It's just the same pattern as always with VC-funded platforms. They start out great, because they're literally too good to be true. They have no realistic business model (or none at all) and are...
Exemplary
It's just the same pattern as always with VC-funded platforms. They start out great, because they're literally too good to be true. They have no realistic business model (or none at all) and are completely unsustainable, but can just burn tens of millions of dollars attracting users and getting them to build a personal attachment/investment with the site.
Then eventually the money starts to run out, and they need to look for another funding round. Growth and "engagement" are the most interesting things for VCs, so they have to start aggressively pushing them through techniques like forced (or very heavily encouraged) registration, heavy social-sharing features, etc. (exactly what all those annoying Medium "features" are aimed at). They often also start adding something that resembles a business model at this point—it'll have almost no chance at generating enough revenue for them to keep running the site the way they have been, but at least it makes it look like they have a plan.
If a company has taken venture capital, you have already been sold. It’s not a matter of if, it’s simply a matter of when. (Unless the company goes under before it can exit, that is.) A venture-capital funded startup is a temporary company that has to convince enough people into using their platform so that they can make good on the exit they promised their investors at the very beginning. It is the opposite of a long-term, sustainable business.
Some of us knew this back in 2013. Andrea Philips, for example, saw through Ev Williams' bullshit and identified Medium as a content farm. I'm reproducing the text below to get around Medium's...
There’s a lot of buzz around Medium right now. It’s shiny and incredibly easy to use!
Great sharing features mean increased social media buzz! Founded by some of the guys
who made Twitter so of course it’ll be awesome! And there are curated posts, so if you
write something really fantastic, you’ll get tons of exposure.
Super, right? What else could a writer possibly ask for?
This is all true. But it all neatly glosses over one ugly fact: Medium is just an
upscale version of the same old business model used by shady content farms
the world around. And it contributes to an environment where the most
important element in creating written content — the writer — is
undervalued and uncompensated.
That business model goes something like this:
Step 1: Get people to write for cheap (or better, for free!)
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit
Step 2 isn’t clear in the case of Medium, but you know it’s coming, eventually.
Nobody starts a business with no plan for seeing a return on their investment,
after all, even if they’re playing a long game.
In the case of Medium, it may just be some variation on “selling ads” or something
more novel, like “repackaging content to sell it elsewhere.” A friend of mine has joked
about Medium selling best-of collections as Kindle Singles… but that’s an entirely
plausible direction for the business to go.
And if and when they decide to monetize your content… they’re not under any
obligation to give you one red cent of the proceeds.
A reminder, from Medium’s Terms of Service:
By furnishing your User Content to Medium, you give Medium a broad license to
use and exploit your User Content as it operates and evolves its business. That license
has a number of different features: it is a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free,
sublicensable, transferable license to exploit all copyright rights now in existence or that
may arise in the future with respect to your User Content, in any medium that now exists
or may arise in the future, as well as to do anything else that is reasonably appropriate to
our Service and its exploitation of your User Content (including, but not limited to, use
of your name in association with your User Content to identify you as the contributor).
The license has no restriction as to the medium, dissemination method, type of Service
we may offer, or the type of systems or products that may be used in conjunction with
your User Content.
What does this mean? It means you’re giving your writing to a corporation for free, and
they can do anything they want with it. Forever. Without paying you. Ever.
Writers in the digital world are under a lot of conflicting pressures. Gathering an audience
when you don’t have an audience is wicked hard work. And so the lure of exposure can be
incredibly powerful: simply use someone else’s platform to boost your own reputation and
gain influence. Hopefully, the thinking goes, some of those readers will start to follow you
around and pay attention to your other work.
But if all you ever get from your writing is exposure… what exactly are you gaining?
You can’t eat exposure. It doesn’t pay your mortgage. It doesn’t keep well in the freezer
and it’s not transferable. And alas, exposure doesn’t always mean increased interest in
the stuff you’re making money from elsewhere. I know of more than one project (not
naming names to protect confidences) where widespread and glowing press coverage
never translated into actual sales.
Now, I’m not saying you should never write unless you see the Benjamins. I’ve written
for free before; I’ll do it again. Sometimes, yeah, the exposure is worth it. But even then,
it would be foolish to use Medium as a primary platform for your work. If Medium goes
away — like Geocities, Bloggers.com, Posterous and countless other startups lo these
twenty years gone by — your digital footprint will be gone, too. Poof.
