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

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

#321

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

codechicago277 wrote: post #285
thepasswordis wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally it. Especially hijacking copy/paste, or text highlighting. It just brings the entire feeling of the place down. Imagine walking into a nice high end restaurant, and the server tries to sell you a credit card before taking your order. Would you continue going to that restaurant? That's what this sort of garbage does to my sentiment around websites that do it.

It’s crazy to me that they seem completely blind to the root problem. When I pick a blogging platform I don’t want popups, paywalls, required logins, or anything other than the content. Medium took off because it had a simple clean UI and good posts, and seemed like the lowest friction way to blog. Now Medium has huge amounts of friction and feels like yet another business trying to pump money out of users, so Substa…

> It’s crazy to me that they seem completely blind to the root problem.

I know it's cliché, but the classic quote remains true:

> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

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

#322

Post by ivanjermakov »

72mena wrote: post #307

Question related to this: Is there a tool out there that let's you spin a Medium-like text editor for your personal site? Curious to hear about HN's recommendation about whether a tool like this exists or if someone has considered building one.

Something like CKEditor[1]?

[1]: https://ckeditor.com/

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

#323

Post by [deleted] »

programmarchy wrote: post #301
inerte wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a few years ago I started to realize that if I somehow see the link pointed to "medium.com" I would just... nope. Not willing to take the gamble if I can read the page or not.

Same here. I have no patience for this type of shameless spamming anymore. One thing I hate about Medium is that it puts a paywall across everything, as if they’re The NY Times. If anything, I care about the author I’m reading, not Medium. With Substack I can subscribe to an individual author and they are the ones deciding what to paywall. Sure Substack gets a cut if I subscribe but that’s in the background.

[deleted]

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

#324

Post by synergy20 »

I'm a paid subscriber, I even gifted the membership to my friends.

The recommendation system needs to improve to find the true great articles, maybe some famous and well respected domain bloggers shall get a higher score than a newbie from nowhere with a clickbait title. You need a quality rating system. Maybe some icon to show the blogger's level(expert, random blogger, newbie,etc)

Personally I also like a text-oriented theme more, I mean I don't need those fancy pictures to distract me when what I want is to broaden my tech skills. In general Medium articles seem too verbose to me. In this twitter/Axios era, nobody has the time and patience to read those slow articles. Can you provide a text-mode option?

Talking about this, maybe Medium can learn one thing or two from Axios, how about put summary and conclusion to the top of each blog? so I know ahead what I am getting into before I have to scroll all the way down, to decide if I should dive into the thing at all?

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

#325

Post by throwaway290 »

programmarchy wrote: post #301
inerte wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a few years ago I started to realize that if I somehow see the link pointed to "medium.com" I would just... nope. Not willing to take the gamble if I can read the page or not.

Same here. I have no patience for this type of shameless spamming anymore. One thing I hate about Medium is that it puts a paywall across everything, as if they’re The NY Times. If anything, I care about the author I’m reading, not Medium. With Substack I can subscribe to an individual author and they are the ones deciding what to paywall. Sure Substack gets a cut if I subscribe but that’s in the background.

I'll interrupt this stream of consensus to note I don't have issues following a link to Medium.

Here's how it goes: I open a link, I dismiss a sign-up suggestion screen (if any), I read the stuff, and then I go. If there's a paywall I leave, but I see many more paywalls at links to the Economist or similar sources so what's the big deal? People want to make money.

There are low-quality posts but they are plenty on all platforms (dev.to comes to mind). On plus side Medium articles are comfortable to read without distractions.

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

#326

Post by benjaminwootton »

klabb3 wrote: post #268
aidos wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that’s probably the response that’s most swayed my opinion of a service ever. Good luck with it, I really hope you can turn it around.

Agreed, I think this deserves recognition. This is not the fake self promotion disguised as “brutal honesty” you see in the corporate word, there are actual admissions here that go beyond that, which leads even a cynic like me to take this seriously. It’s also important to understand that a lot of people will never pay for or be happy with the paywall content model, especially for articles. So even a success in this…

It is still corporate speak. He has posted similar before and been told that the paywall and forced reg is the issue. Then he comes back, doesn’t acknowledge it and gets told the same again. That is not genuine engagement.

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

#327

Post by ihateolives »

dawsoneliasen wrote: post #262
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…

I’m a writer who used to write on medium, started writing on substack last October. To be honest, I like the business model of medium better. I get paid when people read my stuff. Plus having distribution built in, that’s great. But last year I started posting really thoughtful content that I put a lot of work into, and I would get like dozen views. I had 300 followers and several previously successful articles and I…

> But last year I started posting really thoughtful content that I put a lot of work into, and I would get like dozen views.

I used to be active blogger in 2000s and was a part of blogging community back then. One lesson that I learned back then was that you cannot predict popularity. Those heavy pieces you think will be hits with readers will not be and those that you throw together on a whim about your sock drawer will get more hits than anything else combined. Ymmv, but the effort you put in does not always equal the popularity it'll get.

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

#328

Post by GraffitiTim »

GraffitiTim wrote: post #226
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…

These aren’t the key problem. The key problem is that you’ve lost the trust of the authors you want to attract. It’s no longer a place I can post and know that my content will be cleanly accessible to readers. I now think you’ll pepper it with pop ups and account demands. It went from being a minimalist and trusted place to post, to now a feeling of feeding my own content into someone else’s machine and losing contro…

Also: if you've been the new CEO since last July and haven't figured this out, you'll fail to save Medium.

You mentioned paying attention to the sentiment and linked to the HN survey where people explained why they don't like Medium. The top comment was someone explaining this exact reason.

It's highly admirable that you are on here trying to listen, communicating issues transparently, and working to fix problems. But I think you need to listen even more deeply.

Unfortunately this will push you into the depths of the business model that you won't want to change, but is the fundamental reason for medium's eventual failure.

Right now is the moment to save it, as you read this note!

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

#329

Post by nixpulvis »

thepasswordis wrote: post #270
wkat4242 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are not the main pain points. The biggest issue for me is that medium makes me feel like a cash cow. The way it wants me to pay every step of the way, the way it hijacks copy/paste to insert its own marketing. The account it wants me to create. The trackers it inserts everywhere. You missed the step of making something great that people actually feel good about paying for. The grassroots "for users by u…

This is literally it. Especially hijacking copy/paste, or text highlighting. It just brings the entire feeling of the place down. Imagine walking into a nice high end restaurant, and the server tries to sell you a credit card before taking your order. Would you continue going to that restaurant? That's what this sort of garbage does to my sentiment around websites that do it.

Fundamentally, it's hard to build a profitable blogging platform we'll like, because all you really need to do is render markdown/HTML with a decent stylesheet. Most features on top of that should either be browser extensions or shouldn't exist at all.

Everything else is platforming, which we will also argue should be separated from the blog itself. This is why we have URLs and links. Just as in the restaurant example, I first go to a credit card company, then I go buy dinner.

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

#330

Post by jrumbut »

raincole wrote: post #319
jrumbut wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume the plan from day one was make a very appealing platform at a loss, gain a moat from a huge library of good content, then squeeze the profit out of it. It's a deceptive business model, and people feel deceived and no longer want to do business with that company (surprise!).

The same logic applies to Youtube. Do you think Youtube is going to fail soon?

The thing is video hosting at scale is still a pain, I have a YouTube account because I have a Google account so they never nagged me to create one, and almost all their content is still free in unlimited amounts. I'm not sure I've ever paid YouTube a dollar directly even though I watch it daily.

There may be some similarities (like when they used to let people upload full movies and TV shows), but it is a big stretch to paint YouTube and Medium with the same brush.

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