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

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

#391

Post by mrtweetyhack »

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.

[dead]

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

#392

Post by phendrenad2 »

Have you ever walked into a car dealership and the dealer seems to have already made up their mind that you're looking to buy a car NOW and you want to drive out with a car NOW and you're ready to make a decision NOW..? Yeah, that's how Medium feels. When I click a link to a Medium article, it seems like it's assumed that I really desperately need to read this article, I'm a huge fan of the author, and I'm ready to pay any price. I'm so ready, that I don't even care to know the price before I create an account. Just sign me up! I'm ready!

But I'm not ready. I clicked this post because it has a controversial headline. Maybe it'll be the best blog post I read all year, but more often than not it's someone who only made a Medium.com account because they think it'll make them rich. But I can't read it because I'm not a member, or I hit my limit of "free" articles (which is confusing because they didn't feel like they were valuable), or whatever the limiting factor is now.

I'm not sure what the solution is.

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

#393

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway290 wrote: post #386
p1esk wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medium is not Economist.

Point me to where I said "Medium is Economist" or cease. I can count on my fingers the number of Economist articles I read per year while my history is full of recent Medium visits, mostly related to work so stuff that translates in productivity and earnings. They're not even in the same ballpark.

[deleted]

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

#394

Post by kseistrup »

I stopped clicking on Medium links a looong time ago, I simply can't stand the X-views paywall. It's not worth it.

More recently I started using https://scribe.rip/ (via the Redirector browser plugin) when I absolutely want to read a Medium article, though not on Medium. Once ScribeRIP fails to work I'll just stop reading Medium articles again.

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

#395

Post by gls2ro »

burnished wrote: post #346
benjaminwootton wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still corporate speak. He has posted similar before and been told that the paywall and forced reg is the issue. Then he comes back, doesn’t acknowledge it and gets told the same again. That is not genuine engagement.

The people who hate the paywall above all aren't customers, and frankly, being more concerned about that than whether the content behind it is worthwhile at all seems mixed up. I cant blame him for not prioritizing those things - I personally care way more about whether or not clicking a medium link is likely to lead me to something relevant, the rest can be negotiated.

Customers are the end of a funnel that starts with non-customers/visitors.

if visitors numbers are shrinking you get no new customers.

add to that the risk of other platforms trying to get away your existing users:

- substack: both writers and readers - hashnode: targeting writters and readers from tech - dev.to: the same as hashnode - mastodon: longer posts and with elk and others better syntax - ghost : writers and readers

and many more.

so not paying attention to the base of the funnel is very costly in the long run: and this is what happened to Medium = ignored the base of the funnel (the free users) for a long period and focused on short term goals/income

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

#396

Post by vbezhenar »

binwiederhier wrote: post #297
wkat4242 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> you annoy me so much that even if there's good content behind it I'm long gone before I ever find out because you've already pushed me away I cannot agree more. The brand has destroyed itself by putting everything behind a login/pay-wall. I don't even click on medium.com links anymore, regardless of how interesting the content may be. And if I accidentally click on one, I click the back button in less than a second…

How do they monetize? I never tried to register. Do they ask money to actually read the content they did not even produce themselves?

I'd expect for them to monetize on ads. And ads show up regardless of registration status.

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

#397

Post by Joeri »

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…

On top of that, medium just isn’t a site that matters much to me. I am not interested in exploring medium to find the interesting articles they are boosting. For me medium is just a place that hosts articles that I find through reddit or HN or mastodon. The best thing it can do is let me read that one article and get out of the way. It doesn’t need features, it doesn’t need recommendations, it just needs to not be annoying to read, it needs to not try to engage me.

But the investors will never let it just be that, there’s too much money involved.

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

#398

Post by tomcam »

AmericanOP wrote: post #376
yellowapple wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anal…

No argument. But how do they make money without these measures? Also Reddit has never been a huge moneymaker, the vast majority of their labor—moderators—work for nothing.

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

#400

Post by MattDemers »

bee_rider wrote: post #106
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…

This definitely seems like at least half of it. With blogging platforms, an additional aspect: I don’t really care to read the opinions of people who are mostly interested in blogging about a topic. I want to read from actual practitioners. As soon as a platform becomes well known, the non-practicing bloggers show up and it turns into a crapshoot whether what I’m reading is first or third hand information. And that’s…

I'll agree; we're just getting to the "Substacks writing about writing Substacks" phase now. Up until now all those people were on Medium.
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