I don’t know about you, but the idea of every link pointing to my work for the last
few years suddenly breaking… well, it makes me feel a little queasy. Third-party platforms
come and go, but a site and domain you own are forever. Protecting yourself and your
work from bitrot is important.
Now, maybe you don’t mind lining someone else’s pockets with free labor. And
maybe the risk of bitrot doesn’t matter to you. Your personal calculus may prove
it’s worth it and beneficial to you, and you still want to post to Medium. And that’s
fine, I guess. We all draw the lines we’re comfortable with.
Just make sure you’re perfectly clear on what you’re getting out of the bargain —
and what you’re giving up.
Everything Ms. Philips wrote in 2013 was true then, and it's true now. If you base your web presence on
Medium (as opposed to publishing on your own site and syndicating to Medium) you're nothing but a
digital sharecropper -- or, as we'd call you in New York, a schmuck.
Any chance you could replace that code block with a blockquote, or even just include the text inline? Code blocks make it really hard to read text, especially on mobile.
Any chance you could replace that code block with a blockquote, or even just include the text inline? Code blocks make it really hard to read text, especially on mobile.
That's only true if you count their use of the Spotify approach to artist payment -- where the popular artists make bank and everybody else makes next to nothing -- as "paying writers". As far as...
I mean, Medium is a content farm, sure, but unlike WordPress.com and every other free blogging site, it actually pays its users.
That's only true if you count their use of the Spotify approach to artist payment -- where the popular artists make bank and everybody else makes next to nothing -- as "paying writers".
As far as I'm concerned, "paying writers" means that you submit a piece, a editor reads it and makes an accept/reject call, and if Medium agrees to publish your piece you get paid by the word. If you agree to write under any other payment model, you might as well buy lottery tickets as well.
Medium is one of the few websites that successfully bypasses UBlock Origin. I wouldn't mind if their ads weren't so invasive. But no, I don't pardon the interruption. Also: the author makes good...
Medium is one of the few websites that successfully bypasses UBlock Origin. I wouldn't mind if their ads weren't so invasive. But no, I don't pardon the interruption.
Also: the author makes good points. So why is he writing on Medium in the first place?
My guess was to make it easy for people to see all the annoyances he mentions. I got the "Pardon the interruption" modal when I clicked on the article, I can highlight text and see the little...
Also: the author makes good points. So why is he writing on Medium in the first place?
My guess was to make it easy for people to see all the annoyances he mentions. I got the "Pardon the interruption" modal when I clicked on the article, I can highlight text and see the little popup menu, etc.
Most likely to convince others to move from the platform, considering most medium writers are probably on medium. I'm a bit disappointing the author didn't provide a good alternative, besides self...
Most likely to convince others to move from the platform, considering most medium writers are probably on medium.
I'm a bit disappointing the author didn't provide a good alternative, besides self hosted.
I personally like GitHub pages for mine. It's free (as in, no paid tier exists unless you want your repo private for some reason), clean, and fast. If you pick one of GH's predefined themes it's a...
I personally like GitHub pages for mine. It's free (as in, no paid tier exists unless you want your repo private for some reason), clean, and fast.
If you pick one of GH's predefined themes it's a really fast start- just fill a few config vars and get started. The true beauty of it is that you can also include HTML, custom themes, js, and really anything static to make it yours.
If you have a .edu email address are a student, you can get unlimited private repositories for free through GitHub's Student Developer Pack program. edit: corrected wrong info
If you have a .edu email address are a student, you can get unlimited private repositories for free through GitHub's Student Developer Pack program.
I just want to point out, you don't need .edu address, any proof that you're studying is ok (they gave me the student pack with just paper from school with my name on it - and it wasn't even in...
I just want to point out, you don't need .edu address, any proof that you're studying is ok (they gave me the student pack with just paper from school with my name on it - and it wasn't even in English).
Perhaps it is not a matter of "someone writing why Medium is bad on Medium" but "someone on Medium writing writing why Medium is bad.'" I've never used Medium, but his account appears to be not...
So why is he writing on Medium in the first place?
Perhaps it is not a matter of "someone writing why Medium is bad on Medium" but "someone on Medium writing writing why Medium is bad.'" I've never used Medium, but his account appears to be not particularly active, but quite old.
Any way to self-host something with the same interface? At least when it first started, Medium made all your articles look good and had the kind of WYSIWYG editor that didn't let you shoot...
