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

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

#371

Post by charlie0 »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #257
bachmeier wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But instead of incentivizing premium content we spent the subscription revenue to pay people to flood us with low quality click bait and content mill articles. I suspect these things, but I seldom get confirmation. My view is that Medium articles are low-effort crap that are not even worth the effort to click the link (I stopped clicking those links entirely quite a while back). I wish they'd put half the effort in…

Instead of a subscription, would you pay per article? Like maybe 5 cents or 25 cents or something? Assume it's frictionless. No account with the site, no login, etc. You read the article and magically X cents is removed from your bank account. Would you do it?

Like with...cryptocurrency?

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

#372

Post by smsm42 »

inerte wrote: post #295
thepasswordis wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally it. Especially hijacking copy/paste, or text highlighting. It just brings the entire feeling of the place down. Imagine walking into a nice high end restaurant, and the server tries to sell you a credit card before taking your order. Would you continue going to that restaurant? That's what this sort of garbage does to my sentiment around websites that do it.

I remember a few years ago I started to realize that if I somehow see the link pointed to "medium.com" I would just... nope. Not willing to take the gamble if I can read the page or not.

Agree, this is surprisingly annoying when you click and it tells you "nope sucker, not today, you're not getting to read something you're interested in". Why should I even bother to get my hopes up in the first place?

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

#373

Post by eastbound »

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…

Everyone needs to build a brand, with their own blog. When posting on Medium, it also feels like Medium is hijacking the long-term reputation that we’re building.

I don’t know, maybe Medium should promote individual articles that are on Wordpress instances of personal and corporate blogs. Who would be happy to pay to apply to the vetting process.

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

#374

Post by smsm42 »

raincole wrote: post #319
jrumbut wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How is it the same model? I have been watching YT videos for years and was never denied access to any content.

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

#375

Post by smsm42 »

> Substack doesn't have an algorithm that recommends you content

Which is a good thing. I don't really need a robot doing to me "you read an article about 'Instagram influencer mauled by a bear', so you are clearly into Instagram influencers and bears, here are 9000 blogs from Instagram influencers and another 9000 from people collecting teddy bears". In fact, I have an RSS feed which is composed of I lost count how many blogs, which I constantly fail to read half of them - and those I selected manually for being the most interesting to me, do you really thing I need another hyper-noisy channel to suggest me more content? If there's something relevant to the article, the article author would likely suggest it anyway. Or other thousand of authors would. Or it wasn't that important anyway, and my 2k+ messages unread in Feedly are calling to me.

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

#376

Post by AmericanOP »

yellowapple wrote: post #349
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…

And Substack's already starting to feel the same way; the incessant prompts to create an account and subscribe to something are the telltale first red flags heralding an intention to put monetization first and utility second.

I cant think of a single platform thats doesn't ultimately lose relevance and get replaced that does this.

A few days ago people here said their Google trick is appending 'Reddit' to the query. Not Quora. Not other dedicated Q&A sites that have been around as long. Reddit the free (minus the dumbass mobile app prompt.)

Same for log-ins. Pinterest? Forget it. Twitter? Just missing a replacement.

I don't know what analytics compel these guys to put a gate in front the platform. Just accept what people are willing to give you. I guess they wake up one day and realize everyone just moved on.

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

#377

Post by mrexroad »

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. X-views is just disrespect and ensures I never build a habit out of the platform’s content. Same goes for sites like FineHomeBuilding.com. Even if I know there’s good content there, I now avoid clicking just to not “use up” my stupid 3 views a month (yes, can copy/paste url to private browsing, but easier to just go elsewhere).

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

#378

Post by napolux »

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…

the sketchy SEO tactics(at least at the beginning), invasive paywalls, clickbaiting, etc…

medium was doomed from the start. but being myself a detractor from the start i’m probably too much biased

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

#379

Post by AmericanOP »

raincole wrote: post #319
jrumbut wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Youtube has amazing infotainment right now. Its a super cool emergent phenomenon that there are soo many amazing niches filled by content creators putting out information dense 45 minute+ videos. I don't mind the ads in this case (vs some short clip), and they all seem to have sponsors as well.

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

#380

Post by zengineer »

I realized that I never read anything on Medium. I use it solely as my private travel blog, which is then read by family members, close friends and my nostalgic future me. The reason I like to use medium for that is that it is very easy to add content. The two biggest issues I have with Medium is that pictures can not be set fullsize anymore and that there is a (for me) useless sidebar. Not only are you now limited on how to present your content, but it adds a lot of distraction.
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