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

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

#531

Post by hd95489 »

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

I wonder how much traffic they loose on that first pop up. I bet like 25-50% of all views never make it past that shitty subscribe thing

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

#532

Post by hd95489 »

jzb wrote: post #315
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 w…

I don’t really see why everyone needs to build their own cms. It’s super inefficient to have to maintain all the infrastructure and keep it up to date just so you can publish 6-20 articles a year

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

#533

Post by hd95489 »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #497
mrcwinn wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Made clear by your own list, you seem to think Medium has a content issue. The issue is how annoying it is to experience the content, not the content itself. And wow, quite a claim to say that creators are too busy to have lives worth writing about. Reconsider what went wrong with Medium so you can get on the right track.

I think we're seeing a similar problem just from different sides. Why make the experience more seamless if the content at the end isn't also worthwhile? You're working left to right, I'm working right to left.

If it’s not seamless then people won’t see the value to generate content in it. So you will get more garbage content.

If much of the content is garbage but some is good then presumably people will still come for the good stuff and just spend more time filtering out garbage. Most people don’t navigate inside the medium ecosystem anyway. So inner system garbage is less of a problem then landing experience

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

#534

Post by hd95489 »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #292
tonystubblebine wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best of Medium is better than the best of the NYTimes and isn’t fungible at all. That’s not refuting what you see. To get those gems you see too many me too articles. You are right.

This is delusional, the best of Medium isn’t exclusive to Medium. The New York Times has over 150 years of reputation built on quality, and its content is available no where else. Medium has a loose collective of bloggers who can easily migrate to a different platform with no requirements on the quality of the content they produce. If you want to compare yourself to the NYT it’s not enough to have a few good articles…

You probably think too highly of the times. They have access though more than quality. They are the official communication channel of the US government and that alone makes them unique and important. It’s comparable to a subscription to a standards library or government code book

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

#535

Post by berniedurfee »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #505
berniedurfee wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal experience was having written several articles based on my experiences that did get some views and claps or whatever. Hopefully they helped some people out. Yet, I was below some sort of threshold to be in the club that would get me a few pennies if enough people read them, so I was kicked out of that program. Not that the program mattered, but getting kicked out for not being popular enough was annoying,…

Thank you. And I'm sorry we kicked you out. It was a rough cut and I think too rough. Also, we are stingy with our view counts so I think they are slightly more real than what would be reported elsewhere. For example, they are lower than what Google Analytics would tell you and much, much lower than what Quora or LinkedIn report.

Thank you for taking the time to respond!

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

#536

Post by xtiansimon »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #114

I think it's that sites initially provide valuable services for free, at a loss. Users love them, and so they grow. But loving something and being willing to pay for it are very different. The site expects, eventually, to stop losing money and even maybe earn a little profit. So after they've become popular and everybody seems to love them, they start trying to charge a little money here and there, or otherwise find…

As a reader i perceive Option B, keep up the mobilization efforts, as corrosive, like rust, or mold. There is no limit, and so you feel you’re always getting tricked. I’m not saying this of Medium specifically. I’m just react to this Option B idea.

This irks me because scammers are always trying to trick me. Legit companies are trying to trick me with dark patterns to spend micro amounts of money (Square is my current nemesis). For me there is always a level of opposition to these efforts.

Mentioned here was the New York Times. It’s always a subscription. You may be able to find a discount, or a special deal, but it’s always a subscription.

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

#538

Post by carlosjobim »

distances wrote: post #417
AmericanOP wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For me the bar is that a site has to work in incognito. That's how I open all links, so login is out of the question. Medium actually works very well that way, I didn't even know they still have the paywall -- or I might have disabled some scripts?

> For me the bar is that a site has to work in incognito.

Or you'll do what?

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

#539

Post by carlosjobim »

wkat4242 wrote: post #224
darth_avocado wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I never felt recommendations were a problem. I stopped reading medium articles once everything was behind a paywall. When most content is mediocre at best, paywalls aren’t helpful.

But even if the content is good.. Annoying me with making an account and only viewing 3 random articles ensures I'll never find out how great it is. Making an account is a pretty big step if you're just consuming content. Unless those 3 articles all happen to be amazing which is unlikely, and even then it's still a very large jump to a pricey subscription. Not everyone makes silicon valley money. Ps not sure if it's…

Could you give an example of 3 amazing articles that would make you purchase a subscription if you found them on the same platform?

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

#540

Post by tonystubblebine »

asim wrote: post #405
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 thi…

Thank you. FWIW, I think the case for Medium over Github + Jekyll is solid. We are a little more user friendly, we have syntax highlighting now, you do not have to put your own articles behind the paywall, potentially we will help with discovery/distribution.
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