Any way to self-host something with the same interface? At least when it first started, Medium made all your articles look good and had the kind of WYSIWYG editor that didn't let you shoot yourself in the foot. In fact, they still have all of that, just a lot of trash on top now.
I use Ghost. I'm not self-hosting (I pay them) but you can choose to go the self-host route. Their latest versions use a nice WYSIWYG editor (though I still just stick to Markdown myself).
I use Ghost. I'm not self-hosting (I pay them) but you can choose to go the self-host route.
Their latest versions use a nice WYSIWYG editor (though I still just stick to Markdown myself).
WordPress is working on a new editor called Gutenberg that works kinda like Medium, but breaks paragraphs into blocks that you can move around and fiddle with.
Any way to self-host something with the same interface?
WordPress is working on a new editor called Gutenberg that works kinda like Medium, but breaks paragraphs into blocks that you can move around and fiddle with.
Medium is a poor choice for anything, I'm 99% less likely to read an article if it's hosted on Medium. Because, first of all, it's not Medium, it's XXXXXL, and it's an epitome of crappy idiotic...
Medium is a poor choice for anything, I'm 99% less likely to read an article if it's hosted on Medium. Because, first of all, it's not Medium, it's XXXXXL, and it's an epitome of crappy idiotic user-hostile design. Then, almost the entirety of articles I've encountered there has been of low quality to absolute garbage. Blogger is way better, at least with older templates.
I wish I could lay claim to this quote, considering it’s genius—but alas I simply read it on HackerNews about a year ago: “It’s called Medium because it’s neither rare nor well done.”
I wish I could lay claim to this quote, considering it’s genius—but alas I simply read it on HackerNews about a year ago:
“It’s called Medium because it’s neither rare nor well done.”
What alternatives do folks suggest for drawing audiences? I ended up syndicating my content from a wordpress self-hosted site onto Medium, because it seems harder to connect with people without...
What alternatives do folks suggest for drawing audiences? I ended up syndicating my content from a wordpress self-hosted site onto Medium, because it seems harder to connect with people without leveraging an existing community.
What kind of content do you write about? If you're a developer I'd definitely recommend joining https://dev.to. And you can always post "articles" here as text posts :)
What kind of content do you write about? If you're a developer I'd definitely recommend joining https://dev.to. And you can always post "articles" here as text posts :)
For now, self-hosting and syndicating to Medium is probably your best bet. Going forward, self-hosting will likely continue to be your best bet, but Medium might be replaced as the central...
For now, self-hosting and syndicating to Medium is probably your best bet. Going forward, self-hosting will likely continue to be your best bet, but Medium might be replaced as the central blogging hub of the Internet. In short, always self-host and syndicate where the people are.
I know this is late but I recently started work on a SPA that allows you to read articles w/out all the clutter and ads. It's fully open source and I just added support for medium.com! (I'll be...
I know this is late but I recently started work on a SPA that allows you to read articles w/out all the clutter and ads. It's fully open source and I just added support for medium.com! (I'll be making a full post about this once I add support for more sites.
Bookmarklet: javascript:open("https://nektro.github.io/reader/?url="+location.href,"_blank").focus() https://nektro.github.io/reader/ https://github.com/nektro/reader
It's just the same pattern as always with VC-funded platforms. They start out great, because they're literally too good to be true. They have no realistic business model (or none at all) and are completely unsustainable, but can just burn tens of millions of dollars attracting users and getting them to build a personal attachment/investment with the site.
Then eventually the money starts to run out, and they need to look for another funding round. Growth and "engagement" are the most interesting things for VCs, so they have to start aggressively pushing them through techniques like forced (or very heavily encouraged) registration, heavy social-sharing features, etc. (exactly what all those annoying Medium "features" are aimed at). They often also start adding something that resembles a business model at this point—it'll have almost no chance at generating enough revenue for them to keep running the site the way they have been, but at least it makes it look like they have a plan.
Aral Balkan's description of them as "temporary companies" is still my favorite:
Some of us knew this back in 2013. Andrea Philips, for example, saw through Ev Williams' bullshit and identified Medium as a content farm. I'm reproducing the text below to get around Medium's paywall.
Everything Ms. Philips wrote in 2013 was true then, and it's true now. If you base your web presence on
Medium (as opposed to publishing on your own site and syndicating to Medium) you're nothing but a
digital sharecropper -- or, as we'd call you in New York, a schmuck.
Any chance you could replace that code block with a blockquote, or even just include the text inline? Code blocks make it really hard to read text, especially on mobile.
