovering some random blog? Not so much. Whereas Medium has concentrated eyeballs and knows their preferences to serve them stuff that's close to their tastes...

> I only read his post because it's on HN. And I read Medium stuff regularly on Medium. I totally get where you're coming from, but I'm not convinced that Medium helps at all. I mean, this article was posted to Medium. Medium didn't put it in front of you. So how is Medium helping? I used to cross-post everything I wrote to Medium, because I thought it was a good reader acquisition strategy. But posting on Medium doe…

> and making sure that I matched popular writing styles

Maybe this is the problem. I'm sure as a professional writer you need to keep up with reader interests (rather than setting up to do the blog equivalent of Finnegan's Wake), but you don't want to be too interchangeable either.

It's like you had to decide each month from each cake you want to eat (there's an infinite row of cakes) and you vie for the huge ones -- together with countless other people, so you get really small crumbs. Go for a smaller cake and you may get actual slices with frosting and all.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#256

Post by PavlovsCat »

int0x80 wrote: post #69
joeax wrote: post #42

This is an on-point rant, but what alternatives are there that combine clean, useful publishing tools with the ability to reach a wide audience? Sure I can host my own blog, but what good is it if I have no reader engagement. If there is a decent replacement, I'm all ears.

1- Host your blog. 2- Write post. 3- Post to multiple aggregators (HN, reddit, etc) It can even be made (semi)automatic.

Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#257

Post by abalone »

> Sure, Medium editor is nice. Typography is good (for English, other languages are not supported). Publishing is free.

That's it? I'm not sure the author accurately summarized the upside of Medium. I thought the main benefit is distribution.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#258

Post by chipotle_coyote »

danShumway wrote: post #251
chaostheory wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Medium didn't put it in front of you. It does through emails and their homepage, which is one major reason people publish on Medium despite the downsides

Again, I get it, and you're not wrong. In theory. But in practice, is Medium currently helping people build audiences in a significant way? My experience suggests no. It was easier for me to do that with a self-hosted site. I'm not sure exactly why this is -- maybe it's that Medium's discovery algorithms take into account correlations between existing readers, so if you don't already have a bunch of readers you'll ne…

> But in practice, is Medium currently helping people build audiences in a significant way?

I actually don't think Medium ever helped people build audiences in a significant way, with relatively few exceptions: Medium has always been structured to build an audience first for Medium and second for "publications" hosted on Medium. But it's never been particularly good at building audiences for individual authors.

While I'm aware this is anecdotal, there appears to be very little correlation between the number of followers one has and the number of views any given article gets: you can have several hundred followers and have some articles that get thousands of views (usually because they were included in someone else's publication or linked from somewhere else on the web), and others that get maybe a couple dozen views.

> I don't personally see any data that suggests Medium is driving any traffic to my content.

It is not. Readers that start on Medium by and large stay on Medium.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#259

Post by dntrkv »

foo101 wrote: post #150

Most of the popular online services have screwed up their interface. I think it started with Digg. It was once a loved website. The screwed up the interface and everyone ran to Reddit. Now Reddit has screwed up their interface too. We all used to love Google for its simple and elegant web interfaces. Look at what a mess GMail is now. If there is anything that more than 10 years of Web 2.0 teaches us, it is that once…

The main thing that killed Digg was them selling out to advertisers and having power users control all the content on the front page. The redesign was just the final nail in the coffin.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#260

Post by jamesjyu »

coldtea wrote: post #117
tpaschalis wrote: post #33

It's funny, because some years ago when Medium blogs were starting to be posted left and right, people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the few who objected. Now, we need all kinds of tricks, add-ons and blocks to just read five-minute posts during our commute. It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. The next free framework that comes, which promises a cl…

> It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. But zero ways to get people to read it. I only read his post because it's on HN. And I read Medium stuff regularly on Medium. The chances of most people discovering some random blog? Not so much. Whereas Medium has concentrated eyeballs and knows their preferences to serve them stuff that's close to their tastes...

It's easy to fall into the trap of seeking scale, because we're surrounded by it: best selling authors, viral content, etc. But I'd rather have a small number of readers who really appreciate my writing versus a large number of randoms gathered from feed promotions who won't even finish reading.
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