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Ending our Medium integration

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Re: Ending our Medium integration

#141

Post by kareemm »

dev_dull wrote: post #140
kareemm wrote: post #138

Somewhat related - I think write.as has a huge opportunity here to sell to businesses. When I've done content marketing my core problems were: 1. I want to write a draft, solicit comments to improve, edit, spell check, and run through tools like Hemingway 2. I want to publish to different platforms like LinkedIn, a blog (static site using markdown or Wordpress), an email tool like Drip, and Medium. Maybe missing some…

The post shows the risk in such a move. The 3rd party integrations can be turned off without warning (such as this case). What do you tell your paying customers?

Your paying customers are still going to have to post their articles to different sites regardless of whether you support it or not. But you could make it easier for them. I would tell them:

"Medium cut off access so you have to go there directly to post. We've formatted your post for Medium - cut this and paste it to Medium here: [link_to_create_new_post_on_medium]."

Publishing to multiple platforms via a single click is nice, but the most painful part about publishing to multiple platforms is formatting the posts so they look good everywhere you post.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#142

Post by thebaer »

Author here -- just got a response from Medium, though it's still confusing:

> We recently experienced an interruption with API, and the ability to generate new oAuth-based applications has been restricted. I have reenabled that feature.

This doesn't really explain why our 2-year-old integration suddenly stopped working (we didn't need to generate a new application). So I'm asking for more clarification.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#143

Post by Will_Parker »

pjc50 wrote: post #129
tonystubblebine wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dilemas are, who gatekeeps the gatekeepers, and how much do they want to act like a publisher vs a town square. If too much, maybe they'd become liable for the content they publish.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#145

Post by michaelbuckbee »

kareemm wrote: post #138

Somewhat related - I think write.as has a huge opportunity here to sell to businesses. When I've done content marketing my core problems were: 1. I want to write a draft, solicit comments to improve, edit, spell check, and run through tools like Hemingway 2. I want to publish to different platforms like LinkedIn, a blog (static site using markdown or Wordpress), an email tool like Drip, and Medium. Maybe missing some…

This isn't what you're looking for, more an indication that there is a real need for these types of services. Checkout: https://www.wordable.io/ - which focuses solely on Google Docs to Wordpress.

It's kind of nuts to think that these somewhat "edge" cases are so large as to be able to build a business around.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#146

Post by [deleted] »

RankingMember wrote: post #134
patrickg_zill wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long ago I was a consultant for a large church. One of their IT guys got a call from the pastor, who was worried about being hacked... The IT guy had been working on the desktop and had left up a browser window. The pastor read the URL as ExpertSexChange...

I mean, if I was going to have that kind of surgery I'd definitely be looking for an expert. You put a regular cosmetic surgeon in there and you risk having no wrinkles on things that should have wrinkles and other such catastrophes. All this to say maybe they missed an opportunity when they ditched that domain. ;)

[deleted]

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#147

Post by kareemm »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #145
kareemm wrote: post #138

Somewhat related - I think write.as has a huge opportunity here to sell to businesses. When I've done content marketing my core problems were: 1. I want to write a draft, solicit comments to improve, edit, spell check, and run through tools like Hemingway 2. I want to publish to different platforms like LinkedIn, a blog (static site using markdown or Wordpress), an email tool like Drip, and Medium. Maybe missing some…

This isn't what you're looking for, more an indication that there is a real need for these types of services. Checkout: https://www.wordable.io/ - which focuses solely on Google Docs to Wordpress. It's kind of nuts to think that these somewhat "edge" cases are so large as to be able to build a business around.

Wordpress is a massive market and text drives the web. I think these can be great businesses. Hadn't seen Wordable - thanks.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#148

Post by lmm »

dwaltrip wrote: post #109
lmm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The UI/UX for medium comments is so utterly horrible it makes me angry just thinking about it. I was reading some interesting articles the other idea, and it was a painful, torturous struggle to read all of the comments and their nested responses. The entire text of a comment should not be a clickable link! And you shouldn't have to go to a new page to read comment replies... Sorry, just venting, not directed at you.

Deeply nested discussions get harder, much like on StackOverflow. I think it's a deliberate design decision and I'm not convinced it's a bad one; you do miss out on some deeper discussion, but it encourages people to work-up their responses into full-sized posts (and making a new post is very easy).

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#149

Post by eitland »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #106
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.

Yes, I just started this month with a paid account ($1 a month) and it's basically what medium was supposed to be - custom urls and rss. See the dead simple layout: https://kemendo.com/ I do wish they allowed email subscriptions but from what I understand that is coming soon. I also don't love the "published with write.as" text at the bottom of every page for paid accounts but that's no big deal.

Same here. Been lurking around for a while and finally got around to it.

The combination of open source, reasonable (actually directly inexpensive IMO) hosting, simplicity (but not dumbness or lack of features), the fact that they are already part of the fediverse and seems generally nice was my reasons for subscribing.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#150

Post by briffle »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #107
borplk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many dark patterns including forcing people to login to read content. Now it's a "modern" ExpertSexChange where "online marketing specialists" ask questions with one account and answer their own questions with another account. "Disclaimer haha I work for Bullshit.ly as a growth ninja but here's my response..." "In conclusion I'm not saying you should totally checkout our stuff ... but you totally should. just my 2 ce…

Long ago I was a consultant for a large church. One of their IT guys got a call from the pastor, who was worried about being hacked... The IT guy had been working on the desktop and had left up a browser window. The pastor read the URL as ExpertSexChange...

Around 1997 or so, I got called into a meeting with my boss, director, and head of IT security. I worked night shift in a wafer fab, and someone was accessing the computers in the office, and visiting inappropriate sites at night (that their new sophisticated monitor found). I was young, and into computers, I guess they assumed it was me. I pointed out that I didn't have a keycard that gave me access to the office area, so it couldn't be me, asked if they checked it. While they were quickly apologizing, I asked what site they accessed.

www.excite.com

The look on their faces when I suggested they actually verify the site before firing whoever it was.....

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