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

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

#401

Post by [deleted] »

vbezhenar wrote: post #396
binwiederhier wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#402

Post by kelnos »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #167
hbarka wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> let you get 1/3 of the way so you are more confident in what you are getting

It's really interesting to see different perspectives here (especially yours, as the CEO). To me, I feel the opposite: I would rather know immediately on page load if I'm going to be allowed to read the whole article or not. If I get 1/3 of the way through and then get hit with a paywall, I get really frustrated, and even if I would consider subscribing, that frustration pushes me away.

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

#403

Post by WirelessGigabit »

My main gripe is that the quality really has gone down. I see many people posting on stuff that just isn't worth blogging about.

For example: https://tirthyakamaldasgupta12.medium.com/visualize-the-flow...

How is this important?

It's going the same way as the StackOverflow answers, which, like Quora, are being posts about self-promotion and filled with 'if this answer is correct please don't forget to mark it as such'.

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

#404

Post by pmontra »

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'm one of those people that don't follow authors and don't explore platforms. I access random pages on random sites from search engines or HN. That kind of solves the problem of quality.

Basically Medium is indistinguishable to me from any of its competitors, except it's quite slow to load so given two similarly promising links I prefer the other one. It's too much JavaScript because Medium can be fast if I turn JavaScript off using either NoScript, uBlock Origin, uMatrix etc.

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

#405

Post by asim »

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…

Tony let me say it's super brave for you to come here and share this information. The critics are harsh but Medium is still a great resource and I continue to use it for my own personal writing. I think my only personal knock on it right now is things that would prompt the user to sign-up or hit a paywall. That's friction. That's friction that a lot of users don't like and I get that you're running a business but this is real what becomes the barrier to entry and then turns off an existing crowd.

My comment might get lost amongst many, you may not see it, but Medium still has the reach. I think as a blogging platform you can support a lot more customisation and become an actual platform that is the staple for where people put their content. I have a personal blog hosted on GitHub with Jekyll. I'd much prefer to use mediums tools but I'm reluctant to because of the experience for end users. Just my thoughts.

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

#406

Post by suction »

chirau wrote: post #362
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…

If this is what you believe is wrong with Medium, then i don't think you will rescue it. Medium.com now paywalls even bullshit content. Simple as that. You limit me to x number of free articles in a month, yet the first 10x articles from medium i see are absolute trash with no quality control and vetting and all so by the time i hit my limit, I am already annoyed by it. If you are going to paywall me, let the content…

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

#407

Post by srb24 »

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 been a paid subscriber to Medium for a few years now (I have a lot of writer friends and it seemed a way to support the art) and I think it's great (I'm not afiliated to the company in anyway and not one of their creators) - I read it every day and there's always at least 2-4 interesting articles which is pretty standard compared to other more pricey publications eg. the Financial Times (I read about 20 online titles every day) - I'm not sure why a lot of these commenters seem to think removing a paywall or increasing read free limits will help improve the company, if anything the reverse will happen and these people will probably never pay for anything. I would actually wouldn't mind sensible text style ads added to articles (think eary 21st century Adwords style) if only because if an article gives me an idea then it would be great to then find a relevant solution provider - if YouTube can stuff 2-4 ads in every video then I think you can safely run non intrusive ads though I guess the army of ad blockers might cause issues (something YouTube videos seem immune to) - oh and reopen the API as that would help data driven content generators

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

#408

Post by okaleniuk »

I drifted away from Medium five years ago when I built by own site with interactive features Medium lacked. But I still continued publishing non-interactive pieces there. However, last March, when Facebook and Twitter started hunting down russian bots, Medium became the last safe haven for them. I blocked quite a few but eventually gave up and deleted the account along with a few dozen posts.

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

#409

Post by aspaviento »

buryat wrote: post #312
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…

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

Same feeling here. There was a time in which it was pleasant to read an article in medium but not anymore and they made the experience so awful that I'm not willing to give them any more chances to improve. And reading the CEO here it seems they aren't even aware what the real problems are.

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

#410

Post by danbmil99 »

nnurmanov wrote: post #277
danbmil99 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has spent time in the C-Suite, I applaud your courage in publicly addressing criticisms head-on. I just hope you are not fighting a losing battle against low employee morale, frustrated writers and angry, impulsive investors. I have a friend who got some traction on Medium, but if I want to write for myself I would choose Substack in a New York minute. Best of luck!

You mentioned Substack, I’d like to question their model. With Medium they help with searching, although it needs an improvement, with Substack there is no such a thing, I have to subscribe to an author and read all his posts, but no human being can produce quality content 100% of time. I think they should change. Medium has better model, IMO

The way I understand it, Substack is literally a platform, more like Wordpress than Medium. It is incumbent on those who publish to do all their marketing, outreach, discovery, virality etc. using their own resources. Substack takes a very reasonable 10% on your revenue, so you don't have to be a programmer to distribute a newsletter, but getting the word out is up to you.
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