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Medium raises $25 million

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Re: Medium raises $25 million

#11

Post by bhouston »

minimaxir wrote: post #6
lowglow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it true that people actually don't care about keeping ownership over their content? You comment here. Isn't that basically the same thing? What are comments if not for mini-blog posts sometimes.

Hacker News comments don't require the blood, sweat, and tears involved in writing a 1,000-word well-edited essay. Additionally, Hacker News comments aren't used by the owning website for potential profit. (Y Combinator as a brand is likely hurt by HN comments anyways)

> Y Combinator as a brand is likely hurt by HN comments anyways

Comments are the price some websites pay to encourage higher levels of engagement, and the high level of engagement here on HackerNews makes it a more valuable resource to its readers (more submissions, more voting, and sometimes informed comments from the community) and thus it has a halo effect on YCombinator. Thus the comments in the grand scheme of things are surely a net positive.

Reddit and YouTube are built in part on comment driven engagement even if a large majority of the comments are poor.

Re: Medium raises $25 million

#12

Post by misiti3780 »

I think mediums UI is nice, but as far as i can tell, you cant include code snippets so its almost useless for blogging about programming - until the change that, I am going to continue to use jekyll.

Re: Medium raises $25 million

#13

Post by goronbjorn »

misiti3780 wrote: post #12

I think mediums UI is nice, but as far as i can tell, you cant include code snippets so its almost useless for blogging about programming - until the change that, I am going to continue to use jekyll.

They do support code blocks: https://medium.com/help-center/128f049a7ad (just search the page for "Code block")

Re: Medium raises $25 million

#14

Post by kmfrk »

eob wrote: post #8
state wrote: post #3

I guess this is the direct counter-argument to my comment in the thread about Svtle. Is it true that people actually don't care about keeping ownership over their content? I find it so strange that these services which are pitched directly at people who consider themselves to be brilliant also become the archive for your stuff. It just seems like a conflict of interest when, yes, what exactly is their game plan?

It's a distribution / curation thing, like writing an Op-Ed for a magazine instead of publishing it on your blog. Either way you get the word out, but by ceding control to the magazine you gain access to a wider audience, unless you are in the 1% of bloggers who are a destination themselves (like daringfireball.com). Even Krugman "blogs" via the NYT instead of on his own domain. Both ways are valuable, of course. Jus…

Yeah, Medium is tantamount to the blogging equivalent of an online petition in 2014.

Lots of Open Letters. :)

I wouldn't mind if they disrupted away the opinion columns and letters to the editor in newspapers, though. Better to fit it all in one place to ignore.

Re: Medium raises $25 million

#15

Post by normloman »

"Ideally, Williams envisions Medium much like a magazine creative director, inviting the types of items that may show up in a magazine, from features to top-ten lists to cartoons to even video."

Good. The internet needs more top 10 lists.

Re: Medium raises $25 million

#18

Post by lowglow »

blumkvist wrote: post #10
lowglow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it true that people actually don't care about keeping ownership over their content? You comment here. Isn't that basically the same thing? What are comments if not for mini-blog posts sometimes.

There's quite a bit of difference between annonymous ramblings in some corner of the internet and long form journalism that took you serious amount of time and money to put together.

time is money, regardless of how it's spent.

Re: Medium raises $25 million

#19

Post by staunch »

The cool thing is Ev is rich enough now to pay back the full $25M personally if he decides to pull another Odeo/Twitter.

...though I imagine most investors will keep their money in play this time :-)

Re: Medium raises $25 million

#20

Post by lowglow »

minimaxir wrote: post #6
lowglow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it true that people actually don't care about keeping ownership over their content? You comment here. Isn't that basically the same thing? What are comments if not for mini-blog posts sometimes.

Hacker News comments don't require the blood, sweat, and tears involved in writing a 1,000-word well-edited essay. Additionally, Hacker News comments aren't used by the owning website for potential profit. (Y Combinator as a brand is likely hurt by HN comments anyways)

> Hacker News comments don't require the blood, sweat, and tears involved in writing a 1,000-word well-edited essay.

Some people do take the time to write well thought out replies.

> Hacker News comments aren't used by the owning website for potential profit.

I'm going to disagree. HN profits GREATLY from your participation.

> Y Combinator as a brand is likely hurt by HN comments anyways

Not likely. Comments from an engaged community (no matter how cynical at times) still drives traffic, and that is a powerful in and of itself.

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