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Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

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Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#161

Post by hbarka »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #119

I'm Medium's current CEO as of last July. I actually pay a lot of attention to this sentiment on Hacker News. For example, I've bookmarked and often share this recent HN poll where 88% of people here think there's a negative stigma to a medium article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33223222 It's sad and entirely our fault. We didn't fail but we did lose our way. Here's how I see it: 1. Lost our way on recommen…

I must say that the hook and lede of Medium articles are very effective. They are sticky and grabs your interest. The frustration comes with the paywall. There must be another way, like a free summary (maybe use ChatGPT) that will compel me to pay.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#162

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #49
zem wrote: post #25

cory doctorow has codified this precisely in his theory of "enshittification": 8 Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the…

Are there examples of sites/platforms that are doing it "right"? (however you interpret 'right' to be, I guess). Ones that have been around for a while and haven't enshittified?

http://Wordpress.com (not.org)

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#164

Post by tonystubblebine »

bburnett44 wrote: post #153
tonystubblebine wrote: post #119

I'm Medium's current CEO as of last July. I actually pay a lot of attention to this sentiment on Hacker News. For example, I've bookmarked and often share this recent HN poll where 88% of people here think there's a negative stigma to a medium article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33223222 It's sad and entirely our fault. We didn't fail but we did lose our way. Here's how I see it: 1. Lost our way on recommen…

Yeah thanks for your transparency but how do you go about fixing these problems? Like it's great to acknowledge them but the "Why NodeJS is dead" article was in the suggested sidebar for me yesterday

It's been frustratingly slow because our recs system is sprawling. Your main feed is populated differently than the read-more section you are referencing. Plus author behavior lags incentives. We actually had a clickbait about MILFs on a programming story the other day so it's worse than you are reporting.

Where we are today is 30% rolled out but not even announced to our authors. That'll happen in a week and is when I think author behavior will change.

That "X is dead" trope will disappear from your recs both because we'll have better things to show and because the new incentives make it not worth writing. An article like that is very sensitive to incentives because there is no authentic reason to have written it. Probably without Medium's payment, it never would have been occurred to the person.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#165

Post by zepolen »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #119

I'm Medium's current CEO as of last July. I actually pay a lot of attention to this sentiment on Hacker News. For example, I've bookmarked and often share this recent HN poll where 88% of people here think there's a negative stigma to a medium article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33223222 It's sad and entirely our fault. We didn't fail but we did lose our way. Here's how I see it: 1. Lost our way on recommen…

There is only one reason medium went down the hole and it's because it annoyed the fuck out of users by demanding sign up (and subscription) just to read content OTHERS had created on the platform.

What the hell did they expect would happen?

Medium did one thing and one thing well: a fast, easy, and free way to publish an article for the others to read. The value of that is immense.

It has nothing to do with 1 and 2. Youtube is FULL of click bait videos and their recommendation system is garbage, but it thrives, you know why?

They take care of their best content creators, they even send a plaque! And they don't force viewers to subscribe, they show ads and offer a subscription to remove them.

Imagine if youtube tomorrow started telling every visitor that they must login to view any video, and if they view more than 10 videos they need to buy a subscription. Rumble.com would be popping champagne.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#166

Post by nicbou »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #119

I'm Medium's current CEO as of last July. I actually pay a lot of attention to this sentiment on Hacker News. For example, I've bookmarked and often share this recent HN poll where 88% of people here think there's a negative stigma to a medium article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33223222 It's sad and entirely our fault. We didn't fail but we did lose our way. Here's how I see it: 1. Lost our way on recommen…

Great reply. It's rare to get such straightforward, measured responses from anyone representing anything.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#167

Post by tonystubblebine »

hbarka wrote: post #161
tonystubblebine wrote: post #119

I'm Medium's current CEO as of last July. I actually pay a lot of attention to this sentiment on Hacker News. For example, I've bookmarked and often share this recent HN poll where 88% of people here think there's a negative stigma to a medium article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33223222 It's sad and entirely our fault. We didn't fail but we did lose our way. Here's how I see it: 1. Lost our way on recommen…

I must say that the hook and lede of Medium articles are very effective. They are sticky and grabs your interest. The frustration comes with the paywall. There must be another way, like a free summary (maybe use ChatGPT) that will compel me to pay.

Most other metered paywalls move the paywall much lower in the page. That would be a simple way--let you get 1/3 of the way so you are more confident in what you are getting. Or move the location of the paywall.

In general though, we love being subscription driven rather than ad driven and I don't expect that to change.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#168

Post by xdfgh1112 »

bee_rider wrote: post #101
dannyr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love that post. Sadly, every major tech platform is going thru "enshittification".

The enshittification cycle has always been here, but progress continues. It just feels like things are getting worse as the programs we grew up on enter the shit-zone part of their lifecycle.

Wikipedia seems like a weird exception to this rule.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#169

Post by tonystubblebine »

zepolen wrote: post #165
tonystubblebine wrote: post #119

I'm Medium's current CEO as of last July. I actually pay a lot of attention to this sentiment on Hacker News. For example, I've bookmarked and often share this recent HN poll where 88% of people here think there's a negative stigma to a medium article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33223222 It's sad and entirely our fault. We didn't fail but we did lose our way. Here's how I see it: 1. Lost our way on recommen…

There is only one reason medium went down the hole and it's because it annoyed the fuck out of users by demanding sign up (and subscription) just to read content OTHERS had created on the platform. What the hell did they expect would happen? Medium did one thing and one thing well: a fast, easy, and free way to publish an article for the others to read. The value of that is immense. It has nothing to do with 1 and 2.…

The NYTimes does it. And that's the thing think we got wrong: the pay off for what is behind the paywall has to be higher.

Re: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

#170

Post by wruza »

Slight offtopic, I didn’t even realize that medium has a frontpage and recommendations. Like in, you can sign up not only to pay money for views. Also, the average post quality itself is irrelevant when you read it occasionally only through shared links (e.g. on HN). But what’s annoying is that low-quality medium articles dominate SERPs. “I see it, I skip it” is common in my circle. Brand damage done. But it’s not the worst offender, tbh. A whole horde of blogs like “I apt-installed foo and tried to run it with some arguments, voila” is also there.

edit: I mean if it wasn’t there in SERPs, I wouldn’t even associate it with low-quality posts.

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