Better?
Much - thanks!
I mean, Medium is a content farm, sure, but unlike WordPress.com and every other free blogging site, it actually pays its users.
That's only true if you count their use of the Spotify approach to artist payment -- where the popular artists make bank and everybody else makes next to nothing -- as "paying writers".
As far as I'm concerned, "paying writers" means that you submit a piece, a editor reads it and makes an accept/reject call, and if Medium agrees to publish your piece you get paid by the word. If you agree to write under any other payment model, you might as well buy lottery tickets as well.
Medium is one of the few websites that successfully bypasses UBlock Origin. I wouldn't mind if their ads weren't so invasive. But no, I don't pardon the interruption.
Also: the author makes good points. So why is he writing on Medium in the first place?
My guess was to make it easy for people to see all the annoyances he mentions. I got the "Pardon the interruption" modal when I clicked on the article, I can highlight text and see the little popup menu, etc.
Most likely to convince others to move from the platform, considering most medium writers are probably on medium.
I'm a bit disappointing the author didn't provide a good alternative, besides self hosted.
I personally like GitHub pages for mine. It's free (as in, no paid tier exists unless you want your repo private for some reason), clean, and fast.
If you pick one of GH's predefined themes it's a really fast start- just fill a few config vars and get started. The true beauty of it is that you can also include HTML, custom themes, js, and really anything static to make it yours.
Gitlab also hosts web pages and private repos, for free
Wrong. You can always generate locally and just push the resulting HTML and stuff. I did that for quite a while when I used GH Pages.
Oh hey, fancy seeing you here! (I'm u/jackson1442)
Just wanted to let you know you double commented
Submitting the same form twice should already be prevented. Did you open two separate reply boxes for it or something?
If you
have a .edu email addressare a student, you can get unlimited private repositories for free through GitHub's Student Developer Pack program.edit: corrected wrong info
I just want to point out, you don't need .edu address, any proof that you're studying is ok (they gave me the student pack with just paper from school with my name on it - and it wasn't even in English).
wordpress.com
Perhaps it is not a matter of "someone writing why Medium is bad on Medium" but "someone on Medium writing writing why Medium is bad.'" I've never used Medium, but his account appears to be not particularly active, but quite old.
Or its just that Medium users are his audience.
It's definitely intentional. This is his only Medium-post and the rest of his writing is self-hosted.
(From his post there)
Any way to self-host something with the same interface? At least when it first started, Medium made all your articles look good and had the kind of WYSIWYG editor that didn't let you shoot yourself in the foot. In fact, they still have all of that, just a lot of trash on top now.
I use Ghost. I'm not self-hosting (I pay them) but you can choose to go the self-host route.
Their latest versions use a nice WYSIWYG editor (though I still just stick to Markdown myself).
I've already self-hosted Ghost a few years ago. Nice and fast, but not as beautiful as Medium.
I suggest checking it out again. They've really overhauled the theming in the past year.
WordPress is working on a new editor called Gutenberg that works kinda like Medium, but breaks paragraphs into blocks that you can move around and fiddle with.
Medium is a poor choice for anything, I'm 99% less likely to read an article if it's hosted on Medium. Because, first of all, it's not Medium, it's XXXXXL, and it's an epitome of crappy idiotic user-hostile design. Then, almost the entirety of articles I've encountered there has been of low quality to absolute garbage. Blogger is way better, at least with older templates.
I wish I could lay claim to this quote, considering it’s genius—but alas I simply read it on HackerNews about a year ago:
“It’s called Medium because it’s neither rare nor well done.”
What alternatives do folks suggest for drawing audiences? I ended up syndicating my content from a wordpress self-hosted site onto Medium, because it seems harder to connect with people without leveraging an existing community.
What kind of content do you write about? If you're a developer I'd definitely recommend joining https://dev.to. And you can always post "articles" here as text posts :)
For now, self-hosting and syndicating to Medium is probably your best bet. Going forward, self-hosting will likely continue to be your best bet, but Medium might be replaced as the central blogging hub of the Internet. In short, always self-host and syndicate where the people are.
I know this is late but I recently started work on a SPA that allows you to read articles w/out all the clutter and ads. It's fully open source and I just added support for medium.com! (I'll be making a full post about this once I add support for more sites.
Bookmarklet:
javascript:open("https://nektro.github.io/reader/?url="+location.href,"_blank").focus()https://nektro.github.io/reader/
https://github.com/nektro/reader