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Re: On Medium

#31

Post by lelandbatey »

t0 wrote: post #20
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.

it's interesting that you say that, since I felt the same way. I never really liked how much the content and the presentation of something where tied together. personally, I built my answer to this as http://xwl.me/, a site that just makes you markdown document beautiful and readable. However, you control what that source document says and where it's hosted.

I found it makes things simple and beautiful for me.

Re: On Medium

#32

Post by ricardobeat »

raymondduke wrote: post #26
minimaxir wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can theoretically set up Google Analytics to follow outbound links. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1136920?hl=en

Seems too complicated.

This is something that Medium itself could set up for you.

If you want something simpler, just paste this into your page: https://gist.github.com/5899046

Re: On Medium

#33

Post by Cherian »

Sometime back someone invited me to Medium and I am yet to try this out. I am still confused by to why I should try it out.

Some questions I have:

My domain (website) represents an exercise in credibility, branding and personality [1]. Why should I move to Medium?

Some people who write on Medium tell me the sheer number of views they get encourages them to write. Some have mentioned around 20K views in 3-4 hours. But this is a factor of “Editors pick” which will soon hit flooding issues and the rich gets richer issues in the front page. Can they ensure continuous coverage at this level ?

Some time from now they’ll have to make money. They’ll charge you, run ads or sell to another company. This might not be in sync with your ideology. I pay $6 on prgrmr. Cheap enough. Is this acceptable to you?

I agree maintaining a domain is more hard work than writing on medium but the feeling of “I own it” is incredible. Don’t you feel the same?

If distraction free writing were the USP, I’d recommend my co-founder’s iaWriter [2]. It does not publish directly and that’s a big negative. Isn’t this good enough?

[1]: http://www.gigpeppers.com/

[2]: http://www.iawriter.com/

Re: On Medium

#34

Post by minimaxir »

DanBC wrote: post #30
jmspring wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just for fun, here's a chart showing who submits Medium to HN ( http://imgur.com/pDIyeRM ) EDIT: I should have said, this is only the last 100 posts! EDIT: increasing the number gives a bad request error. :-/ urllib2.HTTPError: HTTP Error 400: Bad Request File "C:\Python27\lib\urllib2.py", line 527, in http_error_default raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code, msg, hdrs, fp)

Fixed graph here, containing the top 20 posters by number of posts, for 1000/1315 links containing the medium.com domain. (Using R; sorry about the labels)

http://i.imgur.com/WIJ4cT9.png

...wow, 1,000 submissions for a less-than 1 year startup is crazy.

NB: If you want to get more than 100, you need to use the start=0,100,200... parameter which works up to a maximum of 900 with limit=100.

Re: On Medium

#35

Post by tasuki »

raymondduke wrote: post #7

I've had two Medium articles get over 1.1k views and a 90%+ readership. I have about 6 subscribers on my WordPress blog that gets ~100 views a day. Just putting that out there. Make of it what you will. By the way, I once had an article get 10k views after a share on HN, then had that same article get ~120,000 after a republish on Lifehacker. The morale of all this? I don't know. Sure, it feels kind of good knowing t…

Does it come down to making money? Writing is about getting a message accross, be it a "give me money" message or a different one.

Re: On Medium

#36

Post by SeanDav »

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 generally avoid any submissions from Medium unless they have over 100 comments, in which case it is the meta discussion that attracts me and not the Medium post.

The problem I have with Medium is the posts typically lack depth, they are more "sound bites" than articles.

Re: On Medium

#37

Post by [deleted] »

raymondduke wrote: post #7

I've had two Medium articles get over 1.1k views and a 90%+ readership. I have about 6 subscribers on my WordPress blog that gets ~100 views a day. Just putting that out there. Make of it what you will. By the way, I once had an article get 10k views after a share on HN, then had that same article get ~120,000 after a republish on Lifehacker. The morale of all this? I don't know. Sure, it feels kind of good knowing t…

[deleted]

Re: On Medium

#38

Post by Ultron »

minimaxir wrote: post #23

My big issue with Medium is branding. With Svbtle, you could atleast use your own domain name to link to your articles. With Medium, you always see the same medium.com domain and the same black-on-beige background. There's no sense of identity. How often do people read articles by the same author on Medium? How often do people remember who wrote an article?

Medium is for writers who don't know how to brand. Medium essentially takes all the credit, traffic and recognition. And the writers seem to like that, weirdly enough.

Re: On Medium

#39

Post by _delirium »

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 can't help thinking that the winner of this nouveau publishing spectrum isn't going to be a hosting service, but a linking service.

It's possible you're right, but I would personally guess in the other direction. I think Tumblr is the most successful example of an approach that focuses on the internal ecosystem more (posts can certainly contain links, but linking outward isn't the focus). Tumblr tends to cover smaller things (1/2-paragraph posts, photos), but that model of an internally focused platform seems like it has room to expand. Whereas the link-based model already competes with a million existing ways to organize links, with varying mixes of voting, curation, and algorithms: Reddit, HN, Twitter, Slashdot, Prismatic, BoingBoing, etc.

Re: On Medium

#40

Post by huhtenberg »

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 think part of it is the fact that it separates content from its creators

I think it's more due to a 3 second loading delay when you are forced to stare at a blank page with no activity indicators.

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