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Re: On Medium

#11

Post by probably_wrong »

jmduke wrote: post #6

I get the feeling that a lot of people on this site dislike Medium, either consciously or unconsciously. I think part of it is the fact that it separates content from its creators; I think part of it is that it sprung up the same time as Svbtle, and grew conspicuously ubiquitous whereas Svbtle has remained pretty confined to the tech sphere. The underlying value proposition by any sort of blogging engine (Posthaven,…

> I get the feeling that a lot of people on this site dislike Medium, either consciously or unconsciously.

I dislike Medium consciously, but not for the reasons you present. I dislike the site because I don't think its prominence here in HN was progressive, but rather very sudden (one month it was nothing special, and the next one it was always on the main page).

That tells me that either Medium is the website to end all websites, a site so popular that it took news sites by storm and whose news cannot be ignored, or that their marketing team is artificially pushing their content in HN to gain views. The fact that they have a main page article discussing how awesome the site is doesn't help either.

Of course, I have no evidence whatsoever of this, but that's how it feels for me. So as suggested by a fellow HN commenter, I just ignore everything from them.

Re: On Medium

#12

Post by te_chris »

Whatever publishers think, I've started using (medium.com) on HN as a negative content filter. Was quite impressed when I first saw it, but the last few times I've clicked on something on the front page of HN on medium it's been poorly thought out link bait. This isn't unique to medium of course, but I've gone from having a high-end perception of their content to a low-end one.

Re: On Medium

#13

Post by jmduke »

probably_wrong wrote: post #11
jmduke wrote: post #6

I get the feeling that a lot of people on this site dislike Medium, either consciously or unconsciously. I think part of it is the fact that it separates content from its creators; I think part of it is that it sprung up the same time as Svbtle, and grew conspicuously ubiquitous whereas Svbtle has remained pretty confined to the tech sphere. The underlying value proposition by any sort of blogging engine (Posthaven,…

> I get the feeling that a lot of people on this site dislike Medium, either consciously or unconsciously. I dislike Medium consciously, but not for the reasons you present. I dislike the site because I don't think its prominence here in HN was progressive, but rather very sudden (one month it was nothing special, and the next one it was always on the main page). That tells me that either Medium is the website to end…

I don't disagree with you whatsoever. It definitely felt more organic to me because I follow a lot of the Obvious Corp. folk on Twitter, but I think it's naive to think that any major tech-focused publication (and I'm being broad with the definition of publication here) doesn't specifically submit stuff to HN.

I have no idea how HN's ranking works, but I wish there was some sort of diminishing return bias against a given top-level URL.

Re: On Medium

#14

Post by marban »

jmduke wrote: post #6

I get the feeling that a lot of people on this site dislike Medium, either consciously or unconsciously. I think part of it is the fact that it separates content from its creators; I think part of it is that it sprung up the same time as Svbtle, and grew conspicuously ubiquitous whereas Svbtle has remained pretty confined to the tech sphere. The underlying value proposition by any sort of blogging engine (Posthaven,…

"For most tech people, ease of use is a non-factor"

If you're still looking for simplicity (minus the network) you might give http://postagon.com a shot.

Re: On Medium

#15

Post by shuzchen »

raymondduke wrote: post #9
ricardobeat wrote: post #3

Many articles on Medium have all external links shortened to bit.ly URLs. Is that an option in the publishing interface? I find it extremely annoying, you can track outbound links using javascript without hiding the actual url.

The last time I checked, that wasn't an option. And now that you mentioned it, I might start to do it, too (sorry). I'm not sure how you can track links via javascript, but I do know how to make a bit.ly link.

Bit.ly is also useful in that you can use the same link across the web and have analytics all in one place. Otherwise you'd need to check medium to track links you posted there, and some other site for links from there etc.

Re: On Medium

#16

Post by jmspring »

jmduke wrote: post #6

I get the feeling that a lot of people on this site dislike Medium, either consciously or unconsciously. I think part of it is the fact that it separates content from its creators; I think part of it is that it sprung up the same time as Svbtle, and grew conspicuously ubiquitous whereas Svbtle has remained pretty confined to the tech sphere. The underlying value proposition by any sort of blogging engine (Posthaven,…

I just simply wonder why so many medium articles have made their way to the front page for an extended period of time.

Some good, some, eh, but propensity of solo-source gets old.

Re: On Medium

#17

Post by hkmurakami »

te_chris wrote: post #12

Whatever publishers think, I've started using (medium.com) on HN as a negative content filter. Was quite impressed when I first saw it, but the last few times I've clicked on something on the front page of HN on medium it's been poorly thought out link bait. This isn't unique to medium of course, but I've gone from having a high-end perception of their content to a low-end one.

I've noticed that the posts tend to be well composed but on the fluff side in terms of content.

Re: On Medium

#18

Post by abdophoto »

I'm the co-founder of The Tech Block http://thetechblock.com and we sort of built something similar to Medium (before Medium existed) except it's focused on Technology and we pick and choose the pieces that go on our site.

Though it has similarities, the big difference is that our site is not a place where you'd actually type out your article. Instead, if it's housed on your site already, you can choose to cross publish to our audience of tech enthusiasts.

If you haven't heard of it, give it a look.

Re: On Medium

#19

Post by bpatrianakos »

raymondduke wrote: post #8
jmduke wrote: post #6

I get the feeling that a lot of people on this site dislike Medium, either consciously or unconsciously. I think part of it is the fact that it separates content from its creators; I think part of it is that it sprung up the same time as Svbtle, and grew conspicuously ubiquitous whereas Svbtle has remained pretty confined to the tech sphere. The underlying value proposition by any sort of blogging engine (Posthaven,…

I like your comment, and your last name. I have an Uncle named Jim. This isn't him, is it? That would be quite the coincidence. --- I think the next best blogging platform will be one that does what WordPress used to do. I have my eyes on Ghost, which claims to be a minimalistic blogging system that you have full control over. It's interesting you mention a linking service. I am actually working somewhat of a linking…

Ghost was a good idea but seems to be dead. Last post I can find is from last year. It's design inspired my own service however which was a nice silver lining.

Re: On Medium

#20

Post by t0 »

jmduke wrote: post #6

I get the feeling that a lot of people on this site dislike Medium, either consciously or unconsciously. I think part of it is the fact that it separates content from its creators; I think part of it is that it sprung up the same time as Svbtle, and grew conspicuously ubiquitous whereas Svbtle has remained pretty confined to the tech sphere. The underlying value proposition by any sort of blogging engine (Posthaven,…

It just isn't innovative. It has a special font and layout, but it's still just paragraphs of text. Neocities is guilty of this as well. They did add a promise of privacy and commitment, but giving someone a textbox to write in just can't really be improved any further.
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