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Ending our Medium integration

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Re: Ending our Medium integration

#201

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

jerrytsai wrote: post #110
smacktoward wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. It's barely acceptable on desktop, but on a mobile device it's awful. All the links and buttons are tiny , and they're all so crowded together I frequently end up doing dumb things like tapping "flag" when I meant to tap "discuss." With just a little bit of work HN's UI could be so much better.

On mobile, try using https://hackerweb.app/ A much nicer mobile interface for consuming HN, but you'll have to go direct to the site to interact with it.

Oh nice, thank you!

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#203

Post by wongarsu »

artursapek wrote: post #157
joelhaasnoot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time one didn't need to login to read Quora stuff.

Can you imagine if Stackoverflow did this? The tech world would grind to a halt.

So you're saying you're not upvoting useful answers on StackOverflow?

Upvoting alone is enough to make me sign in to SO when I'm mysteriously logged out. SO saves me enough hours to justify that small curtesy.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#205

Post by asark »

potta_coffee wrote: post #136
taude wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 miss the days when people had their own websites, blogs, whatever, and then there were forums. Facebook has killed forums and I hate them for it.

Not just Facebook. Any site without attention paid to on-site SEO is basically impossible to find since Google gave up fighting the spammers and (effectively) stopped trying to provide access to a bunch of the web. That was back in, like, '08 or '09.

The other day I was trying to find a Russian world-traveller photo blog I used to read but lost track of, and it was plain from the results that Google's 1) heavily penalizing low-traffic sites to the point of giving me top results that contain almost none of my keywords when there 100% for sure had to be sites that contained all of them, and 2) barely paying attention to text linking to a site anymore. I'm not even upset I couldn't find the site I wanted using my search terms so much as that part of their surrender to the spammers meant that most of the top results were "legitimate" content-mill spammers-by-another-name. I don't think I could have found anything like what I was looking for. Any similarly-obscure sites are just invisible now.

DDG wasn't much better. The spammers won and "web search" doesn't really search the whole web anymore, or even close to it.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#206

Post by marcosdumay »

SamWhited wrote: post #32
kuhhk wrote: 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?

Every time I click through to a post I want to read on Medium it gives me that damn full page popup about not being logged in (I know, I'm just reading a post, why would I want or need an account for that?) and then I generally just close the page and don't read whatever it was. Not to mention that they don't advertise RSS feeds so you have to jump through hoops to use it for a feed reader.

That's probably because I'm blocking some script, but I get a top menu that covers the top 20% of my screen, and an advertise (visual one) for their RSS feeds that covers the bottom 30% of my screen. None of them can be closed without some extension or the developer tools.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#207

Post by dhimes »

RajT88 wrote: post #123
taude wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Serious question: Why don't you sign up?

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#208

Post by dalore »

smt88 wrote: post #124
PaulHoule wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel like those examples don't explain your point.

Uber is

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#209

Post by colemickens »

It's one thing for users to give their membership, patronage and data to a centralized for-profit, startup type company. It's another, totally absurd to me, thing to cede control of your company's online presence to some other startup... just for a simple blog. And still no one seemed to care even when Medium started nagging users to signup when just trying to read an article...

I just don't get it. It's not a good look when I go to read a technical article from [startup], and wind up staring at a fullscreen popup begging me to signup for a Medium account. Really?

I'm adding it to my list of lessons that apparently people have to learn first hand - make personal backups [no, really, it's not that hard], use a password manager [no, really, it's easier than not], don't use GoDaddy [they were just on HN again in the last few weeks]... and don't use thin little SaaS that don't do anything and just want to posses your content and your users and eventually go under or go dark, leaving you holding the bag.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#210

Post by brightball »

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.

I work for one of those fully bootstrapped successful companies now and it really is fantastic how we can have real business conversations around ecosystem improvement that don’t revolve around money.

Money is good, but not having everything dictated by it is good for the mission.

EDIT: Sure there's still a financial incentive there but it's framed more in the "we need to turn a profit so that we can afford to continue doing these things". We still have salespeople who still have commissions and we still have salaries to pay.

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