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Ending our Medium integration

write.as

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Re: Ending our Medium integration

#121

Post by dylz »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #100
athenot wrote: post #69

Does anyone here use Write.as for blogging? This is the first time I've seen them and the simplicity look appealing to me. For the record I was really excited when Medium came out and loved the simple, open, no-clutter style it had. But fast-forward to today and it's now very different.

I'd love to try Write.as, but it seems that their free plan is no longer available? Not to me at least. The cheapest plan I can choose is 12USD/year.

The default plan selected is $0. Leave it as is.

Notice that if you pick $12, a billing section appears, but if you click the $0 such that the $0 button is greyed, it is replaced with captcha

This is a great default ... but weird in terms of colour / selection choice being misleading?

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#123

Post by RajT88 »

taude wrote: post #113
rjain15 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong in making money, if you want to attract good content writers and curate content, provide additional services like digital magazine, you have to make money to pay your writers, curators and staff. I don't write for Medium, but I think rather than trashing Medium, maybe we should help make it as a better platform for publishers. There is enough garbage out in the internet, maybe Medium can help c…

I'm sure there's other like me here, but I don't even click on articles published in Medium anymore because I don't want to deal with their gigantic popup that interferes with me getting to the content. I think we're eventually going to see a resurgence in open platforms where content creators better control their content. I don't think the discoverability of these content hubs is worth it, I personally do more disco…

I legitimately want to read the articles--they have a lot of interesting ones.

The curious thing is that often enough you can't even click through--they insist that it's "Medium Exclusive" content and you can only view 3 a month. (Browser Private mode helps, but is not a panacea) But... If I search the 'net for the title of the supposed Exclusive article, I can frequently find it elsewhere with no nagging or paywall.

I don't really believe Medium has the exclusive content that gives it an advantage over anything else, but it's useful as curated, indexed content that you can find elsewhere. This is probably not what they are going for, though.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#124

Post by smt88 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #68
new_here wrote: post #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.

It's not just "morals", it is "brand equity." If people believe in your brand, you have something. If they don't believe in your brand, you have nothing.

Price or features trump brand value most of the time. Just ask Spirit Airlines, Facebook, or Uber.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#125

Post by [deleted] »

rjain15 wrote: post #111
new_here wrote: post #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.

There is nothing wrong in making money, if you want to attract good content writers and curate content, provide additional services like digital magazine, you have to make money to pay your writers, curators and staff. I don't write for Medium, but I think rather than trashing Medium, maybe we should help make it as a better platform for publishers. There is enough garbage out in the internet, maybe Medium can help c…

[deleted]

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#126

Post by criddell »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #65
peruvian wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I run a publication on Medium, Better Humans. My understanding is that the pivot to be a place where most writing is paid for was specifically to crowd out content marketing. The content marketing is, as the two of you say, basically Wikipedia summaries and people selling themselves. It's part of the style guide for their Membership program that writers can't have calls to action (with a few exceptions, like if it's…

Why stay on Medium? Why not take total ownership and move to your own space?

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#127

Post by phoe-krk »

jonmaim wrote: post #74
phoe-krk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just surprised nobody mentioned any decentralised, blockchain-based platform What about decentaralized platforms that are not blockchain-based? The Fediverse (a part of which is write.as) achieves this goal of being decentralized without using any kind of blockchain technology.

Thanks for mentioning the Fediverse. Who is paying for server costs?

The owner of each instance pays the costs for hosting a given instance. So, basically, domain + hosting.

Note that these costs can be really low; Pleroma[0] can be run on a Raspberry Pi 3 or a $2.50 Vultr instance[1]

[0] https://pleroma.social/

[1] https://blog.soykaf.com/post/what-is-pleroma/

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#128

Post by nineteen999 »

adventured wrote: post #98
richardhod wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you describe what Quora did? I've heard a few reports that it's not like it used to be, but I've found it useful, and am curious as to what makes it worse than before.

Knowledge services make for horrible VC businesses. The exception to that rule is Stack Exchange, because they have a business model that is unique to the space and impossible to replicate for a site like Quora (Genius, Answers.com, wikiHow, et al.). Quora has to allow low quality content on their service in order to keep the volume up, to drive traffic & clicks, to drive ad potential, to avoid the dreaded down round…

I got the impression they may have had a somewhat cavalier or insufficient approach to security as well.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2018/12/04/quora-ha...

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#129

Post by pjc50 »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #65
peruvian wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I run a publication on Medium, Better Humans. My understanding is that the pivot to be a place where most writing is paid for was specifically to crowd out content marketing. The content marketing is, as the two of you say, basically Wikipedia summaries and people selling themselves. It's part of the style guide for their Membership program that writers can't have calls to action (with a few exceptions, like if it's…

> they manually review all articles before allowing an article to get promoted by their algorithm.

This is amazing - this is the thing that people demand of Youtube, in order that the algorithm stops promoting anti-vaxxers and Holocaust deniers.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#130

Post by rhizome »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #117
adventured wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowledge services make for horrible VC businesses. The exception to that rule is Stack Exchange, because they have a business model that is unique to the space and impossible to replicate for a site like Quora (Genius, Answers.com, wikiHow, et al.). Quora has to allow low quality content on their service in order to keep the volume up, to drive traffic & clicks, to drive ad potential, to avoid the dreaded down round…

> Quora has to allow low quality content on their service in order to keep the volume up, to drive traffic & clicks, to drive ad potential How does flooding my feed with dozens of questions about what the probabilities of different subsets of the faces are when rolling a die (e.g. what's the probability of getting an even number or greater than 5 when rolling a die?) help drive traffic, clicks, and ad potential?

Because each of those is probably a homework problem in Stats 101, and every college kid is going to be googling for the answer to the variation from their edition of the textbook.
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