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

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

#131

Post by pixodaros »

Eduard wrote: post #100
PaulHoule wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The remarkable thing about Medium was that it went downhill so quickly, or, compared to other platforms like Twitter, it started trying to make money early in the process of gathering an audience, which limited it's growth. In my mind it never had a good reputation. Successful blogging has three elements: (1) writing a lot, (2) technically running your blog, and (3) promoting your blog. In principle Medium took (2) a…

> Successful blogging has three elements: (1) writing a lot... How much truth is in this often-repeated statement?

Its an empirical rule of thumb that to build an audience online, post at least once a week (more often for low-effort posts for smartphones). If you can think of any well-known online writers who do not post a lot, I think you will find they generally had an existing audience (eg. Paul Graham is a venture capitalist with a crowd of admirers). Rules of thumb are not laws of nature, but this one matches my experience and my observations.

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

#132

Post by wkat4242 »

drc500free wrote: post #97
jklm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, Substack is heading down the same direction - when you get linked to an article, it now forces a full screen popup on you asking if you want to subscribe or just read.

Somehow I find that less annoying with substack, because their positioning is clearly "look, this is a newsletter, not a blog." The dark UI patterns around dismissing the pop up are annoying though.

Yeah that's the problem. I don't want a newsletter, I want a blog.

And like the OP I only care about people reading my stuff. I don't care about monetisation and I definitely don't want to put them through all the crap that medium does.. substack is not a great alternative because it's also monetisation focused for authors.

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

#133

Post by joegahona »

reso wrote: post #87

Lots of answers point to the user experience of Medium becoming worse. This misses the bigger picture: the economics of free blog hosting don't work. V1 of Medium was great because they weren't concerned with monetization. The product was built fully in the interests of the user. Once the company grew, they saw that the bottom line was not sustainable, and so started adding features that would possibly increase reven…

I agree that UX complaints miss the bigger picture. Lots of the highest-traffic sites have terrible UX. Lots of people will put up with poor UX if it delivers the content/product they want. Poor UX does not help -- but it's not the main failing of Medium, in my opinion.

Medium has been plagued with endless "pivots" -- not sure if it was wimpy yes-men who had to give in to every U-turn from the founder or if it was just fundamentally bad ideas. They also let the Substack idea pass them by, which can only be described as embarrassing.

On the other hand, your point about Medium flailing away trying different features to add to the bottom line is poignant. Very few written-content publications have figured out monetization. There's always a tension between ads, which yuck up the experience, and paywalls, which hobble virality and penalize your most passionate users.

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

#134

Post by rkimb »

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…

Just wanted to say thanks for your transparency - very cool to see you here acknowledging the pain points head on and sharing your plan to address them.

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

#135

Post by joegahona »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #102
JohnFen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big part of it is that users/readers understandably feel that a bait-and-switch has happened. Because it has. I really think the whole idea of "make it free at first, monetize later" is what's broken. If the intention is ultimately to have it generate revenue, the best thing to do is set up the revenue mechanism right from the start.

Agreed. Many people who have the means don't mind paying for things that bring them value, and they would much rather just pay for consistency than have that value eroded over time.

Good example: The Information.

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

#136

Post by wkat4242 »

slymerson wrote: post #38
JohnFen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me sad. Long form content is the content I get the most value from. Short-form is largely pointless.

I agree with you, but the younger generations are going to be the "leaders" of the world and they love short form content. Everything points towards short form content being the biggest thing while long form content and text content becomes niche.

I don't agree. It's not young people as such, it's the mainstream that love shallow short form content.

However the more intelligent, curious and thoughtful people that hopefully become our leaders, are more into long form content which simply has much more to offer than cheap one-liners.

Unfortunately selecting those leaders is where we are going wrong right now. Referring to a lot of leaders (politics and industry alike) that just love blasting cheap shots on short form services like Twitter.

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

#138

Post by burnished »

patrick451 wrote: post #127
gwbas1c wrote: post #115

I remember seeing a few medium posts on Hacker News a few years ago. They all had good tone management; but when read with a critical eye, they were factually incorrect or had poor comprehension of the subject matter. It got the point where, if I saw "medium.com" next to a link I'd think, "oh, that's a medium post" and not open it. If I accidentally opened a Medium post, I'd close it immediately without reading it. "…

I agree that "medium.com" is a stamp of mediocrity, and I tend to have the same kneejerk reaction to never read something posted there. However, I'm not sure I agree about the good tone management. There's always been something about medium and most of the articles there that is sort of cringe. It feels kind of like linkedin, where everything is superficial self-promotion, everybody is "thrilled" (a word only used in…

Yes. It never feels like the authors primary purpose is the article or self expression.

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

#139

Post by idk1 »

I mostly see a paywall when I visit it. It's funny they've done all that effort to get me there, then once every day or so I see their paywall and leave.

I'm only talking from my perspective, but I'm bounced away from it most of the time.

I don't feel like I get that with Substack? I usually just click "no thanks" on the newsletter box, and go back and sign up if I like it. I very occasionally subscribe and pay for a substack feed I particularly like.

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

#140

Post by anigbrowl »

Permit wrote: post #98
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the incentives changed. We really just need someone egalitarian to make the craigslist of blogs and never be tempted to stab the goose who's laying the golden eggs for quick monetization. The blogging space is too long-term for that short sighted nonsense

> never be tempted to stab the goose who's laying the golden eggs Isn’t the whole point that there are no golden eggs? People don’t want to pay and people don’t want ads. Where would you get income for the authors and for the platform itself?

Write a book or become an e-celeb and go on tour. 90% of blog/newsletter content (which are basically the same thing) is just self-promotion anyway.
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