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The making of Medium.com

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Re: The making of Medium.com

#21

Post by thoughtcriminal »

barretts wrote: post #19
thoughtcriminal wrote: post #15

I personally won't ever use Medium because it deprives the author of branding and recognition.

Why, simply because it's hosted on a different domain? It seems to help people reach an audience wider than they would otherwise, which is anything but bad for branding.

A wider reach isn't a given, especially for someone who writes well and has basic marketing skills.

Besides, on the rare occasion I have read an article on Medium (I don't anymore) I could never remember the author. It's all just the faceless Borg.

For anyone thinking of using Medium, don't do it. It's like giving your work away for free, and for no recognition.

Re: The making of Medium.com

#22

Post by thoughtcriminal »

intropic wrote: post #20
thoughtcriminal wrote: post #15

I personally won't ever use Medium because it deprives the author of branding and recognition.

I wonder what the reasoning was behind branding the author in the URL path as opposed to as a subdomain. It seems like a very strange approach to take from guys who have done the latter before. If nothing else it sure makes posts from Medium very annoying on HN because I can't actually tell which blogger's post I'm going to read until I click the link (primarily read on iPad so no hovering).

It's not annoying for Medium. It's free labor.

Re: The making of Medium.com

#23

Post by mnicole »

thoughtcriminal wrote: post #21
barretts wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, simply because it's hosted on a different domain? It seems to help people reach an audience wider than they would otherwise, which is anything but bad for branding.

A wider reach isn't a given, especially for someone who writes well and has basic marketing skills. Besides, on the rare occasion I have read an article on Medium (I don't anymore) I could never remember the author. It's all just the faceless Borg. For anyone thinking of using Medium, don't do it. It's like giving your work away for free, and for no recognition.

Seriously. The first thing I do if I strongly like or dislike an article is click the name/avatar to get more information about the author to better understand their background. Medium pushes me onto a page with the rest of their articles instead of a profile and I then have to hope that I can use Google to find their Twitter or website based on the small amount of information in their user blurb (because it doesn't force them to include either).

Re: The making of Medium.com

#26

Post by markdown »

call wrote: post #12
ValentineC wrote: post #8

Loved the article, not a fan of the 2.4MB video of hands typing on an Apple keyboard [1] I was forced to download. I'm just glad I wasn't on a mobile connection (tethered or otherwise) with a bandwidth cap. I searched for methods to disable MP4 video downloading on both Chrome and Firefox, but they don't appear to work (for Firefox, it was about setting media.autoplay.enabled to false). If anyone knows how I would be…

The whole damn page is 13 MB. It took over a minute to load on my 1.5mbps bandwidth-capped WiMax connection. The tab in Chrome is using over 200MB of memory on my Mac. With chrome using the maximum possible screen real estate, I can't even read the title on my 1440x900 mbp. http://cl.ly/PK8o A+

It's 28.4 megs.

Re: The making of Medium.com

#27

Post by markdown »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #4
arkitaip wrote: post #2

Very detailed and useful write-up about how actual design work is done in complex web app projects. Makes me actually want to use Medium.

Medium is not a complex webapp. Facebook or gmail is a complex webapp.

Medium is so simple it would be a good candidate for beginner web tutorial examples: Build a Medium clone in Rails in 4hours.

Medium isn't a big thing because it's special in any way, it's a big thing because it was made by "web celebrities".

Re: The making of Medium.com

#28

Post by markdown »

wiremine wrote: post #17
cmelbye wrote: post #9

Wow, great article but terribly designed website. Really slow scrolling, confusing layout, not sure what I could interact with and what I couldn't. (Some elements used the "pointing hand" cursor yet indicating I could click, yet did nothing when I clicked.)

I had the completely opposite reaction: I thought it the layout was excellent. (Although I agree the reaction on the mouse over was confusing).

The page is beautiful, but is designed for a very narrow range of computing devices.

28MB will cost you a fortune on 3g if you don't have a good plan, and the page will be freeze most devices and be unusable on most of the rest.

Might as well have used Flash.

Re: The making of Medium.com

#29

Post by [deleted] »

markdown wrote: post #27
dreamdu5t wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medium is not a complex webapp. Facebook or gmail is a complex webapp.

Medium is so simple it would be a good candidate for beginner web tutorial examples: Build a Medium clone in Rails in 4hours. Medium isn't a big thing because it's special in any way, it's a big thing because it was made by "web celebrities".

[deleted]

Re: The making of Medium.com

#30

Post by Lukeas14 »

intropic wrote: post #20
thoughtcriminal wrote: post #15

I personally won't ever use Medium because it deprives the author of branding and recognition.

I wonder what the reasoning was behind branding the author in the URL path as opposed to as a subdomain. It seems like a very strange approach to take from guys who have done the latter before. If nothing else it sure makes posts from Medium very annoying on HN because I can't actually tell which blogger's post I'm going to read until I click the link (primarily read on iPad so no hovering).

SEO would be one theory. Pages under the same 'www' subdomain will provide a more positive SEO boost to medium.com than pages under various subdomains.
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