Live data from Hacker News

Ending our Medium integration

write.as

51–60 of 382 posts

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#51
post #17
post #4

Personally, I was excited by Medium all those years ago. Now I think twice before clicking a medium.com link. I really hate the obnoxious UI and usually close the tab before reading the article. Anyone else feel this way?

While some interesting and insightful articles still exist on the site, the majority feels like someone trying to explain me what they read on Wikipedia this morning.

Or to sell themselves. Or worse, writing a subpar programming tutorial to have "online presence".

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#52
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that way about most bloggish sites, until I hit the readability button. If they block that then I give up.

Every single time I see a medium link, I prime my cursor to hit Reader Mode as fast as possible, it's a godsend.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19035256

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#53
post #2

I think some things are more suited as not-for-profit entities. Blogging is hard to monetize without coming off as evil or desperate, so why bother? But then again, you still need to fund servers and such.

I think the right question is, what is a fair amount to pay to fund servers etc?

$1/mo? $5/mo? $25/mo?

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#55
post #2

I think some things are more suited as not-for-profit entities. Blogging is hard to monetize without coming off as evil or desperate, so why bother? But then again, you still need to fund servers and such.

Perhaps this will lead to less blogs-for-profit, and more blogs-out-of-interest. The internet was just fine before money arrived and took most of it hostage, I'm sure it will be just as good when it all goes bust and money leaves.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#56
Quora also started out as an awesome service just like Medium. Eventually though, the VC's need the promises they've heard during fundraising to be fulfilled. That's when the platforms start with the dark patterns.

Non-VC companies are a longer and less glamorous slog to get off the ground but also don't come under pressure to compromise on their morals.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#57
post #39
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly about Medium: waning enthusiasm. I only recently got engaged in HackerNews. The UI isn't beautiful. There are minimal features. It's my favorite content aggregator right now. Obviously, HN isn't a blogging platform, but it accomplishes many of the things medium is trying to. I wonder if many more partners will give up on medium? Hackernoon is moving away because of a change to medium's advertising po…

> The UI isn't beautiful. I disagree. HN's UI is perfect.

They could have fixed the overflowing fixed-width blocks on mobile, to be honest :) But I agree with you in every sense.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#58

Services exist if you pay for them with: 1. Labor 2. Cash 3. Personal Data/Ads With a few exceptions (I can't think of any, but presumably you might) you have to pay through one of these methods. If you don't like Medium, you can use Blogger (3), Ghost/Svbtle (2) or self host (1 + less 2). To put it another way, are we annoyed at Medium or just the inevitable friction in the world. No matter what they promised, they…

Self-hosting costs me money ($5/month) but not much labour after the initial set up that took 2 hours. My work flow is to write in text files on my local computer, commit to git and `git push`. I can't think of a work flow that requires less labour. It would also cost nothing if I used github pages or a similar service.

Caveats - authoring is not mobile friendly, and it's not possible for folks who aren't comfortable with git.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#59
post #21

Signal v Noise - recently exited https://m.signalvnoise.com/signal-v-noise-exits-medium/ Previously, a Wired's Publication did similar thing. Despite all, (as someone who writes on medium) - I see it's one easy platform anyone to get started - kind of what blogspot used to do.

Wordpress is great. I've signed up for a yearly plan, I get to use my own domain. And their editor is really great.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#60
post #4

Personally, I was excited by Medium all those years ago. Now I think twice before clicking a medium.com link. I really hate the obnoxious UI and usually close the tab before reading the article. Anyone else feel this way?

It's still the nicest, simplest web design I know that has any level of popularity for blogging. I'd still rather read on Medium than on Wordpress or Discourse or Blogger or Ghost or really any popular blog layout I've seen.

I don't want to trivialize how annoying the login popups are, but ultimately I put up with them for the sake of a more readable article on the other side.

What blog styles do you like reading?

Post reply on HN