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

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

#311

Post by zby »

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 are two types of writers - professionals and amateurs. Professionals want to earn money on their writing - so they are happy with paywalls. Amateurs have no hope to earn money but want their writing to be distributed as wide as possible - so paywalls make them sad. Professionals also want their work to be read - but they understand that paywalls are the only way to make people pay for their work.

Medium tried to make two of these groups happy and that is difficult. Both need many of the same tools - like nice looking templates, easy editing, comments and also recommendations - so there is a lot of investments that could be used by both groups and there is also a lot of synergy between these two - but they need to be monetized differently.

I think it is too early to say that Substack has found the good model - they managed to attract the cool guys - but Medium was also fashionable for a little while. But right now Medium needs a total rebranding.

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

#312

Post by buryat »

wkat4242 wrote: post #177
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 think these are not the main pain points. The biggest issue for me is that medium makes me feel like a cash cow. The way it wants me to pay every step of the way, the way it hijacks copy/paste to insert its own marketing. The account it wants me to create. The trackers it inserts everywhere. You missed the step of making something great that people actually feel good about paying for. The grassroots "for users by u…

these days i usually immediately close a page if it's on medium.com because of these dark patterns

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

#313

Post by aqfamnzc »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #284
thepasswordis wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is doing everything they can to kill it though. It's gone from habitually including site:reddit.com in every google search to actively avoiding it on mobile. I'm not going to install the app. Ever. I will never, ever, ever install reddit's app. No amount of nagging me will ever get me to install it ever.

I still use site:reddit.com for recommendations, I just use a third party app for viewing (rif is fun, aka "reddit is fun").

"reddit is fun is fun for reddit"

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

#314

Post by pier25 »

I blogged on Medium for a while. My most read article hit like 170k reads and the front page here on HN.

The UX on Medium kept deteriorating for readers. Slow loads, annoying modals, etc.

And then Medium did some shitty things with Freecodecamp.

I ended up deleting my account and moving some of the articles to my own blog. In retrospect this wasn't a good move since I broke the URLs and I regret it. But what's done is done.

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

#315

Post by jzb »

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've never liked Medium, and your reasons aren't why. It's always been a primary example of building value on someone else's platform. Why? Why should I spend my time building value for you?

The "huge pile of shit" is a primary example of why authors should invest in tools they control and have a direct relationship with their audience. A portable relationship with their audience. As I see it, Medium is in conflict with that.

I'm really hoping that the Twitter fiasco and Medium's "huge pile of shit" will serve as object lessons why creators, publishers, etc. are better off building their own platforms even if it's slower initially.

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

#316

Post by andrei_says_ »

wkat4242 wrote: post #177
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 think these are not the main pain points. The biggest issue for me is that medium makes me feel like a cash cow. The way it wants me to pay every step of the way, the way it hijacks copy/paste to insert its own marketing. The account it wants me to create. The trackers it inserts everywhere. You missed the step of making something great that people actually feel good about paying for. The grassroots "for users by u…

Exactly, it is the enshittifying of the service by corrupting it’s original promise and replacing it with “make more money”.

Nobody comes to use your service just because you want more money. People come to get value, and that has been sniffed out.

P.S. props to Corey doctorow for his fantastic “enshittification” posts.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

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

#317

Post by paradox460 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #271
wkat4242 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on one right now. If that wasn't clear from my post. Also, Reddit still manages ok on this front IMO. The only reason I stopped paying was that they doubled the price when they moved away from gold to whatever it is they call now. Another one is tweakers.net in Holland. Boards.ie in Ireland though I left that country years ago and I don't know how that site is fairing now. Those are the main ones I can think o…

Reddit is doing everything they can to kill it though. It's gone from habitually including site:reddit.com in every google search to actively avoiding it on mobile. I'm not going to install the app. Ever. I will never, ever, ever install reddit's app. No amount of nagging me will ever get me to install it ever.

If you replace the reddit URL with i.reddit.com, you get the old mobile site, which was optimized for 533MHz devices. They sometimes put banners to redirect you to the newer design, but you can dismiss them

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

#318

Post by benjaminwootton »

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 saw you made a similar post a while back and a whole thread of people who said it was the forced registration after a few views which damaged perception. The stuff above is trivial vs that.

That is by far and away your biggest issue in a community like this.

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

#319

Post by raincole »

jrumbut wrote: post #308
codechicago277 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s crazy to me that they seem completely blind to the root problem. When I pick a blogging platform I don’t want popups, paywalls, required logins, or anything other than the content. Medium took off because it had a simple clean UI and good posts, and seemed like the lowest friction way to blog. Now Medium has huge amounts of friction and feels like yet another business trying to pump money out of users, so Substa…

I assume the plan from day one was make a very appealing platform at a loss, gain a moat from a huge library of good content, then squeeze the profit out of it. It's a deceptive business model, and people feel deceived and no longer want to do business with that company (surprise!).

The same logic applies to Youtube. Do you think Youtube is going to fail soon?

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

#320

Post by fatih-erikli »

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…

Hello, What do 6021 employees do in a medium?
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